World Masters Championships Finland

 I was competing at the World Championships in Finland in a place 4 hours away from Helsinki by bus called Jyvaskyla. I came home with 3 silver medals a 4th 5th 6th and 7th place in total and two new Irish masters’ records. I competed in over 13 events in total in the 4 days I competed. I was known to the locals as Super woman for competing in so many events, but this is not out of the ordinary as a 93 year old from Canada known as Olga to her friends competed in 12 events and broke 3 World records. Now that is a super Woman, to high jump and competes at her young age.

I began with the Pentathlon event and was up against the best long jumper in the world, Petra Baejac from France who jumps over 5 metres 60 and 1 metre 60 in the high jump and although she was not on par she won the individual long jump and 60m hurdles as well as the pentathlon. I was not easily beaten as I won the shot put with a season best of 10.54 and then raced to first place in the final event of the pentathlon the 800m beating Petra by 15 seconds but it was not enough for the overall gold medal this time. I hope to begin training for the high and long jump in the local track St Colman’s which has just been built and completed last week. So look out Petra I seek revenge.

 The next event was the 60m sprint. I broke the Irish record running 8.8 to make the final the next day where I was unable to improve the time and finished 7th. The 800m individual final was the next day along with the shot putt. The first lap was run in 70 seconds and was tightly contested with two athletes nipping my heel twice I was clipped and had to chop my stride to avoid being pushed as the last lap was a sprint to the finish line and another disappointing final sprint out of the medals but three seconds faster than the Pentathlon 800m the day before. The javelin was run at another stadium 10 to 15 minutes away by car in minus 15 degrees, yes that’s right snow and minus degrees outside for the javelin where the dark skinned girls where hot favourite and won from Trinidad and Tabago I had only time to throw 2 throws and had to be transported by car back to the main stadium for the 60m final which both ran almost consecutively., At 3.3.0 and 4.05pm it was nerve wrecking just travelling by car in the snow between venues never  mind concentrating on the events. I ended up with a new Irish record in the Javelin by a metre with 30.99metres.

I had two well deserved rest days watching other Irish athletes compete and supporting them where I recovered ready for two more hectic days of  World championship heats against ex- Olympic athletes

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