CIARA Mageean took the first step toward a medal at the European Athletics Championships with an unworried third place in her semi-final.
With the top six assured of qualification to Sunday night’s final, it was job done for the Portaferry woman who stopped the clock at four minutes, 6.81 seconds, modest by her standard.
With temperatures rising to the high 20s in the Stadio Olimpico, Mageean looked calm and confident as she lined up alongside the 14 other women with the first six guaranteed advancement. No fastest losers, it was all down to finishing places.
The Irish record-holder coolly settled back in the pack after the gun fired and stayed there through opening lap splits of 68.86 and 2:16.4. An urgency struck the field at the sound of the bell but it was only with three laps gone(3:21.52) that the gloves were entirely off.
Mageean was back in seventh at this point as long-time leader, Jemma Reekie of Britain, continued to dominate at the front.
A confident Mageean started to work her way through on the backstraight and was able to cruise up to third in the final 100m as Reekie took the win in 4:06.68.
“I wanted to stay out of trouble … that’s the biggest risk you get is caught up in something, you’re having to keep your wits about you when you’re in the pack of a 1500m but I had the faith no matter where I was, I’d be able to be in that top six and make it through,” said Mageean.
“The aim was to be in the top six and I am in the top six. I’m through to the final, that’s all I had to do.”
Sarah Healy will join Mageean in the final after an equally competent fourth place in the second semi-final. In a much slower race, the Dubliner followed a similar strategy as her compatriot.
Always well-placed, Healy came wide on the final homestraight to avoid trouble, two women had fallen earlier in the contest, and seize one of those invaluable qualification spots in 4:12.30. Winner of the race was France’s Agatha Guillemot*, a surname with a long history in French athletics, in 4:11.92.
Unfortunately, Mark English’s participation in the championships lasted less than two minutes after elimination in heat 2 of the 800m. Knowing that only the first three finishers in each of the four heats were guaranteed to advance to Saturday’s semi-finals, although there was a second chance for the four fastest non automatic qualifiers, pressure was on the Donegal man to produce his best.
The heat went off fast but slowed around 300m when the Finn Valley AC athlete went uncharacteristically to the front and led at the bell in 52.35 seconds. He was still in front at 500m but had slipped back to third entering the final furlong but held that vital third spot entering the home straight only to be gobbled up by faster finishers.
His fifth place in 1:46.73 fell short on both counts, neither a top three nor a fastest time. Britain’s Tom Randolph, runner-up in the Bobby Farren Memorial 800m in Belfast last month, grabbed the fourth and final fastest automatic non-qualifier time of 1:45.58 in the fourth heat.
“It went off exactly as I thought it would,” said English.
‘‘I knew [Elliott] Crestan (also eliminated in fourth) would try to slow it right down because he has run fast this season, so I passed him at 250 into the race and tried to kick on a bit. Yeah. But it was tough out there to try to do that out there and to try to turn the wheels over the last 300m. This year was all about qualifying for the Olympics, so I’m going to get back to that.”
Michelle Finn was below her best in the 3000m steeplechase heats’ where a top-eight finish would have sufficed to qualify for the final. Finn took 14th place in the first heat, where defending champion Luiza Gega of Albania could only manage eighth place in a race won by Romania’s adopted Kenyan Stella Rutto in 9:30.00.
Finn was timed at 9:46.93, a season’s best but well short of her career high of 9:29.05 in Finland three years ago.
*Joseph Guillemot was Olympic 5000m champion in 1920 and winner of the 1922 International Cross Country Championships at Hampden Park in Glasgow.
