MTU Athletics make splash at indoor university track championships

It was a day of personal bests, records, and medals for the MTU Athletics Club recently who took third place overall at the Universities Indoor Track and Field Championship in Dublin.

First up at the National Indoors Sports Arena, Liscarroll native Aoife O’ Sullivan booked her place on the Irish all-time list with a massive new Irish University Athletics Association high jump record. Her jump of 1.85m was a massive 7cm personal best.

Not to be outdone by her teammate, Lucy Holmes from Dungarvan ran the race of her life in the 1,500m to take home gold with a new personal best and another university record for the women of MTU Athletics Club.

Seasoned international Colin Doyle of Model Farm Road in Cork city raced away with the 200m title and will now be hoping to take home national senior gold in two weeks’ time.

One of the big stories of the day was Ryan Duggan’s 2nd place finish in the men’s shot.

Ryan suffered a bad knee injury 15 months ago and was forced to take a year away from competition.

Making their debut for MTU were Cork Speed Development athletes Max O’Reilly and Fatima Amusa who both took home medals on the day. Max ran a blistering 60m in 6.71 seconds to take the silver medal while Fatima took bronze in the women’s 200m.

The relays were the final event of the day and saw the men’s team of Colin Murphy, Colin Doyle, Cathal Ryan, and Max O’Reilly take silver, missing out on the gold medal by less than a second.

The women’s team of Nicole Walker, Gabriella Bowen, Aoife O’Sullivan, and Fatima Amusa narrowly missed out on a medal, finishing 4th overall.