There was no sign of any golden hangover for Chris O’Donnell in Rome on Saturday morning, the Sligo athlete safely negotiating the heats of the individual 400 metres just over 12 hours after leading off the Irish mixed 4x400m relay to their historic gold medals on Friday night.
O’Donnell was back inside the Stadio Olimpico drawn in the first of three heats, the 14 fastest times across those three races progressing to Sunday’s semi-finals, where they will join the top-12 ranked athletes who received a bye.
Despite the intense excitement of the success on Friday night, O’Donnell displayed zero evidence of any fatigue as he ran a season best of 45.69 to nail fourth place, the win there going to Jonathan Sacoor from Belgium in 45.50.
In the end, O’Donnell was ranked ninth best of the 14 advancing runners, with the young Italian Luca Sito also impressing again, the fastest qualifier after lowering his best to 45.12, having also been a part of the Italian mixed relay quartet with won silver behind Ireland on Friday night.
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Already a five-time Irish champion, O’Donnell was also part of the mixed relay team that made the first big breakthrough when making the Tokyo Olympic final.
Before O’Donnell returns for his semi-finals on Sunday (7.38 Irish time), he will join relay teammates Rhasidat Adeleke, Thomas Barr, and Sharlene Mawdsley on the top of the podium at the Medal Plaza next to the Stadio Olimpico later this afternoon, where they will collect their European gold medals (that ceremony set for 4.35pm Irish time).
The Irish winning time of 3:09.92, another national record by over a second, was just shy of the 3:08.80 world record set by the USA team when winning the World Championship gold medals in Budapest last summer.
Better still, the neatly combined effort of the Irish splits (O’Donnell running 46.09, Adeleke 49.53, Barr 44.90, and Mawdsley that sensational 49.40) certainly looks open to some further improvement in near future.
More telling on Friday night, however, was Adeleke’s first 200m split of 22.33 seconds, astonishingly fast and expectedly forcing her to slow up to 27.20 for the second 200m, but unquestionably taking much of the sting out of her Dutch rival Lieke Klaver on the same second leg, who ran 22.37 for her first 200m, and then 28.37 for her second.
In the meantime, the golden quartet join Sonia O’Sullivan as the only gold medallists for Ireland in the now 90-year history of the European Championships.
Irish medal hopes will also turn to Sarah Lavin on Saturday evening, ranked fifth of the final entries in the 100m hurdles, which earned her a bye into the semi-finals (7.12pm Irish time). By her admission, Lavin will likely need to run in the 12.50s to make the podium, faster than she’s ever run before.
But she’s hopeful. It’s not yet a year since she took down Derval O’Rourke’s 13-year-old Irish record, at the World Championships in Budapest last August, when she clocked 12.62 seconds in her semi-final, improving the 12.65 O’Rourke set when winning the silver medal at the 2010 European Championships in Barcelona; her second successive silver.
That medal decider is set for 9.08pm Irish time.
Israel Olatunde will also return for the semi-final of the 100m (8.10pm), having made the final in Munich in 2022, lowering the Irish record to 10.17 seconds. Brian Fay will also be final action when he takes to a stacked 5000m (21.28pm), where Jakob Ingebrigtsen of Norway is seeking to win a third consecutive European 1,500m and 5,000m double.
Irish Athlete Schedule (Irish time)
Day Two – Saturday June 8th, evening session
4x400 Mixed Relay Medal Ceremony - 16:35
Oisin Lane – Men’s 20km Race Walk – Final – 17:00
Sarah Lavin – Women’s 100m Hurdles – SF – 19:12
Israel Olatunde – Men’s 100m – SF – 20:10
Sarah Lavin – Women’s 100m Hurdles – Final – 21:08 *
Brian Fay – Men’s 5000m – Final – 21:28
Israel Olatunde – Men’s 100m – Final – 21:53*
* should they progress.
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