DCU Athletes making their mark at the International Level

Three DCU athletes made their mark internationally at the recent European Indoor Championships in Turin. Brona Furlong, Gemma Hynes and Claire Bergin were part of the Irish 4×400 metres relay team that narrowly missed out on a medal in a hotly contested final.

With just six teams entered for the event, hopes were high that the inexperienced Irish quartet could sneak a medal from favourites Russia, Great Britain and Belarus. Cork woman Marian Andrews got the team off to a good start, handing over to Brona Furlong in fourth place.

Furlong ran the fastest split of the Irish to get the squad into medal position at halfway, handing over to Gemma Hynes who was making a comeback after serious injury problems sidelined her for most of last year. Hynes blasted the first lap and faded slightly over the second half but managed to hold off the charge of the Belarussian to hold third place ahead of the final leg.

DCU masters student Claire Bergin tried her best to stay in bronze position on the final leg but was overtaken by Belarus’s Katsiaryna Mishyna with less than 200 metres remaining. At the line less than two seconds separated the Irish girls from a surprise bronze medal. They were pleased with their time however of 3mins 36.82secs, just two seconds outside the national record.

Afterwards, Furlong was pleased with the team’s effort, saying: “We knew we were in with a shout of a medal, but that we’d have to run out of our skins to get it. We knew we could beat Lithuania and Turkey. We were in the mix for a long time, but we just couldn’t hang on for third. We ran a very quick time, so we have to be happy with that.”

In the individual 400 metres, Furlong surprised many by making the semi-final after running a lifetime best of 53.84 seconds in the heat.

In the semi-final she found the pace of the Eastern European athletes too hot to handle and was eliminated in fifth place, again breaking the 54-second barrier, which was one of her major goals entering the championships.

“I had been going well, so I was quietly hoping to sneak into the semi-final,” she said. “Realistically, all I wanted to do was run fast because I went into the heat as the slowest so to get out of that was pretty good.”

Furlong, Hynes and Bergin will now target July’s World University Games in Belgrade, and if they can knock a few seconds more off their time, the World Championships in Berlin in August are a possibility.