CAOIMHE Flannery completed a terrific hat-trick of county title wins when she took gold at the recent juvenile even-age cross-country county finals held in Riverstick.
The Skibbereen AC runner had previously won U12 and U13 titles in 2018 and 2019, and she kept her winning run going with an impressive performance in this year’s girls' U14 3000m race.
Flannery made light work of the wind and testing hills and she proved too strong for the rest of the field with a superb run. She led from the whistle and pushed further and further ahead with each of the three one-kilometre laps. In the end, she won comfortably.
Her Skibbereen AC teammate Ciara Delaney finished an impressive second after a very determined run, while another Skibbereen athlete, Emer Dennis-McAleavey, won an individual county championship medal for the first time after finishing fifth overall.
The three Skibb AC girls’ finishing places combined resulted in them winning the U14 girls’ title by a huge margin of 26 points. This is a massive achievement for such a small club in a county that has 56 registered athletic clubs.Competition has now ceased due to Covid-19 restrictions but it is hoped that the rest of the county cross-country juvenile programme, and the Munster and All-Ireland championships, can be resumed when restrictions allow.
In the boys' U16 4000m race, Skibbereen AC’s Ferdia Dennis-McAleavey ran very strongly to finished seventh.
