BANDON athlete Laura Nicholson is now the fourth fastest Irish woman in the indoor one mile.
The former Bandon AC athlete, running for her college The University of Toledo in Ohio, continued her impressive form of late when she raced to a new mile personal best time at the Boston College Eagle Elite meet on Friday.
Smashing her previous personal best of 4:34.35, which she set last year, by more than three seconds, Laura raced to a head-turning 4:30.85 to finish fourth in the race.
As well as set a new school record, Laura, a senior at Toledo, has surged up to fourth in the all-time Irish indoor one-mile list – Ciara Mageean (4:28.31), Roísín McGettigan (4:30.06) and Sinéad Evans (4:30.41) are the only Irish women to have run the mile (indoor) faster than the West Cork woman. On the overall list, Laura is the 11th fastest Irish woman over the mile
This is the second Toledo school record the 24-year-old has set in recent months as in December she ran a 3000m personal best of 9:13.54 at the Sharon Colyear-Danville season opener in Boston, which beat the previous school record by 0.08 of a second.
Maeve O'Neill set a school 800m record.
Nicholson is a former West Cork Sports Star Youth Award winner in 2017, and another winner of this award, Maeve O’Neill (2021) is also causing a stir in the American colleges’ athletics scene – the Ballinacarriga woman ran a new indoor 800m personal best of 2:04.66 at the Boston University Valentine Invitational on Saturday. It is also the fastest women’s 800m time in the Big East Conference this year and will help Maeve in her bid to qualify for the European Athletics U23 Championships in July. The sophomore student at Providence College in Rhode Island also set a new school 500m record at the end of January.
