British AAA Gold for Mairead Murphy

On her second trip to the Alexander Stadium in Birmingham in as many weeks, Mairead Murphy , Ferrybank A.C. produced the finest performance of her young athletics career when she took the gold medal at the British AAA championships in the girls under 17 heptathlon.

In doing so Mairead dominated the competition winning by a huge margin of over 500 points. Her final points total of 4832 points, the highest score by any Irish athlete senior or junior this year , represented a lifetime best score breaking her old mark by nearly 200 points and included  4 best ever performances in the 7 events.

Mairead was in top form travelling to the event represented by her excellent silver medal in the hurdles at the AAA’s individual events a week ago. She started the first day in the best possible manner winning the 80m hurdles in a time of 11.46seconds. This time was her second best ever having run slightly faster for her hurdles silver a week previously. The second event, the high jump, produced one of the highlights of the weekend for Mairead. A lifetime best jump of 1.68m extended Maireads lead. Mairead went on to throw 9.02m in the third event , the shot putt  which was a little disappointing for her.  However she put this behind her to record another lifetime best performance in the 200m with a time of 25.34seconds. Her first day score of 3026points gave her an overnight lead of over 350 points. 

Mairead had a solid start to the second days competition with a jump of 5.22m in the long jump. This extended her lead in the competition and Mairead went on to finish in fine style with another two lifetime bests of 28.69m in the javelin and a time of 2.26.77 in the 800m. Her final score of 4832 points gave her the gold medal well ahead of Sophie Skinner of Exeter (4306points) with Anna Parkinson of Kingston taking the bronze medal with 4200 points.

This competition concluded an excellent season for the young Ferrybank A.C. athlete which saw her win medals at the Irish, Scottish and British championships as well as representing Ireland at the European Youth Olympics in Italy in July.