Lignano Sabbiadoro, a costal resort in North East Italy, is host to the bi-annual European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF). This town, situated on the coast and with a thriving tourist industry, is ideal to host the prestigious Olympic event given its capacity to cater for the 48 participating country’s under 18 athletes, officials and supporters.

The opening ceremony last Sunday evening was an impressive affair with high wire artists, fireworks, live music and an array of impressively decorated hot air balloons to keep the 15,000 strong crowd entertained for over two hours. The highlight of the evening, lighting the Olympic Flame, was original in execution and was met with huge applause by the fans. To the music of an ‘Enya type’ backing track, the flame was lit by a female dancer, in a long flowing gown, hoisted by one of the decorated balloons to the flame podium.

The participants themselves paraded earlier around the athletics track to huge applause and this must have been the highlight of many of their young lives so far.

Waterford is well represented at these games with five participants. Four athletes, Kelly Proper – long jump, Kalyn Sheehan – 400 meter hurdles, Mairead Murphy – 100 meter hurdles and David Mc Carthy – 800 meters along with Stephen O’Shea of the Soccer squad, hope to do club & country proud. And things have started well.

The athletics stadium in Lignano is just as any sports fan would expect except for one major detail. There are only 6 lanes. While Lignano is well able to cater for the thousands of participants in terms of logistical support, her athletics stadium is lacking the full 8 lanes expected of major games. Hence, anyone in one lap races or less hoping to make a final has to lift their performances substantially in order to make the top six. Kalyn Sheehan did just that.

With the trackside temperature in the open well in excess of 40 degrees, Kalyn blistered around the one lap hurdles event in 62.52 seconds, a new personal best and enough for second in her heat and making her the 5^th fastest European girl out of 48 nations. Her final takes place on Wednesday next.

Kelly Proper stepped onto the long jump run-up ranked second of the 24 qualifiers, but rankings mean nothing coming into major games. Current form is more of an indicator and Kelly has been struggling with a back injury for some weeks. She was jumping in pool one, hoping to make 5.80 meters for automatic qualification for Tuesday’s final. She finished 6^th overall and her final takes place tomorrow, Tuesday.

In her first jump she showed great promise with a leap of 5.70 meters into a strong headwind. Jump two yielded 5.29 but she got back into form with 5.65 in the final qualifying jump.

David McCarthy had the benefit of an 8pm start for his 800 meters, thus avoiding much of the sun’s direct heat. Running in the third of three heats, he clocked 1 minute 52.84 which was the fastest qualifying time by two seconds. Mc Carthy will not be fooled into believing he is two seconds quicker than the rest of the field, at least not until he get a chance to prove that he is, on Wednesday. 

Competition continues for Waterford’s athletes tomorrow with Mairead Murphy making her debut in the sprint hurdles.

TUESDAY

The heat and bright sunshine of Monday gave way to thundery showers, a significant drop in temperatures and strong winds. This suited the long jumpers and a new Championship record was set by the winning athlete from                   when jumping 6.40 meters with a plus     meters per second wind reading. Kelly Proper was not found wanting in the highly charged atmosphere where 18 jumps in total were measured at over 6 meters. Proper jumped 6.01 with a plus 2.5 meters wind reading (she holds the Irish Junior record with 6.00 meters set 3 weeks ago)  and one cant help feeling that if she had been fully fit coming into the competition that she would have challenged for a medal. In the end, her sixth place was highly credible (she was in fifth up to the last round) with bronze being won with              . Kelly can now look forward to the World Championships in Morocco next week where she is one of 4 athletes representing Ireland. Ironically, the winner of today’s competition will not be taking part as her personal best coming into the competition was not enough to qualifier her for the World Championships.

Mairead Murphy’s target on the six lane track was to reach the ‘B’ final but if she ran to her potential then a place in the ‘A’ final was a possibility. But plan did not work out and she cleared the first hurdle awkwardly, took more steps than she needed for hurdle two as a result and although she was faster from hurdle 3 to 8 than the second placed athlete, she left herself too much to do and was understandably very disappointed. What added to her disappointment was that she was 0.1 outside a place in the ‘B’ final.

WEDNESDAY

Kalyn Sheehan on Monday was just happy to be in Lignano. Now that she made the final, she was in with an outside chance of a medal and gave everything she had to post a new personal best 62.51 seconds. She went out hard and led for 200 meters but she was hauled in over the last 50 meters by the field and her  brave attempt was over. Exhausted but still smiling, she copper fastened her place as the 6^th fastest in Europe as her time was over a second ahead of the winner of the ‘B’ final.

David McCarthy represented Ireland’s best chance of a gold medal so far in the Championships and conditions were ideal, similar to a warm summer’s day back home in West Waterford. His game plan was to stay on the shoulder of the leader until 200 to go but the exceptionally slow opening lap meant this was going to be a fast finishers race and with McCarthy leading with 50 to go (but with all the field on his shoulder) the German passed him and McCarthy fought to the bitter end to hold silver from the Portuguese. He was very sporting after the race and congratulated all his fellow athletes, knowing that he was the fastest by far. But that’s the nature of Championship running.  The slow time of just under two minutes represented the tactical nature of the race and McCarthy will carry the experience gained with him to Morocco.

Waterford still has an interest in these Championships as Ferrybank A.C. will likely have three of the four team in the 4 x 100 meters later in the week.