Mullingar once again demonstrated its talent in depth at the AAI “B” Cross Country and Inter-County Relays on Sunday 25th January at Lough Key Forest Park, Co. Roscommon. Is it any wonder our underage athletes are rated the best in Ireland?

Before the Inter-County relays where Mullingar/Westmeath stamped its mark, Aine O’Reilly and Arlene Coughlan competed in the National “B” Cross Country Finals.

Aine led the girls under 15 field out with a good strong start that showed she has a really good turn of pace and should feature on the track this summer over 800m perhaps. Conditions underfoot were difficult to say the least and long stretches of very wet and soft ground had to be negotiated, adding to the spectacle for onlookers, but mud covered misery for the athletes. Aine ran bravely and gave a very good account of herself, and though she finished strongly, unfortunately she finished out of the individual medal places. Things went better for Arlene in the girls under 17 race where she kept in touch with the leading group throughout the race as she slipped and slid her way around the 1,500m course and with a terrific late surge pushed her way into 7th place to take an individual medal. Arlene is underage again next year, so this was a terrific result for her.

Of the girls 4x500m under 12 relay team, only Aisling Bracken was actually under 12, with Laura Whitelaw, Niamh Quinn and Emma Glynn giving away a year to the other girls in the race but they all combined really well as a team and were good enough to finish 5th against the best in Ireland. This is a very young team and next year there’s no doubt but they’ll win medals.

Cormac Dalton was also giving away a year in the 4x500m boys under 12 relay but that didn’t seem to faze him at all as he turned in a terrific performance and passed the baton to Glen Gaffney in a good position. Glen passed to Oisin Quinn and on account of Glen and Oisin’s characteristic committed strong running they kept the team right in the hunt for medals. Kevin Giles, also giving away a year, took the baton for the final leg in 2nd place and despite chasing hard for gold, crossed the line to take silver medals, to the delight of his team-mates.

On paper, our girls and boys 4x500m under 14 relay teams looked red hot favourites to win, but took nothing for granted and turned in spirited performances to make sure each team won in convincing style. Donna Kiernan led the girls away and was only passed near the first changeover to Linda Conroy. Linda made short work of the small gap and re-took the lead, which she easily held all the way to the changeover with Elizabeth Carr, who increased the lead even further, so much so that unless Lorraine Daly fell over or stopped on the final leg, wasn’t going to be lost. Lorraine made no mistake and led the team home with an enormous lead to take gold.

No pressure on the boys under 14, but they weren’t going to let the girls take all the glory! After a strong opening leg by Liam O’Reilly, the team was well placed in third when Thomas Lynn took the baton. Thomas ran the perfect even-paced race and closed down the leaders and passed over to Padraig Moran in first place. Padraig never put a foot wrong and increased the lead for Shane Fitzsimons to bring the team home for the second gold of the afternoon. Any wonder others wondered what it would take to beat this team. And to think we had Aaron Glynn on the subs bench! He’d have been first choice on most of the other teams in the race!

All done, a terrific afternoon for Mullingar, all the more satisfying when considered that our juvenile relay teams were representing Westmeath, against some much larger Counties with a lot more Clubs and athletes to choose from.

As always, sincere thanks to the parents for providing transport and much appreciated vocal support. All enjoyed the great entertainment and a bonus was the lovely dry day, which wasn’t too cold and a far cry from the awful forecast for the day.