One of the Club’s very promising junior athletes, Vincent Connolly, had the signal honour of leading the Mullingar men’s team to victory at the Tom Byrne Memorial 5km in Lucan on Sunday 14th June. This race starts and finishes on the track in Lucan and is one of the few road races in the Country that finishes on a track, which adds to the atmosphere at the finish since the race is often still undecided as the leaders come onto the track for the final sprint in front of a big crowd.

Vincent was 8th overall (and 1st junior) in a time of 16:43, and packing brilliantly close on his heels were Martin Lyons 9th in 16:46, Ben Vaitkavichius (2nd in master category) 10th in 16:47 and Maurice Looby (1st in master category) 11th in 16:48. Also running strongly in support were Liam McGlynn 17th (17:31) and Justin Murtagh 18th (17:36) to guarantee the first team prize. The Mullingar men’s team is building quite a reputation on the road race circuit, and with performances like these, it’s no wonder.

An interesting footnote is that in the pre-race publicity, attention was drawn to some of the more illustrious former winners, among them our own Cormac Finnerty who of course ran in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, so the Lucan race has quite a pedigree!