New Irish Record Set For Indoor 800m In Vienna

Monday, 1 February 2021 08:09

Ciara Neville also matched her 60m PB set in Athlone four years ago.

Nadia Power's tremendous athletics rise continues, with a new Irish record in the women's 800m at the indoor meeting in Vienna - and Ciara Neville almost made it a double, instead recording the second-fastest Irish 60m ever.

Power, bronze-medalist over the same distance at the European Under-23 Championships two years ago in Sweden, clocked 2:02.44 in finishing second to Britain's Kelly Hodgkinson.

The Dublin City Harriers star lopped a whopping three seconds off her previous indoor best, edging Siofra Cleirigh-Buttner's 2018 record of 2:02.46 by a slender two-hundredths of a second, despite describing the result on Instagram as "a tactically bad race".

Hodgkinson on her part set a new junior (U20) world record of 1:59.03 - itself a world lead for 2021 - with Power easing out Italy's Irene Baldessari into third, on 2:02.71.

The British athlete and Power took over at the halfway point when the pacemaker dropped out

The Vienna meeting - usually held on a Sunday afternoon but moved to a Saturday night in front of an empty stadium due to the covid crisis - has traditionally been a happy hunting ground for young Irish stars, with Phil Healy and Kelly Proper setting records in the Austrian capital over the past decade.

Power set an outdoor Irish U23 record of 2:01.01 last September in the Quercia meeting in Roverto, Italy, before winning the following week at the prestigious Continental Tour Gold event in Zagreb, one level below the Diamond League.

But after competing abroad last summer, Power fell foul of stringent Athletics Ireland protocols and was controversially barred from the National Championships, along with three-times European medalist Mark English.

Neville equaled her lifetime best of 7.30 seconds in winning the 60m in Vienna, matching her performance in Athlone from four years ago.

Only Amy Foster has run faster, 7.27 seconds in winning the National indoors title in 2018.

Marcus Lawler finished second in Vienna in his 200m heat, clocking 21.24 seconds in finishing second behind Slovakia's Jan Volko.

Meanwhile, this year's National Indoors have been cancelled due to Ireland's current Level 5 situation, but the European Indoors in the Polish city of Torun are still going ahead - for now - on March 5-7 under major covid protocols.

The World Indoors in Nanjing, China have already been postponed for a second time to 2023.