National Championships 2017 (Live on RTE Sunday 6-8pm)

Chivito550

No chat about the showpiece of the domestic season so thought I'd set up a thread. Most of the main final action is tomorrow, and it's live on RTE from 6pm for those who can't make it down.

RayCun

bit of a thread in the events forum
Testostercone was running in the 10,000m earlier, saw you were up in the 200

Chivito550

RayCun wrote: »

bit of a thread in the events forum
Testostercone was running in the 10,000m earlier, saw you were up in the 200

I suspect it might get a bit more traffic here.

Phil Healy looked good today winning the 200. Will she have enough gas to beat Sinead Debby in the 400 tomorrow? That would be some double to achieve.

28064212

Results: http://live.athleticsireland.ie/

Surprised to see Mick coming second in the 10,000m. Although I suppose he's deep into Marathon training at the moment.

Anyone know what happened in the women's 1500m heats? They're not showing up. Or are they only running a final?

El Caballo

28064212 wrote: »

Results: http://live.athleticsireland.ie/

Surprised to see Mick coming second in the 10,000m. Although I suppose he's deep into Marathon training at the moment.

Not really a shock, Dooney is faster across all the track distances and is only 23, He was NCAA all-American in XC and has run 29:10 at 20 on the track and ran 29:11 just over a month ago, Definitely the pre-race favourite and hard to see Mick beating him fresh or not. We may not have the depth of 10k runners that we used to but there is still a lot of guys out there who can run low/mid 29's right now in the 10000m.

Tombo2001

El Caballo wrote: »

Not really a shock, Dooney is faster across all the track distances and is only 23, He was NCAA all-American in XC and has run 29:10 at 20 on the track and ran 29:11 just over a month ago, Definitely the pre-race favourite and hard to see Mick beating him fresh or not. We may not have the depth of 10k runners that we used to but there is still a lot of guys out there who can run low/mid 29's right now in the 10000m.

A lot of them? More than 5? Are you including the likes of Travers/ Tomas Cotter at the one end or Seaward and Pollock at the other - guys who are 10000m specialist, but could probably run a low 29....?

Tombo2001

I didn't get to yesterday's event but watched it on TV - overall I thought the standard was pretty decent, especially in sprinting.
The mens 400mH was exciting, the 100m between Marcus Lawler, the new American guy (Jeremy Phillips?), Jason Smyth - we have the backbone of a fairly decent relay team - every runner in the 100m yesterday finished under 11 seconds.

The womens 400m race was also very interesting; it was according to Jerry Kiernan the Cliodhna Mannings first attempt at the distance, that's what I though he said anyway, and the winning time was the best we've seen in the event for a few years. And between herself, Sinead Denny, Bromell, Healy, Moynihan there is a good relay team.
Mens 400m we had Gregan running an excellent time also.

All of which got me thinking about this:
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/other-sports/old-golfers-beware-flying-bicycles-and-local-runners-coming-through-1.3163034
He is the only athletics journalist at a mainstream Irish newspaper that I can think of, the most prominent one anyway.....I always get the impression he is a bit embarrassed about Irish athletics. He'll write about individual success stories, but only those who have done substantially well internationally. Domestic athletics for me personally, I think the standard is good in a lot of places and I'd like to see it get more credit.

Chivito550

Cliodhna Manning in the 400m was definitely the standout performance of the weekend for me. Where on earth did that come from!

Chivito550

Tombo2001 wrote: »

I didn't get to yesterday's event but watched it on TV - overall I thought the standard was pretty decent, especially in sprinting.
The mens 400mH was exciting, the 100m between Marcus Lawler, the new American guy (Jeremy Phillips?), Jason Smyth - we have the backbone of a fairly decent relay team - every runner in the 100m yesterday finished under 11 seconds.

The womens 400m race was also very interesting; it was according to Jerry Kiernan the Cliodhna Mannings first attempt at the distance, that's what I though he said anyway, and the winning time was the best we've seen in the event for a few years. And between herself, Sinead Denny, Bromell, Healy, Moynihan there is a good relay team.
Mens 400m we had Gregan running an excellent time also.

All of which got me thinking about this:
http://www.irishtimes.com/sport/other-sports/old-golfers-beware-flying-bicycles-and-local-runners-coming-through-1.3163034
He is the only athletics journalist at a mainstream Irish newspaper that I can think of, the most prominent one anyway.....I always get the impression he is a bit embarrassed about Irish athletics. He'll write about individual success stories, but only those who have done substantially well internationally. Domestic athletics for me personally, I think the standard is good in a lot of places and I'd like to see it get more credit.

Lawlor wasn't running. He's injured. Maybe you're confusing him with Eanna Madden.

El Caballo

Tombo2001 wrote: »

A lot of them? More than 5? Are you including the likes of Travers/ Tomas Cotter at the one end or Seaward and Pollock at the other - guys who are 10000m specialist, but could probably run a low 29....?

A lot more than 5 and that's just of guys who have run that fast in the last year or two, we really don't have any 10000m specialists anymore bar a few guys in the states.

Stephen Scullion ran 28:58 a couple of weeks ago
Mark Christie 29:26 about 2 months ago
Hugh Armstrong 29:23 a few months ago
Travers ran 29:04 in 2015 with Hanrahan not too far behind
Pollock ran high 28 in 2015 and a mid 28 the year before
Seaward regularly runs 29 on the road
Kevin Batt also runs 29's on the road and has a 13:3* 5000m PB
Brandon Hargreaves ran 29:19 in 2015
Dooney and Mick of course

A few other guys worth mentioning

Shane Quinn
Jake Byrne
Conor Dooney
Sean Tobin

Pherekydes

Watched the programme last night. They covered the first day with a 2 minute montage, with more interviews than action. Didn't even show the whole of the men's 200m! :mad:

Did they show the women's 200m? I may have blinked and missed it. The 10k had about 4 seconds coverage. :rolleyes:

Chivito550

Pherekydes wrote: »

Watched the programme last night. They covered the first day with a 2 minute montage, with more interviews than action. Didn't even show the whole of the men's 200m! :mad:

Did they show the women's 200m? I may have blinked and missed it. The 10k had about 4 seconds coverage. :rolleyes:

Haven't watch it yet. Plan to do so this evening.

It's a huge positive that it was live on RTE. Sure it would be great if they showed everything but that's not realistic. It costs a lot to do this, so it doesn't make financial sense to have high quality cameras with commentators there all day Saturday when the day is mostly heats.

average_runner

This is also on rte demand in case people forgot to record it.

It was a good move having the event on later in the day

Chivito550

For anyone interested, I did up a report on my experience of being involved in this year's Nationals.

Chivito550

Watched the RTE coverage last night. Thought on the whole it was very good. The slo mo's of the athletes getting ready for their races was a bit weird, but not in a bad way.

The front on camera was a bit annoying for the sprints it has to be said.

Would have been nice to cover more events including the field, but let's be honest, we have to promote our best athletes to the masses, and those best athletes are on the track. We also need to show the events the casual fan would want to watch, so nothing longer than 1500m. I think they got it right on the main.

I'd personally get rid of David Matthews and replace him with Gillick as co-commentator, and bring back in Ailish McSweeney onto the panel. George Hamilton is out of his depth but his iconic voice makes up for it somewhat. There's nobody else really who'd be any better.

The downside of the extended interviews with Barr, English, Mageean and Gregan meant we didn't get any real analysis of their runs, while we got plenty of analysis on Amy Foster, Cliodhna Manning etc.

The athletes were waiting a long time standing behind their blocks waiting for the green light from RTE to run the race. That could be done better. Also it is shocking carry on for the stadium announcer to be calling out the names of the 100m runners as they were sitting in the blocks. That is obviously TV related. That can't be allowed happen again.

But overall, very positive move having prime time live coverage.

average_runner

Chivito550 wrote: »

Watched the RTE coverage last night. Thought on the whole it was very good. The slo mo's of the athletes getting ready for their races was a bit weird, but not in a bad way.

The front on camera was a bit annoying for the sprints it has to be said.

Would have been nice to cover more events including the field, but let's be honest, we have to promote our best athletes to the masses, and those best athletes are on the track. We also need to show the events the casual fan would want to watch, so nothing longer than 1500m. I think they got it right on the main.

I'd personally get rid of David Matthews and replace him with Gillick as co-commentator, and bring back in Ailish McSweeney onto the panel. George Hamilton is out of his depth but his iconic voice makes up for it somewhat. There's nobody else really who'd be any better.

The downside of the extended interviews with Barr, English, Mageean and Gregan meant we didn't get any real analysis of their runs, while we got plenty of analysis on Amy Foster, Cliodhna Manning etc.

The athletes were waiting a long time standing behind their blocks waiting for the green light from RTE to run the race. That could be done better. Also it is shocking carry on for the stadium announcer to be calling out the names of the 100m runners as they were sitting in the blocks. That is obviously TV related. That can't be allowed happen again.

But overall, very positive move having prime time live coverage.

Have to agree with you. Really enjoyed it. The one thing I missed, there was no clock showing the times the athletes ran on the tv. We had to wait awhile.