Impressive Euro debut for Coscoran

Star of the Sea athlete Andrew Coscoran managed a seventh place finish in the final of the 1,500m at the European Indoor Championships at the Arena Torun in Poland on Friday evening.

Coscoran and Kildare athlete Paul Robinson made it through to the highly-competitive final in which the top athletes in Europe battled it out in the prestigious event.

Coscoran finished seventh in a time of 3:40.38 with Robinson 10th in 3:40.74.

The race was won by Norway's Jakob Ingebrigtsen, but he was subsequently disqualified with Poland's Marcin Lewandowski promoted to the gold medal place ahead of the Spanish duo Jesus Gomez and Ignacio Fontes.

That decision was subsequently overturned and Ingebrigtsen was re-instated.

"I was proud to wear the Irish vest and finish seventh in the European Indoor 1,500m final," commented Coscoran.

"My first European senior final, it wasn't a bad result and I'm hungry for more," he added.

For Coscoran, last week represented his first senior European Indoor T&F Championship and he went into the race as the fifth ranked athlete in the Irish all-time indoor 1,500m list.

The Irish indoor 1,500m champion recorded a personal best of 3:37.20 in the men's 1,500m final at the World Athletics Indoor Tour Gold meet in France last month.

The Star of the Sea athlete finished fifth in a highly competitive field, with a time that earned him the fifth-fastest Irish indoor runner over that distance, behind Marcus O’Sullivan, Eamonn Coghlan, Ciarán Ó Lionáird and Mark Carroll.

Coscoran achieved the qualification times for the championships in 2020 while racing in the USA last year.

Due to Covid restrictions racing last week was compacted in order that the athletes would spend the minimum time possible at the Championships with the heats and the final on successive days.

Former Meath AAI Co Board chairman Brendan Meade, a stalwart of the Star of the Sea club, has been greatly impressed by the the talented young athlete's performances.

"All members in the Star of the Sea club were absolutely thrilled with Andrew’s performance and hopefully he will continue in this vein of form and make the Olympics in Tokyo which would be the ultimate dream for any aspiring athlete setting off on his athletic career as a teenager," Meade told the Meath Chronicle.

Looking back at the action from Poland last Thursday and Friday, he highlighted the feat that Coscoran achieved.

"Andrew went into the championships ranked 11 out of list of qualifying athletes and with the top two from each of the four heats and the four fastest losers from all heats to make the 12-man final which meants that qualification was not assured," said Meade.

"Going in heat two of the qualifiers Andrew needed to be in the first two automatic qualifying places or the other alternative was that his heat needed to be fast.

"Heat one had a time of 3:40.75 which was not overly-fast which was going to rule out any athlete other than the top two making it through to the final.

"Andrew’s heat was a quicker race in which Ignacio Fontes (Spain) won in a time of 3:38.68 with Piers Copeland (Great Britain) second in 3:38.88 and Andrew finishing third in 3:39.00.

"Heat three contained Jacob Ingebrigtsen (Norway) and Neil Gourley (Great Britain), the first and fourth ranked European athletes over the distance.

"With those two athletes doing what they had to just to safely qualify Andrew was still the first fastest loser.

"The final heat contained Marcin Lewandowski (Poland) and Paul Robinson (Ireland) and it turned out to be a faster race with Lewandowski winning in 3:39.78 and Paul Robinson finishing third in 3:40.07.

"Andrew, in his first major senior championships, made it through to the final which was a major achievement with the added bonus that Ireland had two athletes in the final.

"Ingebrigtsen a clear favourite for the title and Lewandowski, a former medal winner, was also a leading contender.

"From the gun the two Irish athletes got off to a slow start in that they covered the first 200m in 32 seconds with Lewandowski setting the pace on 31 seconds.

"Andrew gradually increased his pace to 30 seconds per 200-metre segment.

"With 1,000m completed Andrew had moved into 10th place and with his pace increased to 28 seconds per 200-metre segment he manged to finish in seventh place," he concluded.