Morrison continues to shine

While local sprint star Jason Smyth was in action in Orlando, over the weekend and clocked 10.34 seconds and 10.35 seconds in his two 100m races there. He is of course still chasing an A standard Olympic qualifying time in the short sprint and was somewhat disappointed not to have improved on his 10.24 seconds clocking a week earlier in Clermont, Florida.

The Olympic qualifying time is 10.18 seconds and the Eglinton Flyer will have another go this weekend back in Clermont before moving on to New York and a run at the prestigious Diamond League meeting in the Big Apple.

While London 2012 bound Aileen Morrison produced a superb performance to take second place at the latest round of the ITU World Triathlon Series in Madrid at the weekend.

Morrison finished only four seconds behind Swiss winner, Nicola Spirig in the final Olympic qualifying event and came in two seconds ahead of third-placed, Barbara Riveros Diaz of Chile.

Morrison was 25 seconds off the pace after the swim but then produced brilliant bike and run performances to finish in a time of 2:06:38.

The local woman’s runner-up finish moves her up to eighth in the current world rankings.

“I’m really pleased with the run as I was in a really bad place coming out of T2 which has been typical for me over the last couple of races,” said Morrison.

“I really can’t figure out how to get a good T2 done, but luckily they were running at a nice steady pace at the front and I just slowly made my way there.”