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| Home star Olive Loughnane finished second in the women's 20km walk at the 8th Race Walking Grand Prix in Dublin on Sunday. |
Finland’s Antti Kempas was the star performer at the 8th Race Walking Grand Prix in Dublin, Ireland, on Sunday taking the men’s 50km walk title ahead of fancied rivals.
Kempas started cautiously and reaped the benefits as early leaders Jared Tallen of Australia and Italy’s Diego Cafanga faded out one after another.
Cafanga built up a race-winning lead projected for around four hours – but at 46k the last of his energy deserted him; his knees went and the judges ended his morning with a disqualification.
The Finn has been on the end of injury after injury with surgery punctuating a tough last two years. The 30-year-old wondered if he would ever get back to the relatively heady heights of 11th in the IAAF World Championships as he did in 2007.
But this time Kempas went to the front after Cafanga’s demise and there was nothing the rest of a depleted field could do about it.
The reward was a ‘B’ category qualification for Daegu – and a time only seven minutes outside his best. Eddy Roze of France finished third in 4:14:12 behind Basanta Bahadur Rana of India 4:10:51.
In the men’s 20km race, men’s 20km walk Zhen Wang, a protégé of Italian race walking guru Sandro Damilano of China took the title clocking 1:19:46.
Damilano also got third with Giorgio Rubino’s restoration following a troubled year fighting injury – and a four-minute improvement on his previous 20km this year.
Nine of the top 10 logged IAAF World Championship qualifying times with a couple of new faces on the block.
Damilano was also waiting for Liu Hong as she coasted to victory in the women’s 20km walk.
The Chinese IAAF World Championships bronze medallist from Berlin was on her own after the first pair of laps, but the Irish woman Olive Loughnane who beat her back then was content to come through from fifth at half-way to take another second.
Olive Loughnane reckons she’s in decent shape again and ready to repeat her Berlin performance at the IAAF World Championships in Daegu later this summer.
She added: “I’m feeling full of confidence, and I plan to go close to what I did at the last World Championships – or very close.”
Top results
Men’s 50km:
1 Antti Kempas (Finland) 4:02:37
2 Basanta Bahadur Rana (India) 4:10:51
3 Eddy Roze (France) 4:14:12
Men’s 20km:
1 Zhen Wang (China) 1:19:46
2 Hassanine Sbei (Tunisia) 1:20:23
3 Giorgio Rubino (Italy) 1:20:44
Women’s 20km:
1 Liu Hong (China) 1:29:44
2 Olive Loughnane (Ireland) 1:31:55
3 Jamy Franco (Guatamala) 1:32:48