TYRONE teenager Nick Griggs broke the Northern Ireland senior and national U23 3000m records for the second time in less than a fortnight at the London Diamond League fixture on Saturday.
Griggs finished 10th in a star-studded field, recording a time of 7:36.59 and taking over five seconds off the mark he set in Cork on July 9. Since then he also improved his 5000m best to 13:13.07 at the Morton Games in Dublin
Griggs will not be competing in the Olympics, but the Irish man who finished three places ahead of him in seventh, Brian Fay, will be on the start line of the 5000m.
The Raheny Shamrock clubman stopped the clock at a personal best time of 7:34.48 in a race won by nationalised Swiss athlete Dominic Lokinyomo Lobalu in a meeting record of 7:27.68.
Fay remains third in the Irish all-time list behind Mark Carroll (7:30.36) and Alistair Cragg (7:32.49), with Griggs now in fourth immediately ahead of Eamonn Coghlan (7:37.60).
Ireland’s other two athletes at the meeting also performed well. Rhasidat Adeleke dropped down in distance to the 200m, where she finished fifth in 22.35, a mere one hundredth of a second outside her own national record. The race was won by American Gabrielle Thomas in 21.82.
Andrew Coscoran finished eighth in the famous Emsley Carr Mile, won by Australia’s Ollie Hoare in 3:49.03, clocking a personal best of 3:50.49. That saw him climb to third on the all-time Irish list behind Ray Flynn (3:49.77) and Eamonn Coghlan (3:49.78i).
The race did not pass without controversy with three athletes in the 17-man field falling within 30 metres of the start. One of these was Britain’s George Mills, son of ex-footballer Danny Mills, whose petitions for a restart were ignored by the officials.
“”It’s absolutely f***ing ridiculous”,” fumed Mills. “I have experienced that before, but I don’t know how they didn’t restart it. I don’t know how they don’t call it back. “Well, three people go down inside 30 metres, what’s the point? It’s a joke.”
Highlights of the meeting included British records for Keely Hodgkinson in the 800m (1:54.61) and Matthew Hudson-Smith in the 400m (43.74).
