Weekend Review: Cooke and O’Connor shine in a week of big performances

• Aoife Cooke (Eagle AC) secured the qualifying time for the marathon in Tokyo with a stunning 2.28.30 performance at the Cheshire elite marathon yesterday (April 25). The winning time smashed her personal best of 2:32:34, which she ran to win the Irish marathon title in Dublin in 2019. The result places Cooke 4th on the Irish all-time list, just ahead of Sonia O'Sullivan. Cooke joins Fionnuala Mccormack in securing the 2021 Olympic marathon standard.

Ann-Marie McGlynn was also competing at the Cheshire marathon, running the race of her life to finish in 2.29.34 PB which was just 4 seconds outside the Olympic standard. Dylan Hassett was also ultra impressive, clocking a 02:33:25 to go 9th on the all-time list. 

• Kate O’Connor broke her own Irish Heptathlon record with a superb second place performance (only 7 points of the win) at the Multistars World Athletics Combined Events Challenge in Italy, clocking up 6297 points. The performance was made all the more impressive in that O'Connor had not competed in a heptathlon for two years. O'Connor will now set her focus on achieving the Olympic qualifying standard of 6420.