Ajax Orienteering & Hill Running Club

Irish O Championships 2010

In addition to the quality of the orienteering on offer being very good and the social aspects of the weekend the recent Irish Championships held near Limavaddy in Northern Ireland were a success for AJAX OC.

In the individual races there were a number of successes e.g.

Classic M50 was won by Colm Rothery (on a break from training for his assault on the M50 800 m track world record) closely followed by Aonghus O’Cleirigh also of AJAX.

M14 Sprint won by Cathal O'Cleirigh.

There were also a good smattering of second and thirds both in the classic and the sprint events, particularly from the AJAX juniors.

From my point of view the highlight of the weekend was the victories in both the Veterans (AJAX Attackers) and Junior (J36) relay events indicating the club is strong at both ends of the age spectrum.

All three Juniors comprising Dara and Cathal O’Cleirigh and Ruairí Long were consistent and error free and finished a comfortable 4 minutes ahead of Cork O. They had recently finished an excellent 5^th in the J40 event at JK2010 in Devon (with Róisín Long replacing Dara due to the difference in age class).

The Vets team (Aonghus O’Cleirigh, Denis Reidy and Colm Rothery) victory was equally clear cut. I ran the first leg myself on another team was able to observe that even after one control Aonghus’ experience had put him some 100 m ahead of the field. Dennis followed with a strong run. We were able to observe the finish from a sand dune and with two or more controls to go Colm was able to do an “Eamonn Coughlan” to the crowd.

3 May 2010