Ireland’s Paul McKee narrowly missed out on a place in tomorrow’s 400m final at the European Championships in Munich tonight.
The 24-year-old Belfast athelte finished fifth behind Britain’s Daniel Caines in a time of 45.92 seconds.
Caines beat Germany's Ingo Schultz, silver medallist at last year's world championships in Edmonton, into second place.
Caines, running from lane four, set an impressive pace throughout and had collared McKee in the lane outside him at an early stage.
But credit McKee as he battled gamely and was third approaching the final 100 metres.
However, with 20 metres to run, he tired and got pipped for third by both Poland’s Marek Plawgo and Hungarian Zsolt Szeglet of Hungry.
Semi-final 1
1Daniel Caines (Gbr) 45.35 Q
2Ingo Schultz (Ger) 45.49 Q
3Marek Plawgo (Pol) 45.83 Q
4Zsolt Szeglet (Hun) 45.84 Q
5 Paul McKee (Irl) 45.92
6Stylianos Dimotsios (Gre) 45.98
7Yuriy Borzakovskiy (Rus) 46.04
8Radek Zachoval (Cze) 46.24
- Britain's Dwain Chambers won the men's 100m title. He clocked a new championship record of 9.96sec to finish ahead of Portugal's Francis Obikwelu (10.06) and fellow Briton Darren Campbell (10.15).
- Greece's Ekaterini Thanou won the women's 100m title in a time of 11.10 seconds.