Record-breaker Veale walks her way to gold for Ireland

ATHLETICS:KATE VEALE has won Ireland's first ever gold medal at the IAAF World Youth Championships with a superb performance in the 5km walk in Lille yesterday, winning a highly competitive race by a massive 15 seconds.

The Waterford athlete – coached by former Irish Olympian Jamie Costin – was in a class of her own as she decimated the international field to win in 21 minutes, 45.59 seconds – well clear of Yanxue Mao of China, who clocked 22:00.15, with Russia’s Nadezhda Leontyeva third in 22:00.84.

With that the 17 year-old Veale improved her own personal best by some 51 seconds, and in the process set a World Youth Championship record. In fact, five of the top 10 finishers all set personal bests in what was a high quality race from start to finish.

Veale was content to stay with the pack in the opening 2km, before moving to the front and pushing the pace – soon opening up a significant gap on her competitors which they could not close. In the process Veale also smashed her previous Irish Junior record of 22:36.97, which she set when finishing fourth at last year’s World Youth Olympic Games in Singapore.

It was a brilliant yet hardly surprising result for the rising star, who showed her championships form earlier this year when winning a bronze medal in the junior women’s 10km at the European Cup of Race Walking in the Algarve in May.

There was further good news for the Irish team when Marcus Lawlor from Carlow finished second in his 200-metre heat, his 21.63 gaining an automatic qualifying spot in today’s semi-final – and in doing breaking his own Irish Youth Record of 21.79

The IAAF World Youth Championships is the only global event catering for under-18 athletes, with some 1,385 competitors representing 175 countries taking part in Lille. Usain Bolt, Allyson Felix, Veronica Campbell-Brown, Kenenisa Bekele, Yelena Isinbayeva are just some of the previous gold medal winners, putting Veale in already esteemed company.