O’Connor takes heptathlon gold for Ireland’s third medal of European Championships

KATE O’CONNOR HAS continued her gold-medal form to win the heptathlon at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham. 

The 25-year-old from Dundalk sprinted into the lead from the start of the 800m, the last of seven events, before tracking her nearest challenger Emma Oosterwegel.

The Dutch athlete won the race, but O’Connor kept the gap inside one second to cross in third and seal the gold. 

It extends her collection to seven championship medals across the past 18 months.

In that time, O’Connor has won bronze at the European and World Indoors, silver at the World Indoors and Outdoors, and gold at the World University and Commonwealth Games, but this will rank as her biggest title yet.

Her success adds to the medals won by Mark English (800m gold) and Rhasidat Adeleke (200m silver) on Thursday.

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Earlier, two brilliant performances in the long jump and javelin events vaulted O’Connor to the top of the leaderboard.

Her javelin mark of 50.16m pushed her clear of Dutch duo Oosterwegel and Sofie Dokter by a margin of 51 points to second and 71 points ahead of third with one event to go.

O’Connor had earlier registered a personal best of 6.55m in the long jump to place her third overall.

She was firmly in the medal hunt after the first day of events on Friday, trailing Adrianna Sulek-Schumbert of Poland and the Dokter at that stage.

She made a strong start to the opening day in the 100m hurdles, clocking a personal best of 13.30 seconds to finish fourth in heat two, and place 11th overall. O’Connor then cleared 1.86m to equal her high jump PB, adding 1,054 points to her total and moving her into second position.

In the shot put, her best throw of 13.96m maintained second place before closing out the day with a new personal best of 23.79 seconds in the 200m to sit third overnight.

- More to follow…

Written by Stephen Barry and originally published on The 42 whose award-winning team produces original content that you won’t find anywhere else: on GAA, League of Ireland, women’s sport and boxing, as well as our game-changing rugby coverage, all with an Irish eye. Subscribe here.