NEWRY’S Kate O’Connor continued her exceptional form at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo with a sensational silver medal performance in the heptathlon, that included FIVE personal bests over her seven events.
Kate’s achievement was made all the more remarkable as she clocked two minutes 9.56 seconds in the decisive 800m despite sustaining a knee injury during the long jump in the morning session.
The 24-year-old Dundalk St Gerard’s athlete is the first Irish individual to medal in a multi-discipline sport and only the sixth Irish athlete to medal at the worlds, the first in 12 years.
Anna Hall of the United States took the gold, coming home first in the 800m in 2:06.08. O’Connor finished in seventh place, ahead of main challenger Taliyah Brooks and just behind Great Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson, her other contender for a medal.
Hall took the title with 6881 points, O’Connor’s 6714 was a national record, while Brooks and Johnson-Thompson will share the bronze medal on 6581.
Day one had seen O’Connor deliver personal bests in the 100m hurdles, high jump and 200m, leaving her second overall.
She continued that form on Saturday morning.
In the long jump, not one of her strongest events, she produced a best leap of 6.22m. That gained her 918 points, moving her up to 4824 points, 191 points up on where she was at this stage when setting her Irish record (6497 points) in July.
Later in the morning, O’Connor threw a terrific PB of 53.06m in the javelin to get into the medal places on 5743 points.
She becomes the sixth medallist for Ireland, following Eamonn Coghlan (gold, 1500m, 1983), Sonia O’Sullivan (gold, 5000m, 1995 and silver, 1500m, 1993), Gillian O’Sullivan (silver, 20km walk, 2003), Olive Loughnane (silver, 20km walk, 2009) and Rob Heffernan (gold, 50km walk, 2013).
