Hamilton & Turley excel in Seeley Cup 10K (Photos Added)
The weekend's Podium 4 Sport Seeley 10K at Ormeau Park lived up to expectation with two excellent runs by Northern athletes Paddy Hamilton and Julie Turley who challenged eventual Southern Irish winners.
The event which incorporated the Athletics NI Champs had a record 800 finishers.
The official photos are now available in our Gallery
In a high quality Men's field the main contenders were content to observe each other up to the half way mark which was reached in 15 mins 23 secs.
At that stage the breakaway group consisted of Andrew Ledwith who has recently joined Armagh, Mullingar's Mark Christie and the Annadale trio of Paddy Hamilton,Andrew Agnew and Eddie McGinley.
At the 6k mark Ledwith made a break which only Christie managed to cover. However Hamilton later attacked and passed Christie with 1k remaining. Drama then ensued approaching the finish when Ledwith who had a commanding 40 metres lead inexplicably took a wrong turning. However he quickly rejoined the course and just managed to fend off Hamilton for a one second victory in 30 mins 47 secs. Christie was an isolated 3rd in 30.55 with Barnett's Park winner Agnew 4th in 31.03 followed by Letterkenny's Patrick Brennan.Last year's runner up Jarlath Falls of Ballymena completed the first six.
Afterwards Ledwith explained that he had been confused about the location of the finish area because of the presence of a large number of lapped runners. He said that it was his error and in any event he quickly got back on course to take victory. He was pleased with his win which was some compensation for a below par performance in the Dublin Marathon.
Twice previous winner Hamilton expressed delight with his first outing of the season particulary given his recent cold plus continuing knee problems.
As expected Annadale took their 26th title with a dominant 75 points ahead of Armagh(151points) and North Belfast (206 points).
In the Ladies event Dromore's Julie Turley continued her current purple patch with one of her best ever perfomances. She led the race at halfway ahead of more fancied names such as Irish internationals Maria McCambridge, Hazel Murphy and North's Gladys Ganiel.
The 34 year old's confidence has been boosted recently by a PB over 10 miles plus a win at Barnett's Park. While McCambridge dropped out with a stich former AAA's Indoor champion Murphy only forged ahead of Turley with 4k remaining.
The diminuitive Turley still remined in contact and at the finish was only 9 secs behind Murphy who won in 35.41. Julie who said she has been running well all season will race in this week's Irish Inter Counties at Sligo. Ganiel was 3rd in just under 36 mins followed by team mate Breege Connolly (37.04) and North Down's Julie Balmer(38.37). North Belfast easily retained their team title with 13 points from North Down (37 points) and Lagan Valley (47 points).
Full results are online and official photos to follow.
