A full three days after she raced, Limerick’s Sarah Lavin has won Ireland’s second medal of the 2023 European Games. The Permanent TSB Flagbearer for Team Ireland claimed bronze in the 100m Hurdles after the completion of the event today in the three divisions that form the European Athletics Team Championships, which are being held in conjunction with these Games.
Despite having raced on Wednesday morning in Division Three, Lavin’s impressive time of 12.82 seconds was fast enough to earn the Emerald AC athlete a podium place. Her time is the second fastest of her career — just 0.03s off the personal best she clocked at the European Championships in Munich last summer.
Gold went to home favourite Pia Skrzyszowska (Poland) who ran a time of 12.77 seconds, while Nadine Visser (the Netherlands) took silver in 12.81 seconds. Both athletes competed in the Division One race in Krakow this afternoon.
France’s Laeticia Bapté also clocked a time of 12.82 in the Division One race, but Lavin’s time was faster by a vital one-thousandth of a second.The twenty-nine-year-old Irish sprinter is the first athlete at these Games to take an athletics medal after winning a Division Three race.
She gave her reaction upon hearing the news: “I’m so, so happy! I’ve dreamt of winning this, winning a major senior medal since I was a kid. It’s a really strange way to do it – to have that run by myself the other day and to have to play that waiting game to watch all the best from every country compete against each other. Division Two was really stacked, and again Division One today right to the wire.”
Referring to her support and her late partner Craig Breen, Lavin said:“I’ve had incredibly special people helping me over the last few months, over [the] last years, but ultimately I think someone very special up there is helping me…like the drama obviously today, to bring it right [to] one thousandth of a second, to get that bronze when the best were there.”
"It’s for everybody: Jackie, Ray, Kellie, Darragh and Bobbie, my own family and extended family and of course my coach, Noelle…thank you so, so much. I dreamt this day probably a little differently but I’ll remember it forever,” concluded the European Games medallist.
