Waterford’s Thomas Barr took first place in his 400m hurdles semi-final at the World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea.
The UL student was excellent out of the blocks and went smoothly over the hurdles to win the heart in a time of 49.75. He won his previous heat in 49.96.
Barr will now be confident of a medal in tomorrow’s final, which takes place at 11am Irish time. The fast time and semi-final win for Barr means he is guaranteed a middle lane for the final.
UCD student Ciara Everard also secured her place in the world university final after a battling performance in the semi-finals of the 800m. Everard made a positive start to the race positioning herself behind the early leader Angela Petty of New Zealand. Petty continued to dominate winning the race in a time of 2.00.74 with Everard losing a bit of ground in the home straight to finish fifth in a time of 2.02.10.
The time for the Kilkenny native was enough to qualify her for the final which takes place tomorrow at 11.10am.
Elsewhere, Cliodhna Manning and Phil Healy narrowly missed out on making the final of the women's 100m at the European U23 Championships in Tallinn.
There were three heats in the women's 100m with the first two in each qualifying automatically to tomorrow's final along with two fastest losers.
Manning (Kilkenny City Harriers) finished third in the first heat in 11.79 into a minus 1.8 headwind but unfortunately it wasn't good enough to progress.
"I wanted to run a pb (11.71) and get another run but it was into a strong headwind," said Manning, who finished 10th overall.
Healy (Bandon AC) finished fourth in the last heat in 11.81 and was reasonably pleased with her performance.
"I've struggled the last few weeks so it's a good improvement," Healy said.
Dempsey McGuigan (Finn Valley) finished 16th overall in the men's hammer qualification with a best of 65.09m.
