Andrew Coscoran wins 1500m at FBK Games, Sarah Lavin runs season's best

Coscoran “Just to come out and win is great.”

ANDREW COSCORAN WON the 1500m at the FBK Games, the Continental Tour Gold meet in the Netherlands this evening.

The Tokyo Olympian was stride for stride with Great Britain’s Elliot Giles in the home straight, and timed his dip to perfection to win in a photo finish.

Coscoran’s win was clocked at 3:37.97, three-hundredths of a second faster than Giles (3:38.00) while Australia’s Jye Edwards was third in 3:38.24.

“Just to come out and win is great,” Coscoran said post race.

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“The whole time I put myself in the position to win. I thought I had it with 100m to go, but the guys passed me and I thought I lost, but I kept pushing and kind of dived. The others pushed maybe too early and on the finish, I got him.”

Ireland’s other representative in the race, Luke McCann, was sixth in 3:38.62.

A little earlier on Sunday, Sarah Lavin took more than a tenth of a second off her season’s best as she finished fifth in a high-class 100m hurdles.

Lavin clocked 12.91 seconds in the race won by Rio Olympic silver medallist Nia Ali of the United States (12.61) ahead of Nadine Visser and last year’s European Championship bronze medallist Ditaji Kambundji.

In the men’s 400m hurdles, Thomas Barr finished fifth in 49.52 seconds, while Sharlene Mawdsley finished fourth (52.14 seconds) behind winner Femke Bol in the women’s 400m.

Pole vault world record holder Armand Duplantis set a new best mark for the season by soaring to 6.11 metres at the meet.

The Swedish star beat the previous highest of the year jumped by American KC Lightfoot in Nashville of 6.07m.

Duplantis attempted to break his own world record of 6.22m but came up well short in Hengelo.

“I probably didn’t have the legs to jump that high,” said Duplantis, who set his latest world record in France in February.

– Additional reporting © AFP 2023