Celtic Games Victory

A fantastic day of Junior International athletics ended up with Wales winning the the overall Celtic Games title for the first time.

The age groups involved are U16 boys and U18 men and U16 girls and U18 women, the U16 girls won their age group with 38points, 6points in front of second place team Athletics Ireland, the U16 boys came third in their category, with 30 points, 1 point  behind Ulster on 31, and 3 points behind Athletics Ireland, the disqualification of the Wales team in the 4 x 100m relay would have seen the boys win that age group. The U18 element saw the U18 Women finish second on 56 points, 5 points behind Athletics Ireland who totalled 61points, the U18 men also came in second with 56 points, 8 points behind Scotland who finished with 64 points.

The overall female combined score had Wales take first place on 94 points, 1 point in front of Athletics Ireland. The male overall combined competition saw Scotland win with 88 points and Wales take second place on 86 points.

Wales then accumulated a total male and female combined score of 180 points, putting Athletics Ireland in second place with 173 points.

Athletes excelled themselves and were focussed on performing well, we had a total of 20 athletes gain personal best and season best performances. There was one season best performance, but this performance also ended with a new Celtic Games record for Dewi Griffiths (Carmarthen Harriers) in the 3000m with a performance of 8:42.19s, beating Simon Lawson's record set in Antrim last year. Sara Otung (Cardiff AAC) also took a Celtic Games Record held by Wales & Carmarthen Harrier Heather Jones, Sara's joint time of 11.07s broke Heather's 11.11s set in 2001. Rhys Williams (Ysg G Cwm Rhymni) won the U16 boys 80m hurdles, after winning the Welsh Schools title improved his PB from 11.6s to 11.08s, this performance would have also become a new Welsh age group record but with the wind speed exceeding the limit will not stand as a record.

Scottish Athletics Video footage of 2008 Games

The team effort and support certainly showed and as a result the athletes below all acheived personal best performances. full set of results below to download.