Ireland's David Gillick and Joanne Cuddihy Named Irish Team Captains for European Athletics Team Championships, Santry, June 22/23rd

Athletics Ireland is pleased to announce that Irish Olympians David Gillick (DSD AC) and Joanne Cuddihy (Kilkenny City Harriers) have been named as the Men's and Women's Team Captains for the prestigious European Athletics Team Championships 1st League event taking place in The Morton Stadium Santry, Dublin on the weekend of June 22/23rd.

Both Gillick and Cuddihy are pleased to have been asked up for this important team-building role and were delighted to accept the opportunity to utilise their vast competition experience with Ireland's latest European Athletics Team.

Gillick and Cuddihy have competed for Ireland in this exciting and challenging team event on a number of occasions, with Joanne first in Tallinn in 2002 and David in 2003 in Aarhus, both in the European Cup event as it was known then. Cuddihy finished second for Ireland in the Team Championships over 400m in 2009.

Irish record holder over 400m with a time of 44.77 from 2009, Dundrum man David Gillick has been twice European Indoor 400m Champion in 2005 and 2007 and was the first Irishman to break the coveted 45 second barrier for the one lap event. He was also a World Athletics 400m outdoor finalist in 2010.

Joanne Cuddihy (Kilkenny Harriers AC) has competed for Ireland for over twelve years at youth, junior and senior level. Like Gillick, she is also the current national record holder for the 400m outdoors, with a time of 50.73 seconds, set in Osaka, Japan in 2007 while competing for Ireland at the World Athletics Championships. She is a former European Junior Silver medallist from 2003.

Patsy McGonagle, Irish Team Manager:

" I am delighted to have two very experienced European Team participants and Olympians in Joanne and David on board. Their experience and pedigree will add to and support the Irish team over what promises to be two very competitive days of European athletics in Santry. David and Joanne both enthusiastically accepted the invitation and their vast experience of international competition, in this event and others, will give the whole Irish team a real benefit."


Both David and Joanne will be looking forward to working with both Irish Teams in the run-up to and on the two-days of exciting competition in Santry.

The challenge to the Irish Team to keep it's 1st League status will be one that all of the fifty strong Irish Athletics Team, together with support staff, will relish, in what will no doubt be the highest quality athletics meeting ever staged in Ireland.

The Morton Stadium is expected to be full with Irish supporters for the two days of competition to give real support to the Irish Team in their endeavours to finish in the top 10 European teams over the weekends some 40 events.

The Irish Team will be competing against teams from eleven other European countries in Santry in just over 8 days time. These teams are:

Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and Switzerland.

Dublin has hosted this prestigious event on five previous occasions, the last being in 1997.

Over 650 athletes, from twelve European Countries, will be competing in twenty events for Men and Women over the two days in Santry, and the excitement and anticipation is building daily.