{"id":233,"date":"2013-08-14T13:44:56","date_gmt":"2013-08-14T13:44:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/?p=233"},"modified":"2013-08-14T13:44:56","modified_gmt":"2013-08-14T13:44:56","slug":"gold-ends-ireland-wait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/news\/gold-ends-ireland-wait.htm","title":{"rendered":"Gold ends Ireland wait"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rob<\/a>

Rob Heffernan<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Rob Heffernan wins the 50km walk in Moscow to give Ireland their first Gold in the World Athletics Championships since 1995.<\/p>\n

The 35-year-old beat Russia’s Mikhail Ryzhov, 32, to claim his country’s third-ever world gold and first since Sonia O’Sullivan’s 5,000m win in 1995.<\/p>\n

The Cork athlete’s time of three hours 37 minutes and 56 seconds was the world’s fastest this year.<\/p>\n

“It’s hard to take it all in at the moment. I’m delighted,” he said.<\/p>\n

“I wanted to go to Moscow and take on the Russians in Moscow and that’s what I did. I’m very proud that an Irish man can come to Russia and beat them in walking.<\/p>\n

“It’s surreal, it’s just a great feeling,” added Heffernan, who was embraced after the race by his wife Marian, who represented Ireland in the 4x400m relay at last year’s Olympics. “When I came into the stadium it just felt like an out-of-body experience.”<\/p>\n

Heffernan, who finished fourth at London 2012, produced his fastest 5km between the 35-40km mark and never looked in danger of being caught.<\/p>\n

He was with the leading pack at the halfway point and pulled clear of Ryzhov (3:38:58) at 40km, winning by 62 seconds, with Australia’s two-time Olympic silver medallist Jared Tallent (3:40:03) taking bronze.<\/p>\n

However Heffernan was close to missing out when he was issued with a second yellow card warning in the closing stages, one away from disqualification.<\/p>\n

His winning time was two seconds slower than his personal best set at the London Olympics.<\/p>\n

Heffernan had to withdraw from the 2011 World Championships in Daegu after the sudden death of his mother.<\/p>\n

Eamonn Coghlan won 5,000m gold for Ireland in the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki in 1983, before O’Sullivan won the 5,000m in Gothenburg 18 years ago.<\/p>\n

Ireland’s last two medals at the World Championships – silvers for Gillian O’Sullivan and Olive Loughnane, in Paris in 2003 and Berlin in 2009 respectively – have also come in race-walking.<\/p>\n

Heffernan’s team-mate Brendan Boyce finished 25th in Wednesday’s race in a new personal best of 3:54:24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Rob Heffernan wins the 50km walk in Moscow to give Ireland their first Gold in the World Athletics Championships since 1995.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,109,1,107,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-moscow2013","category-news","category-walk","category-world-champs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions\/236"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.time-to-run.com\/ireland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}