Mark English misses out on European Indoor final place

MARK English missed out on a place in the 800m final at the European Indoor Championships.

The Finn Valley AC man finished fourth in his semi-final at Arena Toruń this evening.

English went out of lane 3 in a seriously tough semi-final, alongside Adam Kszczot and Pierre Ambroise Bosse.

And it was Bosse (1:47.86) and Kszczot (1:47.98) who moved into Sunday evening’s final.

English was fourth in 1:48.99.

English opened his bid on Friday night with a third-place finish in his heat. There, he crossed the line in 1:49.79 having had a real scare as his foot clipped the track railing coming  around the final bend.

Two years ago, English won a bronze medal at these Championships in Glasgow, having also taken bronze at Prague in 2015.

The 27-year-old had some injury issues in between those medals, but flew to Poland on the back of a new Irish Indoor record.

At the Sport Ireland National Indoor Arena a fortnight ago, English – a European outdoor silver medalist in 2014 – went 1:46.10 to break his own mark, which stood for eight years.

Last spring, English moved to Finn Valley AC and in late 2020 he linked up with a new coach in Feidhlim Kelly, whose Dublin Track Club has proved to be more than useful for English, as he combines with his work as an intern doctor in the Mater Hospital.

In the first 800m semi, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Amel Tuka (1:47.55) and Poland’s Patryk Dobek (1:47.56) advanced with Marteusz Borkowski of Poland (1:45.79) and Britain’s Jamie Webb (1:45.99) going out of the other semi.

Leaving Cert student Cian McPhillips from Longford set a new European Under-20 record in finishing 1:48.06 for fourth in the second semi.