News
The 9th Annual West of Ireland Women's Mini Marathon will take place on Sunday May 6th 2018 at 12noon in Castlebar. Keep your eye on this website over the next number of weeks for further announcements.
Girl's deserve support in their sporting dreams
Irish international athlete Jessie Barr was among the speakers at the recent Girls and Women in Sport seminar in GMIT Castlebar — at which the eighth annual Western People West of Ireland Mini-Marathon was officially launched.
Waterford-born Jessie Barr is a 400m hurdles specialist who competed in the 2012 Olympics in London as part of
the Irish 4x400m relay team. She is also a European AthleticsChampionship finalistand a World University Games
finalist. But she hasn’t raced competitively since 2013. She remains a full-time athlete, training daily at the University
of Limerick where she is currently studying for a PhD in Sports Psychology, but a string of injuries have curtailed
the last four years of her career. She is also the elder sister of Thomas Barr, who shot to national prominence last
summer when he finished fourth in the final of 400m hurdles at the Rio Olympic. Jessie Barr was in town to
speak to the crowd of hundreds, comprised primarily of female students from schools around Mayo, about girls in sport, the challenges they face and why, in stark comparison to their male counterparts, girls tend to drop out of sport in such numbers in their teenage years. Barr said that young girls were facing undue pressures — from society at large, and from their own peer groups —to turn their backs on sport. She told the story of her own teenage years, as a secondary school pupil, and how she often felt close to packing in her own sporting activities, especially when the friends and teammates she had grown up training and competing with began to drop away.
Barr described her younger self as a decent all-round athlete without ever being exceptionalin one specific discipline
— she was 17 before she discovered the 400m hurdles, the sport that would eventually take her to international
competition — but emphasised how delighted and grateful she is as an adult that she stuck with sport in her teens.
She encouraged the members of the audience to do the same; sport, she said, can be as part of a team or, like
Barr herself, as an individual. The point is persevering, finding the sport that best suits the individual’s needs, and
reaping the benefits in terms of physical and mental health, pushing oneself to achieve and making friends along the way. Barr was talented enough, and fortunate enough, to progress all the way to the Olympic Games. And, despite her recent injury travails, it was easy to see how much she still enjoys training and competing as an elite athlete.
Not every young girl considering taking up a sport, or thinking about leaving a sport behind, will go that far.
For most, sport is something to be embraced and enjoyed; girls should be allowed an encouraged to do just that.
Notes from the 2017 Launch of
Women's Mini Marathon
It was a star-studded line up of some of Ireland’s leading sportspeople that congregated in GMIT Castlebar on Thursday morning last the 8th February for the Girls and Women in Sport seminar, hosted by the Mayo Sports Partnership. The seminar was also the setting for the official launch of the 2017 western people West of Ireland Women’s Mini-Marathon. The Mini-Marathon, which this year takes place on Sunday, April 30 from The Mall in Castlebar, is now into it’s eighth year and has raised over €1.7million for local and national charities to date. This year’s event, which is being organised by the mayo Sports Partnership in partnership with the Western People and Mayo.ie, is expected to be the biggest and best yet. Over 3,500 runners, joggers and walkers took part in the race in 2016 and organisers are confident of that number rising yet again this year. The event follows a 10k route around the county town and participants are encouraged to take part at their own pace. Runners who have taken part in the mini-marathon in recent years include Irish athletic legend Sonia O’Sullivan, Irish Olympian Lizzie Lee and Belmullet native Sinead Diver, who returned mayo from her adoptive Melbourne to take part in the race. There was a similarly stellar cast of female sporting talent at the launch of the 2017 Mini-Marathon this week. Try this for a roll-call: Irish Olympic hurdler Jessie Barr, Irish Paralympic swimmer Ellen Keane, international canoeist Jenny Egan, Mayo ladies football great Cora Staunton and RTE Sport anchor Jacqui Hurley. They were all in town to take part in the Girls and Women in Sport seminar, which aimed to encourage more girls to play a more active role in all kinds of sport. Over 300 girls from schools around the county journeyed to GMIT to gain the insights of some of Ireland’s greatest female athletes, hearing their stories of success and listening to the difficulties they had to face along the way.
Women's Mini Marathon
It was a star-studded line up of some of Ireland’s leading sportspeople that congregated in GMIT Castlebar on Thursday morning last the 8th February for the Girls and Women in Sport seminar, hosted by the Mayo Sports Partnership. The seminar was also the setting for the official launch of the 2017 western people West of Ireland Women’s Mini-Marathon. The Mini-Marathon, which this year takes place on Sunday, April 30 from The Mall in Castlebar, is now into it’s eighth year and has raised over €1.7million for local and national charities to date. This year’s event, which is being organised by the mayo Sports Partnership in partnership with the Western People and Mayo.ie, is expected to be the biggest and best yet. Over 3,500 runners, joggers and walkers took part in the race in 2016 and organisers are confident of that number rising yet again this year. The event follows a 10k route around the county town and participants are encouraged to take part at their own pace. Runners who have taken part in the mini-marathon in recent years include Irish athletic legend Sonia O’Sullivan, Irish Olympian Lizzie Lee and Belmullet native Sinead Diver, who returned mayo from her adoptive Melbourne to take part in the race. There was a similarly stellar cast of female sporting talent at the launch of the 2017 Mini-Marathon this week. Try this for a roll-call: Irish Olympic hurdler Jessie Barr, Irish Paralympic swimmer Ellen Keane, international canoeist Jenny Egan, Mayo ladies football great Cora Staunton and RTE Sport anchor Jacqui Hurley. They were all in town to take part in the Girls and Women in Sport seminar, which aimed to encourage more girls to play a more active role in all kinds of sport. Over 300 girls from schools around the county journeyed to GMIT to gain the insights of some of Ireland’s greatest female athletes, hearing their stories of success and listening to the difficulties they had to face along the way.
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