In his last underage national championships, Conall Mahon finally got the gold medal he craved as he comfortably secured first place in the Triple Jump at the Glo Health Irish U23 Championships in Tullamore on Sunday.

Mahon has had an impressive year to date and he continued his fine form at the weekend to get his hands on that elusive gold medal with a jump of 13.99.

For the Irvinestown man there was delight to have finally achieved his big goal.

“It was great to get that win eventually after quite a few years of trying. It was my first underage national title at my very last attempt so I’m just glad to get it. There have been a few bad days in Tullamore so it is nice to erase those memories,” he commented.

Conall felt he could have produced a bigger jump on the day but he stresses that the only thing that mattered was to return home with the gold medal around his neck.

I got into the lead in the second or third round and it was probably a comfortable enough win in the end. I jumped 13.99 which was alright, I could maybe have jumped a bit further but I was just happy to win and I wasn’t that concerned about the distance if I’m being truthful.” And the win also put to bed a defeat in the Irish U23 Indoor Championships earlier in the season. On that occasion he lost out to Andrii Machin of Clonliffe Harriers but he got the better of his rival this time around.

“The guy who beat me in the indoor U23s, he came second, so it was nice to beat him, it made up for having lost to him earlier on the season.” The focus for the Fermanagh athlete will now switch to the Irish Senior Championships on the second weekend of August in Santry and Mahon is targeting more silverware.

“The senior outdoors are in five weeks time and I’m targeting for myself to try and get top into the top two and beyond that hopefully get a personal best,” he said.

So, there is no time to sit back and admire the achievement of last weekend with a lot of hard training to be completed between now and then.

“The next three weeks I’ll be training hard for the competition. It is mostly technical work that I need to work on and I’ll be in Donegal Town twice a week while I do most of my training in the Bawnacre in Irvinestown,” he added.