Proud parents Margaret and Mandy Boyce, Milford with their son Brendan. Photo: Donna McBride
BY AIDAN O’DONNELL
DAYS after competing in his first Olympic Games, Brendan Boyce has already switched his long-term focus towards Rio de Janeiro and is confident of trimming more time off his personal best between now and then, following a debut to remember in London last weekend.
The 25-year-old race-walker smashed his previous PB of 3:57:03 by setting a new time of 3:55:01 en route to finishing in a highly respectable 29th in the exhausting 50k Walk.
The Milford man only really began to compete on the senior international stage two years ago and in the meantime has managed to trim over ten minutes off a time he first set in Slovakia in 2010.
“I knew that I would need experience if I was going to make it to the Olympics so I decided I would do a 50k back in 2010 just to see what it was like and I did it in 4 hours 8 minutes,” said Brendan after returning home to Donegal this week.
He added: “So I was preparing for the A-standard 18 months on to have a crack at that in Germany and I took over ten minutes off, doing 3 hours 57 minutes.
“I consolidated that result again in Dudince in March, getting a new PB by a few seconds and in London I just wanted to take another chunk off that again and thankfully it’s all worked out.”
Boyce, a member of Letterkenny AC who has been based in Leeds for the last three years, was one of three male race-walkers representing Ireland at the Olympics.
Standard-bearer Robert Heffernan just missed out on a medal despite a late surge through the field, while Colin Griffin was disqualified after being red-paddled on three occasions.
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