In baking Berlin heat, Brendan Boyce finished in 19th place in the men’s 50k race walk at the 2018 European Athletics Championships this morning.
The mercury rose over the course of an already-gruelling event with temperatures well above 30 degrees as the participants went beyond the 30k marker.
Milford man Boyce, a two-time Olympian, was in medal contention by the half-way point, but dropped down in the searing heat.
An injury-hit period prevented Boyce from preparing as he would have wished and went to Berlin with just three weeks of race walking behind him.
“I’m happy to get through the race and happy to finish,” the Finn Valley AC man said.
Boyce finished in four hours, two minutes and 14 seconds.
The winner, Maryan Zakalnytskyy of Ukraine, finished in 3:45:32.
Matej Tóth took silver in 3:47:27 with Dzmitry Dziubin collecting bronze thanks to a new PB of 3:47:59.
Boyce said: “Aerobically, I knew I was fit but there was a question mark of if my legs could withstand the last part of the race.
“We decided to go out strong and positive for the first 30k. I wanted something positive out of the race.
“It’s hard to quantify what you’re feeling. You see everyone else suffering so that kept my mentality that I needed to finish. Everyone else was in the same position.”
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