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06 Sept 2025
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06 Sept 2025
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Eddie Leddy pictured on his way to winning the Intermediate Boys race at the 1968 All-Ireland Colleges Cross-country championship
Its that time of the year when we traditionally look back on the previous 12 months but Connacht Athletics decided to cast the net that bit further back when they posted the top ten performances from the province's athletes from 1968, a year that featured ten different Leitrim athletes making the rankings.
Naturally enough, in a year that saw him complete a never-equalled performance of winning the All-Ireland Colleges Senior and Intermediate boys cross-country titles within half an hour, Eddie Leddy is prominently featured with the double Olympian ranked in the top ten Connacht performances in four events.
Amazingly, two of those ranking performances came as splits in longer races - his 880 yards time of 2.06.0 saw him ranked fifth overall but it came during a mile race while his 2 mile time of 9.24.0 put him second in that event, despite it coming during a three mile race.
However, Eddie's four ranking places were matched by Aughawillan's Patricia Quinn, who later of course won the Women's Mini Marathon and represented Ireland as Patricia Griffin, showed amazing versatility by being ranked over 100 yards, 220 yards, 800m and the Long Jump.
Of the ten Leitrim athletes ranked in Connacht's top ten as published by the Tuam Herald and resurrected now by Connacht Athletics, all but J McNiff of Carrick-on-Shannon came from Ballinamore AC, McNiff ranked in the Pole Vault thanks to his 9'0" clearance.
Two events saw three Leitrim athletes ranked in the top ten - in the Women's 100 yards, Patricia Griffin (12.8) was joined by her fellow Ballinamore athletes F Hegarty (13.4) and M Sharpley (13.5) while the Men's Mile saw Eddie Leddy (4.17.4) joined by his brother PJ (4.34.0) and M McTague (4.52.0).
Other Ballinamore athletes in the 1968 rankings were M Earley in the Women's 800m and in the Men's High Jump, M Farrell was ranked joint fifth with his 5'5" clearance.
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