Coogan's run is just perfect!

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Failsworth athlete Mike Coogan enjoyed a golden trip to Madrid, where he dramatically won the 200m race in the M45 category at the European Masters Championships.

Coogan, who runs for the Tameside and East Cheshire Athletics Club in Ashton, won the category race – for athletes aged 45 to 50 – by just one hundredth of a second from Xavier Bosch from Spain. Janos Lisztocki of Hungary finished third.

Coogan made such a dash for the line, he fell over at the tape (see video below), though he wasn’t badly injured.

He said: “It turned out fine in the end.

“I’d have felt the pain more if I’d come second, then there was an anxious wait while the judges reviewed the photo finish.”

Coogan won his dream gold medal at the Parc De Gallur Indoor Arena in Madrid, which is Spain’s national indoor athletics stadium.

The European Masters Championships are held every two years and are attended by over 4,000 athletes from around Europe.

The athletes compete in five year age bands starting at 35 to 40, 40 to 45, and so on.

It’s an open event so as long as athletes are over 35, there are no barriers to entry.

There’s a broad range from lifelong club runners to ex-Olympians, and the Championships continuously attract the fastest masters athletes from across Europe for the sprint events.

Coogan trains five times a week, and does most of it either at his club or the Sportcity complex beside the Etihad Stadium, where there is an indoor facility.

He added: “Compared to most I took up sprinting very late, only setting foot on a track for the first time four years ago.

“But as a result I am still improving.

“This year for the first time I finished the indoor season ranked number one in the world at both 200m and 400m.

“The guy in second place in the 200m rankings is a very good American Jeff Laynes. He ran 100 metres in 10 seconds flat as a senior in the 1990s.”

Watch Mike’s heroic 200m victory in Madrid (below).