Mark Carroll and Gareth Turnbull delivered further evidence of their ability to challenge strongly for European indoor championship medals at Ghent in three weeks on a significant weekend for Irish athletics.

Carroll achieved another of his career goals by adding his name to the list of Irishmen who have won the Wanamaker Mile with a wholly convincing performance in New York's Madison Square Garden in the early hours of Saturday morning.

And on this side of the Atlantic, the versatile Belfast athlete Turnbull made it three wins out of three in recent weeks by capturing the British Universities cross country championship at Edinburgh.

Ever since Ron Delany embarked on a record sequence of success in the 1950s, Irish milers have dominated indoor miling in America. So it was perhaps no more than the fulfilment of destiny when Carroll hit the finish line first in the centrepiece of the Millrose Games in three minutes 58.19 seconds.

What made this a little special was not so much that three Kenyans were spread out in the distant pursuit as James Nolan ran on into second place just over a second adrift of the flying Corkman.

Unlike Carroll, Nolan's bid was launched from a home base at UCD, but the quality of his performance was good enough to suggest that, after competing in the national indoor championships at Nenagh next Sunday, he too can run well in the indoor championships in Belgium.

Yet it was Carroll, distancing himself from the disappointment of a series of below par performances last summer, who emerged as one of the outstanding performers on an evening when American athletes of the quality of Maurice Greene and Regina Jacobs were also among the winners.

Inevitably, the presence of the Kenyan contingent, headed by Laban Rotich, occasioned some pre-race anxiety in the Irishman's camp. Yet Carroll, it seemed, never deviated from his plan and tracked the leaders diligently before making the decisive break on the ninth of the 11 laps.

Rotich, caught unprepared, was unable to respond and, with the African challenge extinguished, Nolan came through strongly to take second pace almost two seconds clear of Rotich.

Immediately after the meeting Carroll left to compete in Greece, but he is expected to run at Nenagh.

Sinead Delahunty, also looking for a place in the Irish squad for the European indoor championships, finished third in the equivalent women's race in 4:38.15 seconds. This left her a long way adrift of Regina Jacobs, whose figures of 4:22.04 were the fastest for many years.

Turnbull's ability to adapt to a range of different challenges was in evidence once more in Edinburgh, where he won the British Universities 10,000 metres championship for Loughborough in 29:43.

A fortnight ago he won a big cross country race in Durham over 4,000 metres, and followed it a week later by cruising home in the British 1,500 metres indoor championship at Birmingham.

At this advanced stage of his preparations for the European indoor tests, a cross country race over 10,000 metres was possibly the last thing he wanted. Committed to running for his university, however, he took the challenge on board with some gusto to beat British international Spencer Barden by five seconds.

He plans to run at Nenagh before gearing up for a big challenge in the European 1,500 metres championship.