Karen Shinkins narrowly missed out on qualification to the women's 400m semi-finals at the World Indoor Championships in Birmingham today after being pipped to one of the two fastest losers slots.
Shinkins came third in the second heat, with the first two from both heats qualifying automatically, in a time of 53.59 seconds but missed out by a mere eight hundredths of a second.
Christine Amertil from Bahrain (53.15) won Shinkins' heat with American Monique Hennagan (52.83) in second.
Bahrain's Tonique Williams won the first heat with a personal best of 52.04 and Russia's Yuliya Pechonkina was second in 52.62.
Earlier, Ciara Sheehy was the first Irish athlete to take to the track at the Championships today and made the ideal start to qualify from her 200m heat.
Sheehy ran in heat six and qualified for the semi-finals with some ease in second place behind American Michelle Collins with a time of 23.46 seconds.
In the men's 200m Gary Ryan managed the same feat as Sheehy to qualify in the second automatic spot from each of the six heats. Ryan clocked a time of 21.07 behind Batangdon Joseph (20.95) in heat two.
Paul Brizzel was equally impressive finishing second in heat five (21.02) of the same event, just two-hundredths of a second behind Demeritte Dominic.
In all, 11 Irish athletes will compete at the Championships over the next three days, with the injured Sonia O'Sullivan a notable absentee.