Paris prep: What the National Athletics Championships tell us about Ireland’s Olympics preparations

Last call for Paris, and despite the absence of four of the 10 Irish athletes with automatic qualifying times for the Olympics, now just 25 days away, the National Athletics Championships over the weekend proved a suitably golden and encouraging send-off.

All six of the Paris qualifiers who did compete came away with national titles, in turn delighting the throngs of supporters not witnessed since the heydays of the Morton Stadium in Santry – and none more impressively than Rhasidat Adeleke, now officially Ireland’s fastest woman after blazing the Irish 100m record down to 11.17 seconds.

Also signing off for Paris on a winning note and in impressive style were Mark English (800m), Brian Fay (5,000m), Sarah Healy (800m), Sophie O’Sullivan (1,500m) and Sarah Lavin (100m hurdles), suggesting their Olympic preparations are perfectly on track, and in O’Sullivan’s case also producing her first senior title.

Healy and O’Sullivan have both qualified for the 1,500m in Paris, Healy moving down a distance to test her speed, winning comfortably in 2:03.64 to beat defending champion Louise Shanahan.

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Paris prep: What the National Athletics Championships tell us about Ireland’s Olympics preparations

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The four Paris qualifiers who did not compete had missed Santry for different reasons. Ciara Mageean (1,500m) had already opted out for a fifth successive year, as she is currently training at altitude after her gold medal heroics at the European Championships last month, and is set to test herself again in the Monaco Diamond League on July 12th.

Sharlene Mawdsley was set to race the 200m in preparation for the 400m in Paris, only to withdraw from Saturday’s heats due to a minor injury, as did Andrew Coscoran from the 1,500m heats. Both were understandably cautious not to impact on their Olympic preparations.

Fionnuala McCormack, who has qualified in the marathon and will make history in Paris as the first Irish woman to compete in five Olympics, was never scheduled to compete as her preparations are naturally focused on the road.

Along with these 10 individual automatic qualifiers, Ireland has already qualified two relay teams, the women’s and mixed 4x400m relay, and those selections will be confirmed by Athletics Ireland later this week, with several of the athletes in contention also impressing in Santry.

There is still the hope for several more Irish athletes, with seven of them sitting in a Road to Paris 24 quota qualification spot, ahead of Sunday’s cut-off date. These make up the final Paris event numbers on top of those with the automatic qualifying marks (with a maximum of three entries per event for each country).

World Athletics will update this list on Tuesday afternoon, when the results of all the National Championships across the world have been processed. The national athletics federations then have until midnight on Thursday to accept or reject the places, before World Athletics then publish the final Road to Paris this Sunday, July 7th.

It is a complicated process for a variety of reasons, not least the fact some athletes qualified in two or more events may opt out of one, before the final ranking points gained by those winning national titles over the weekend are applied to those still chasing a quota spot.

Thomas Barr, who last month fell just short of automatically qualifying for his third Olympics in the 400m hurdles, moved into a quota spot last week, sitting in 40th of the 40-athlete quota, although it appears he might just miss out.

Kate O’Connor, second in the heptathlon at the World Athletics Combined Events Tour Gold meeting in Ratingen, Germany last month, also moved back inside her event quota, ranked 22nd of the 24 available spots.

For the 1,500m in Paris, there are 45 entry spots, with Luke McCann currently in 37th spot and Cathal Doyle in 43rd, Doyle’s victory in Santry on Sunday certainly increasing his chances.

Sophie Becker (47th of the 48-athlete quota in 400m), Nicola Tuthill (31st of the 32-athlete quota in the hammer) and Eric Favors (29th of the 32-athlete quota in the shot) are all still just inside the athlete quota in their events.

Phil Healy may well move within the 200m quota this week, after winning another national title on Saturday, and while Adeleke is currently qualified there on time, she will be withdrawing her name to focus on the 400m only. Jodie McCann, sister of Luke, could also move into the women’s 5,000m quota, after winning the national title on Sunday in 15:44.80, with 42 spots available in that event.

Barr, who turns 32 two days before the Olympics begin, is still set to travel to Paris as part in the 4x400m mixed relay having played a key role in the gold medal performance at the European Championships in Rome earlier this month.

That would leave two more men’s mixed relay spots, Jack Raftery doing his selection chances a huge favour by winning first senior 400m title on Sunday in 45.95 seconds, ahead of Chris O’Donnell (46.07), Callum Baird (46.20) and Cillín Greene (46.85). Paris cannot call on them all.