GARY RYAN, the national 200 metres record holder, will provide much of the experience in an experimental Irish team to compete in the SIKI Memorial meeting at Ljubljana a week on Sunday.
Ryan emerged as one of the better Irish athletes in the Olympic Games in Atlanta last year, breaking the national record on a couple of occasions to provide a significant boost for sprinters.
Since then, he has competed with distinction in the World Indoor championships in Paris and he now plans to use the meeting in Slovenia as the starting point of an outdoor programme, leading to the World Championships at Athens in August.
James Nolan, another of the emerging athletes who ran well in Paris, gets the 800 metres nomination and will be hoping for a good performance to sustain him in the approach to the Europa Cup fixture at Santry next month.
An interesting innovation is the choice of Jean Tierney, the first Irish athlete to be selected in the newly instituted pole vault competition for women.
