Athletics Ireland will this week announce an experienced team for the World Championships in Tokyo, which begin on September 13th, with 11 athletes already guaranteed their selection, along with two relay squads.
Another six Irish athletes are in line for selection once World Athletics announce the final Road to Tokyo ranking lists on Wednesday, after which there is still a chance of additional Irish athletes being selected, depending on the number of withdrawals from other nations.
After Rhasidat Adeleke made the decision to end her season last week, citing the lingering injuries and continuous setbacks which made it increasingly difficult for her to train and perform at the level she expects from herself, the number of automatic Irish qualifiers in the track events is left eight.
It is an experienced team nonetheless: Mark English and Cian McPhillips (800m), Cathal Doyle and Andrew Coscoran (1,500m), Sharlene Mawdsley (400m), Sarah Healy and Sophie O’Sullivan (1,500m) and Sarah Lavin (100m hurdles) are all ensured of their selection, and all bar McPhillips competed at last year’s Paris Olympics.
O’Sullivan however has been recovering from a stress reaction in her leg, and there are some doubts about her race fitness.
Fionnuala McCormack, Hiko Tonosa and Peter Lynch were already preselected for the marathon in Tokyo, and both the mixed 4x400m and women’s 4x400m relay squads earned their automatic qualifying spots at the World Athletics Relays in Guangzhou, China at the start of May.
For athletes without the automatic qualifying standard, Tokyo qualification can still be made via the athlete quota for each event; after the automatic qualifiers are known, the remaining quota athletes are decided by their current World Athletics ranking in the Road to Tokyo lists in that same event.
The six Irish athletes within their event quota when the Road to Tokyo rankings closed on Sunday night were Kate O’Connor (heptathlon), Nicola Tuthill (hammer), Brian Fay (5,000m), Eric Favors (shot put), David Kenny (20km walk) and Oisin Lane (35km walk). Each of them also holds the B Tokyo standard set by Athletics Ireland.
While Coscoran was also inside the qualifying quota for the 5,000m, Darragh McElhinney was sitting just one place short – 43rd of the 42-athlete quota – meaning he’ll need one athlete ahead of him to drop out, a likely scenario over the coming days.
Adeleke had qualified individually in both the 200m and 400m, her absence opening another spot in the relay squads. Irish 400m champions Sophie Becker and Jack Raftery are first in line for selection, Becker likely to race both the mixed and women’s 4x400m relay, with Raftery the first-choice man in the mixed event. Chris O’Donnell, who finished second in the national championships, is also set to make the mixed relay squad.
At the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, Athletics Ireland named a team of 24 athletes. Adeleke finished fourth in the 400m, and Ciara Mageean also finished fourth in the 1,500m, the Down athlete currently undergoing treatment for cancer, which she announced in early July.
The women’s 4x400m relay, without Adeleke, also finished eighth in the final in Budapest. The championships in Tokyo run from September 13th to 21st, with RTÉ providing live coverage of the event for the first time since 1999.
AloJapan.com