Ireland’s chances of winning medals at the next Olympic Games could increase substantially next month if the International Olympic Committee votes to introduce a new ‘mixed relay’ in modern pentathlon.

Olympic medals have always been decided by milliseconds and fingernails, but it was Dave Brailsford who introduced the world to the concept of ‘marginal gains’.

In the middle of his hardest sessions, right when the pain gets close to intolerable, Arthur Lanigan-O’Keeffe imagines a very specific scenario.