When does sport become science fiction? When does running, this most natural and elemental form of exercise, become less about competition and more about experimentation?

The backdrop to last night’s events in Dublin had been a negative one, despite the Stockholm result, focused as it was on past defeats to Austria who have found encounters with Ireland, more often than not, to their liking.

Authorities in Austria were today trying to determine how a bungee jumper in Vienna’s famed Prater park became entangled in his cord and was nearly strangled.