Irish athletes preparing for Athens Olympics
Since her appointment she has been putting the pieces in place and, this weekend, the Athens Enhancement plan will be published.
“It is all about putting things in place.
Everything is set up,” she said. “Athletics is unlike other sports in that it is more diverse. Athletes and coaches will have set up their own centres and plans and, where those self-sufficient little corners have been set up, they are working quite well.
“When something is missing we move in to fill the gap, will help somebody to get a major race, and where athletes have an ongoing injury problem we will put a prevention and management programme in place.”
Mark Carroll is one of those who can benefit from the injury management programme. Since last March he has been grounded with what she described as a long and painful injury: “But he is over it now and is training away with the London Marathon as a possible target,” she said. “He is coming back nicely and will be reviewing his programme in a couple of weeks.”
They held a relay team meeting last week and have plans in place to get the 4 x 400m relay team, in particular, to the Olympics. They are currently just outside the top 16 who will go to Athens.
Cathal Lombard has qualified at 5,000m and James Nolan at 1,500m and they are currently training in South Africa. Mark Carroll has qualified in the marathon, Derval O’Rourke, training in San Antonio, has qualified in the 100m hurdles and Paul Brizzell is qualified at 200m.
Gillian O’Sullivan, silver medallist at the world championships in Paris, is all set to lead a strong team of walkers Olive Loughnane has also qualified while Jamie Costin has the standard at 50k and Robert Heffernan, with his injury problems behind him, should post the 20k standard over the coming weeks.
Sonia O’Sullivan is also on the ticket while suitable races for athletes like Gareth Turnbull (1,500m) and Catherina McKiernan (10,000m) are being considered.
Putting a 4x 100m relay squad forward for qualification is also a possibility in the coming weeks.
Most of the qualifiers and many with their sights on qualification were at the presentation day in Dublin recently and the Hon General Secretary of the Olympic Council of Ireland, Dermot Sherlock, said he was overwhelmed with the response.
“Since I became involved with the OCI this was the best single thing that I have experienced,” he said. “Everything was well presented and athletes and federations have never had so much information available.”
His own sport, boxing, is dear to his heart and the Irish boxers travel to Croatia next month for the European championships where all the medallists will gain automatic qualification. After that it is the swings and roundabouts of the qualification tournaments.
“While previously we had 33 countries in Europe seeking qualification this number has now risen to 48 - most of them from the old Eastern Bloc - and we find that they are almost trading passports with boxers shifting from one country to another.”
The selection policy for the world championships in Brussels has yet to be announced but it appears there will be just one men’s team and one women’s team travelling, with the race - either short course or long course - to be decided in both instances.
In the case of junior men and junior women, Athletics Ireland are unlikely to be sending full teams.
Certainly included, however, will be star junior Mark Christie from Mullingar who finished sixth in the European championships and he will travel to Lisbon at the end of the month with a junior squad that also includes Jamie McCarthy from Belgooly. He won the under-20 race in Belfast at the weekend in sensational fashion. Also in the line-up are Joe Sweeney and Andrew Ledwith.
Ireland will have a big representation at the Celtic International in Ayr on the same weekend.
The national inter-club championships at Roscommon Racecourse will be held on February 22.
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