Covid concerns prompt Phil Healy to turn down race offers abroad

The Irish sprint sensation has already qualified for the European Indoors and can choose to stay at home. Others have yet to record the required standard and are opting to chase it around Europe in the midst of a third wave

Phil Healy is among the recipients of the FBD insurance 'Make A Difference' programme, a €50,000 fund set up in conjunction with the Olympic Federation of Ireland which will assist Ireland’s Olympic hopefuls in their preparation for the Tokyo Games. Picture: INPHO/Tommy Dickson

Cork sprinter and Olympic hopeful Phil Healy says that the absence of any elite races here in Ireland is forcing some athletes to seek competitive events abroad and place themselves at greater risk of contracting Covid-19.

As things stand, the European Indoor Championships and Olympic Games are still due to go ahead, the former in Poland in early March, and many Irish athletes still need to secure the required qualifying times for an event due to be held in Torun, three hours northwest of Warsaw.

“You can go abroad, you can get your standard, but you can also pick it (Covid) up at the airport, in the plane, and you could mess up your next few weeks and months afterwards because you hear the horror stories,” said Healy.

“Just because you’re fit and healthy doesn’t mean you’re not going to have the effects of it. It is hard, it is frustrating, and it’s very frustrating for coaches as well because there is nothing definite.”

Healy is fortunate in that she ran the European Indoor standard last year and that makes it easier to turn down offers to run, such as one from a major meet in Ostrava, but even that is done in the knowledge that these absences could stand against her when it comes to lane draws in Poland.

Others, including the hurdler and training partner Molly Scott, who has also taken the decision not to travel abroad right now given the situation with the pandemic, have yet to stamp their tickets to Poland and that makes the absence of activity here at home a major issue.

Athletics coach Feidhlim Kelly has today called on Athletics Ireland to announce a way in which the National Indoors can go ahead given the current restrictions or, if not, then some alternative. He has also called for clarification on quarantine terms and what constitutes elite status.

That last question is a particularly thorny one.

Healy's training base is at Waterford Institute of Technology but she is also availing of the state-of-the-art National Sports Campus facilities in Abbotstown, Dublin, which she believes is of ample size to run off any proposed competition with a field of athletes.

“It would be great to see it. Even when I was at the indoor arena yesterday I see 15 rugby players over in the corner, the boxers are there, we’re there, and you don’t even need… Say it was a 60 metres or a 400, you don’t need many people. 

“Any athlete would take the opportunity to race and if a system was put in place where it was one (field of athletes) in, one out, the facilities at Sport Ireland are massive.

“You don’t have to have everyone warming up in the indoor facility. There’s the Astro pitches, there’s everything. As athletes you see the frustrations but behind it all there’s obviously massive risk for those involved in organising it, officials.

“It would be great to see something go ahead because you see everybody else racing everywhere else.”

- Phil Healy is among the recipients of the FBD insurance 'Make A Difference' programme, a €50,000 fund set up in conjunction with the Olympic Federation of Ireland which will assist Ireland’s Olympic hopefuls in their preparation for the Tokyo Games