Cathal Dennehy: No medals, but plenty of positives for Irish athletics after Tokyo Olympics

Ireland’s David Kenny: On track to be the next great Irish race walker. Picture: INPHO/Morgan Treacy

No medals, no individual finalists, and just one personal best among the lot – it would be easy to look at the performance of the athletics team in Tokyo as a failure but it’d also be lazy, and deeply unfair.

When focusing the lens over how they fared, the best way to start is by rewinding two weeks and asking, with complete honesty, what were the expectations? Many who dip their toes into athletics waters once every four years tend to hold a belief, rooted in nostalgia, that Ireland should be truly competitive at this top tier. The reality? Ireland has won one athletics medal in the last 20 years (Rob Heffernan’s bronze in 2012) and three in the 50 years before that (Sonia O’Sullivan, John Treacy, Ronnie Delany).