Barr eyes final slot: ‘I feel if I can get it right, it’s there’

Barr will settle into his blocks at the Olympic Stadium in Munich at 10.25am Irish time this morning and the 30-year-old knows he needs to get things right to advance to Friday night’s European final.

GOING FOR GLORY: Thomas Barr produced a slick display in the heats yesterday. ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy

By now, Thomas Barr knows the drill: fast start, coast down the back straight, clicking off his rehearsed stride pattern, clean and crisp over each barrier, then attack the final bend and empty himself down the home straight.

Sometimes it goes to plan, just as it did at the 2016 Olympics and the 2018 Europeans. Sometimes it goes awry, just as it did at last year’s Tokyo Olympics and at this year’s World Championships, small errors on the final bends compounding into big losses in time and, ultimately, denying him a place in the final.