Mark English breaks Irish 800m record and books Olympics ticket

Thomas Barr is another who’s in a race against time to secure sufficient ranking points for the Olympics. 

Ireland’s Mark English. Picture: ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy

Mark English produced a superb run to break his Irish 800m record and finish a close second in 1:44.69 at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland on Tuesday evening, a Continental Tour gold meeting.

The Donegal man carved two hundredths of a second off his previous record of 1:44.71 which he ran in Castellon, Spain three years ago, and crucially dipped under the automatic Olympic qualifying standard of 1:44.70.