Do some of the big guns skip this or would they be expected to compete in national championships? Does it have any impact on selection for major championships?
Most are there apart from the US based athletes I think. Even though Sharlene ran over 200m outdoors last season she’s the reigning 200m champion and she has already qualified for the European indoors in 2 weeks for 400m.
Olatunde, Nadia Power, Andrew Coscoran and Sarah Lavin are all running who’ve all represented in major championships along with the 400m crew of Healy, Becker and Jack Raftery. It’s a decent standard.
Your clubmate just won the 200m in a huge PB
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I was talking to the bould Ronnie Long recently and he was saying that there’s a quiet revolution in Irish athletics.
He said that only a few years ago the women’s 200 & 400 were straight finals at the nationals as there were only 8 athletes at the standard. Of late they’ve had 7 heats in each to whittle them down. Good progress.
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Covid bringing everyone home and forcing top athletes to train in Ireland has done wonders for the standard of it.
Yep. Interestingly enough, he mentioned something similar. Particularly the load that’s imposed on the likes of Rhadisat running so many (too many, according to him) races on the US college circuit.
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There’s a great article in the Examiner during the week about Jack Raftery. He’s 6’7" in height and was running 1500m. He switched to 400m to try make a mixed relay team for the Euros last year and realised he was actually a fairly good 400m runner. He’ll go close to winning the 400m national title this weekend and he couldn’t be any further from the typical indoor 400m runner.
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I’ve never seen her Insta but another big one for our parish !
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Waiting lists to get into lots of athletics clubs. There’s a generation growing up whose first or default sport isn’t GAA. Huge efforts over last decade by Athletics Ireland to coach coaches and improve standard of coaching. That’s moved now on to field events. expect to see improvements there over next five years albeit they are incredibly technical and difficult to coach
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Fintan is unreal at 800m
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I’d say he has a massive VO2 max
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The pride of Wexford and Raheny wins another national title powering away from Phil Healy in the home stretch
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Israel Olatunde smashes the Irish record in the 60m and then half injured himself in the celebrations 
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UCD
UCD
UCD!
Smashed his PB earlier and set a CR for the 400m. That mixed 4x400m is ripe for picking for us if other countries continue to see it as 2nd grade.
It’s like 7s rugby, you could probably win it if you want but it’s almost embarrassing to take it serious
I’d think the opposite. It gives a number of athletes who likely wouldn’t have a chance of progressing beyond heats the experience of getting a few races or a final.
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That’s the 12 fastest 400m of all time
Of
All
Time
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My word
That’s just ridiculous