I think he’s a good guy who made bad decisions perhaps trying to fund his dream.
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TG4 has agreed a new broadcasting deal directly with World Athletics which will bring live international meetings onto Irish television this summer for the first time in over 20 years.
In part after the positive feedback from their live coverage of the World Athletics Indoor Tour Final in Madrid in February, which featured several Irish athletes, TG4 has secured coverage all 13 gold level meetings on the 2021 World Athletics Continental Tour, beginning this Sunday with the USATF Grand Prix from Hayward Field in Eugene, the newly renovated venue for the 2022 World Athletics Championships.
Further meetings will include The Ready Steady Tokyo meeting on May 9th, which will serve as an Olympic test event less than 12 weeks before athletics action gets underway at the Olympics, and also the popular Golden Spike meeting in Ostrava (May 19th), the Adidas Boston Games (May 23rd), the FBK Games in Hengelo (June 6th) and the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku (June 8th).
These meetings also come before the Tokyo Olympics cut-off date of June 29th, and the addition of Irish television has already increased the addition of Irish athletes getting invitations to compete, including Nadia Power (800m), Sarah Lavin (100m hurdles), and Phil Healy (200m) as they look to seal their Tokyo qualification berths before that cut-off.
With the lack of any competitive racing opportunities at home this summer already lamented by Irish athletes, (both the Cork City Sports and the Morton Games in Santry were again postponed until 2022), TG4 coverage of the Continental Tour (Luthchleasaíocht Beo) will also bring live events back on Irish television for the first time since the mid-1990s when, with Sonia O’Sullivan at her peak, RTE showed segments of the then Golden League series.
The World Athletics Continental Tour, where Irishman Pierce O’Callaghan serves as director, was launched in 2020 with the aim of creating a coherent global tour of the best international one-day meets outside of the Diamond League, reaching across every continental area: despite the challenges posed by the global pandemic, seven of the original 10 meetings were held last year.
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What a station 
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A proper station.
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Top level athletics is boring. I’d be interested in following some of them on Strava if they lived near me though.
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I love championship athletics but nobody will have any interest in this TG4 stuff, you’d be as well off watching Eurosport
Sonia going to Nike Project in Oregon as a coach.
Link please.
Sonia O’Sullivan has agreed to take up a new assistant coaching role with a Nike training group based in Portland, Oregon beginning this week, initially in the run up to and including the Tokyo Olympics.
It will see O’Sullivan move from her current home in Melbourne to the US on Thursday, her new role as assistant coach to Pete Julian affording her the chance to work with some of the best distance runners in the world.
Describing the role as “exciting and challenging”, O’Sullivan is also looking forward to the chance to “have some purpose again in big time athletics”.
The move, only confirmed in recent weeks, will also bring O’Sullivan closer to her daughter Sophie, currently in her first year at the University of Washington on scholarship.
“It all evolved quite quickly, and once we started talking, it felt like an instinctual decision for me, something I felt I’d like to do,” says O’Sullivan. “I won’t know what it’s fully about until I’m out there, but to be a part of a fully professional set-up, with a good budget behind them, to get the best possible out of the athletes, is something I’m excited about.
“There are currently 10 athletes in the group, Pete Julian as head coach, they also have a strength and conditioning coach, and his athletes range from 800m up to the marathon, so there’s a lot of diversity there, they don’t all train together, on different days and in different places, so he can’t always be there. And this was the perfect opportunity to go and do something that I’ve not really had a chance to do, ever.
“It’s a way for me to travel again in an Olympic year, even though it’s very nice here in Melbourne with no Covid restrictions, it feels very far from the action. Every year I’ve had events in Ireland that I work with and the main athletics championships to look forward to, this past year has been so unpredictable my normal schedule has been put on hold.
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Is she still with the husband,? Is he still coaching?
Yes and yes.
She’s away a lot but they are still together afaik.
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Easier for him to be banging all around him with her away a lot.
This is a good read, if just for the insights into the absolutely fascinating character of the great Jerry Kiernan.
Travers kid called him granda Jerry
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Sharlene is from my home place. What a day for the parish*
*I’ve never met or spoke to her in my life.
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18 year old Irish girl in America got within 0.01 of Healy’s Irish record last night. Youd imagine only a matter of time before she breaks it.
I sent Jerry home with his tae in his mug in a 10k…
It was about 6 years ago…
I was running a lot quicker then also
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It’s all a matter of time
Presuming the mixed relay is 4x400m?
Great to see the IOC following the Community Games lead