ATHLETICS: IF THERE was some consolation for an otherwise despondent Irish team leaving Helsinki yesterday it's that the women's 4x400 metre relay can start booking their flights to London.
It won’t be officially ratified until later today, but they’ve held on to their top-16 world ranking which decides which countries get Olympic relay berths – and means Ireland can add five more athletes to the list of 18 already qualified for London with A-standards.
With Joanne Cuddihy going in the individual 400 metres, the only thing left undecided now is the five names that will join her for the relay: Claire Bergin, Marian Heffernan and Michelle Carey joined Cuddihy to make up the quartet for these European Championships (and ended up disqualified, for a lane infringement), although there’s no guarantee they’ll be the same four that will run in London.
As for the two additional athletes that can be selected, Jessie Barr has almost certainly put her name on the list after making the 400m hurdles final in Helsinki, breaking 56 seconds for the first time when running 55.93 (which even without the 10 hurdles in the way makes her a strong contender). Joanna Mill and Catriona Cuddihy, younger sister of Joanne, are other contenders although there will be disappointment for someone.
Olympic relay qualification is decided on the aggregate of the country’s two best times since June 2011, and for the Irish women those were the 3:27.48 they ran at the World Championships in Daegu last summer, and the 3:30.61 from the 2011 European Cup a few weeks previous – for an aggregate of 6:58.09.
That had left them ranked 12 of the 16, but they’ve actually ended up 13th, as France, who ran 3:25.49 to win the silver medal in Helsinki on Sunday, now have an aggregate time that has jumped them from 14th to 12th. The deadline for relay qualifying times was yesterday, July 2nd, with the IAAF set to officially announce the 16 countries for London, in all four relays, today.
“We were always confident, behind the scenes, that we’d be okay,” says Irish Athletics team manager Patsy McGonagle. “As for any more individual athletes qualifying for A-standards, before next Sunday’s deadline, that doesn’t look likely now, but I do think that having 23 athletes overall is as much if not more than we’d been targeting, and we’d be very happy with that.”
The overall performance of the 26 Irish athletes sent to these European Championships is a different matter: producing only four finalists fell below expectations, and even if Fionnuala Britton couldn’t have offered any more in her brave fourth-place finish in the 10,000 metres, Ireland ended up ranked 26th of the 35 countries that “placed” athletes in the top-eight – having ranked 17th in Barcelona two years ago. Half of the 50 competing nations also medalled, while Ireland was left empty handed there.
“Personally, for Fionnuala, it was disappointing, only because she felt herself she was good enough for a medal,” said McGonagle. “It was a great effort, but just didn’t happen on the day, the worst place to finish.
“So of course you would have to describe the championships as mixed. We’d a good start, then a couple of bad days, with one disqualification after another. I would make the point that we did bring along a lot of developing athletes, because athletes have to be given the opportunity to develop. Sometimes they do get kicked around first time out, but they have to be put into this environment to experience that.
“And the nature of these championships this year meant that seven or eight of our very top athletes weren’t here. That’s not making excuses, and we would be disappointed with some of the end results, yes.”
There was a slightly disappointing feel to Helsinki as a whole, and while there were some world-class performances by a number of gold medallists, the decision to go biennial and stage the championships every two years instead of every four has unquestionably removed some of the prestige. Whether or not that can be restored in Zurich in 2014 remains to be seen.
“Of all the European Championships I’ve been to these have certainly been the most underwhelming,” added McGonagle, “and that’s because the big elephant in the room here is the London Olympics.
“All athletes look at their season and try to peak for the major championship, and the major championship this summer is in London, simple as that.”
So, with the pressure now off women’s relay team, it seems Ireland will have a total of 65 competitors bound for London later this month – not a record high, but with a record number of 14 sports represented. Athletes still have until next Sunday to qualify, but for all the other sports, the flights are already booked.
The Olympic Council of Ireland will stage the official team announcement in Dublin tomorrow – but in the meantime the 65 qualifying spots are made up by athletics (23), badminton (2), boxing (6), canoeing (3), cycling (4), equestrian (8), gymnastics (1), judo (1), modern pentathlon (1), rowing (1), sailing (8), shooting (1), swimming (4), triathlon (2).
