Athletics News:No one said it would be easy, yet no one is likely to endure a tougher Olympic qualification than Martin Fagan, nor be more deserving of it. Early yesterday in the Dubai marathon, Fagan ran two hours, 14 minutes and six seconds - well inside the 2:15 necessary to get him to Beijing next August - to become Ireland's first Olympic qualifier in the distance since 1992.
Fagan also had to endure some suicidal pace-setting, two near fatal crashes into the infamous marathon "wall", and eventually ended up in hospital. All this after last month's problem with US immigration that saw him barred from re-entry after he'd represented Ireland at the European Cross Country, forcing him to abandon his training base in Flagstaff, Arizona.
He wouldn't be denied, however, and his 13th place on the day, making him the 13th Irish athlete to qualify for Beijing, was a brave and determined effort by the 24-year-old from Mullingar.
Yesterday evening he was back at his Dubai hotel, hardly able to walk because of a lower back and hip pain, but already looking forward to the honour of representing Ireland in the Olympic marathon.
"I'd been having a few problems in recent times with my back and hip," he said, "but I never experienced anything like the pain I had at critical points of the race. I just fought on and it was a huge relief to finish inside the Olympic standard.
"I felt the problem coming on first at about 25km (16 miles) and had to stop and do a quick stretch on the side of the road just to try and ease it out. It felt like a stabbing pain running down my back and I stopped to try and ease it and then get going again. I had been running just behind the group ahead of me and feeling fine but then I lost touch and that was disappointing because I was left on my own for a while."
Part of the problem was that up front the leaders were chasing the 2:04.26 world record of Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie, who passed halfway in 61:27 - but eventually paid for that pace and finished in 2:04.53, still the second fastest ever, and earning him €167,000.
Once Fagan was isolated his troubles worsened: "At 35km (22 miles) I was in a lot of pain . . . At the time I was running with a Kenyan and he was able to speak some English and he was able to tell me how the time was going because there were no clocks on the side of the road.
"At that stage the back almost became numb with pain and when I finished it was all a bit of a blur. But it was such a relief and felt like a big weight being lifted from my shoulders after all my experiences over the last several weeks".
On finishing, Fagan lay down to ease the back pain, and with that was whisked off to hospital: "All I wanted was a bit of time to myself to work things out, but the medics were not taking any chances," he explained. "So they took me to hospital but I knew there was nothing they could do. I just needed to relax, to get back on my feet."
It was over two hours after he crossed the line before Fagan got confirmation of his time, and although his selection must still be confirmed by the Olympic Council of Ireland, he is set to become the first Irishman to run in the Olympic marathon since the 1992 Games in Barcelona, when John Treacy Tommy Hughes and Andy Ronan all made it - and Treacy was the best finisher in 51st.
