Ireland’s marathon runners set for Olympic selection on May 23rd
Ireland's best marathon runners set for Olympic selection
Ireland’s best marathon runners will find out about Olympic selection on Monday May 23rd.
The road to Rio which began for marathon runners as far back as January 2015 when the selection criteria was announced is due to come to a conclusion with the squad announcements subject to ratification by the Olympic Council of Ireland. It will also include the race walking selections and the Half marathon for the European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam in July.
Marathon running has been on an upward curve since the last Olympic cycle with over 15 athletes securing qualifying times. This will lead to some disappointed athletes but High Performance Director Kevin Ankrom sees this as a good problem to have.
“There will always be some disappointed athletes but it’s really positive to have so many athletes achieve qualifying standards as we continue to raise the standard of distance running in the country,” said Ankrom.
The five-person panel will meet on Monday the 23rd of May at 15:00. The panel will select 3 males plus 2 reserves and 3 females plus 2 reserves (6 total athletes to be nominated to the Olympic Council of Ireland). The male/female reserves (4) are nominated in case of injury/illness. Athletes will have 24 hours to make appeals with hearings concluded by the end of the working week May 27th.
Selected athletes and reserves will have until July 11 to continue to show form and fitness. If there is a situation where injury/illness occurs to any of the selected athletes, a reserve athlete can be added to the team to replace the injured athlete up to the 11th of July.
After the 11th of July (and when the full Olympic Games team is selected) no further changes can be made to the marathon entry after this date. For clarity and as an example in this situation if athlete “X” is selected and in June athlete “X” is hurt and still is unable to show form and fitness prior to 11th of July, then a reserve can be replaced/nominated to the Olympic Council of Ireland when the overall team is selected. After the final team has been nominated on the 11th of July there will be no further reserves entered as this will be the Olympic Games deadline for countries to enter a team.
The selection criteria for the Olympic Games marathon is HERE.
After the selections have been made on Monday, Athletics Ireland expects to contact athletes between 17:00 and 20:00 to confirm the 6 selected and 4 reserve (10) athletes. At 20:00 Athletics Ireland will post a media release to our websites with the names of the selected athletes.