Irish athletes take to South Africa for the season ahead
A number of Ireland’s leading athletes have taken to South Africa to advance their training for the season ahead.
Thomas Barr and Mark English have gone to Stellenbosch while Ciara Everard is in Potchefstroom.
Stellenbosch is a university town in South Africa's Western Cape province. It's surrounded by the vineyards of the Cape Winelands and the mountainous nature reserves of Jonkershoek and Simonsberg.
Barr, who has a qualifying time for Rio in the 400m hurdles, is joined by his training partner Paul Byrne and all three will be operating from the Coetzenburg Athletics Stadium.
English has also secured the Olympic qualifying time over 800m and he will also hope to be on the 4x400m relay team alongside Barr in Brazil.
Everard who recently qualified for the Rio Olympic Games in the 800m is training in South Africa along with other UCD athletes Richard Owens, University indoor 1500m champion, and new Ad Astra scholarship athlete Alanna Lally. Niall Tuohy is also training at the altitude camp with their coach James Nolan in attendance.
The FNB High Performance Institute of Sport (HPI) is located on the Potchefstroom Campus of the North-West University. Potchefstroom has become the preferred training venue for many international, national and local sport teams and individuals because of the excellent training facilities, the altitude, sports medical and scientific services as well as our hospitality and good weather.
You can read about the Institure a number of years ago HERE