Molly Scott

The Bislett Games/Oslo Diamond League on Thursday evening (12th June) will get the weekend off to an early start, and there's Irish interest both there and at the Stockholm Diamond League on Sunday.

There are plenty of other meetings to look forward to across the weekend, including the NCAA Div I finals, which started in Eugene, Oregon on Wednesday.

Diamond League

Rhasidat Adeleke will run her first individual 400m of the season in Oslo on Thursday, while Mark English will hope to continue the form that has seen him twice break his own national 800m record in recent weeks. The event will be televised live on Virgin Media 2 from 7-9pm on Thursday evening. Rhasidat will take to lane 6 at 7.04pm, while Mark will follow at 7.19pm.

Rhadisat will also compete over 400m at the Stockholm Diamond League on Sunday. The event will again be shown live on Virgin Media 2, from 5-7pm. Rhasidat’s race is due off at 6pm.

NCAA Championships

Seven Irish athletes qualified for the NCAA Division I Championships – five in individual events and two as part of 4x100m relay teams. Seán Mockler (Hammer) and Shane Brosnan (10,000m) competed on Wednesday finishing 21st and 23rd respectively. Diarmuid O’Connnor also got his Decathlon underway, finishing day 1 in 13th position.

Thursday will be a busy day for the Irish with Diarmuid competing in day 2 of the decathlon, Sophie O’Sullivan (1500m), Maeve O’Neill (800m), Lucy-May Sleeman (4x100m) and Lauren Roy (4x100m) all in semi-final action. Those who qualify will compete in finals on Saturday.

Domestic Action

There are strong fields entered for the Belfast BMC on Saturday. The women’s 800m is looking particularly strong with Emma Moore, Greta Streimikyte, Ellie Hartnett and Alex O'Neill among the entries. Cara Laverty will face in-form steeplechasers Niamh Kearner and Roisin Treacy, among others, in the 1500m, Stephen Scullion, Amy Greene and Grace Richardson are among the entries for the 3000m races. The event will conclude with the men’s mile where Callum Morgan, Oisín Ó Gailín, Cathal O'Reilly, Lughaidh Mallon and Nick Griggs are all listed.

Robert McDonnell, David Bosch and Marcus Lawler are all entered in the 200m at the 5th Dublin Graded Meeting of the year.  Others set to compete include Conor Callinan in the Pole Vault and Michael Healy (Discus Throw),

Continental Tour Bronze and Challenger meetings

A number of Irish athletes will be seeking personal bests, world ranking points and maybe even qualification standards as they compete around Europe this weekend.

Callum Baird (400m), Sean Donoghue (1500m), Jodie McCann (1500m), Seán Tobin (5000m), Kate Doherty (100m Hurdles), and Sommer Lecky (High Jump) are all on the startlist for Meeting of Braga in Portugal. This is a Continental Tour Bronze meeting.

Molly Scott (100m, 100m Hurdles), Ciara Neville (100m, 200m) and Saragh Buggy (Triple Jump) are all entered for the EAP Malta International.

Deirdre Murray (400m Hurdles), Oisin Lynch (800m), Louis O'Loughlin (800m), Robert Hewison (800m) and Ava O’Connor (1500m) are among those competing at the International Athletics Meeting of Nivelles in Belgium.

Cillian Kirwan (800m) and Cormac Dalton (5000m) will head to Track Night Vienna in search of fast times on Saturday.

Ronan McMahon-Staggs (1500m) is on the startlist of Portland Track Festival in the USA.

Other meetings

European 10,000m Cup winner Efrem Gidey is currently outside the quota spots for the World Championships. He is entered for the British Championships in Birmingham on Saturday where he’ll likely need to run faster than ever before to improve his Tokyo status. Jack O'Leary, Niall Murphy, Emily Haggard-Kearney and Emma McEvoy are also on the startlist.

The event is being run as part of the University of Birmingham Track and Field Festival, where Anna McCauley is also due to compete in the Heptathlon.

Next week's action will include Continental Tour action in Turku where Sarah Lavin will race the 100m hurdles, and both Andrew Coscoran and Cathal Doyle will race the 1500m; the UCD Athletics Meeting, and the Paris Diamond League where Sarah Healy is due to race the 1500m.

In case you need any reminders, the last time Coscoran and Doyle raced each other at either 1500m or the mile was that epic battle at the Morton Games in 2022.

This weekend is bookended by a Diamond League meet in Rome on Friday and a Continental Tour Gold meeting in Hengelo on Monday, both featuring Irish athletes.

Between those two is a World Race Walking Tour Gold event in Spain, a Leinster Championship with some very strong fields; a busy British Milers Club meeting in Birmingham for the middle distance athletes; distance athletes racing 5000m in Paris; lots of 400m guys and girls in Belgium, and lots more besides.

Rome Diamond League: 1500m starts for Healy and Doyle

After her fabulous 3000m run in Rabat last month, Sarah Healy will be racing her first 1500m of the season at the Rome Diamond League on Friday evening. Healy is in the shape of her life, and it’ll be interesting to see how close she can get to Ciara Mageean’s national record in the coming weeks.

Doyle finished eighth, and was just outside his personal best from the Olympic Games in Paris last year, when he made his Diamond League debut in Rabat, and he’s been rewarded with another start in Rome. While a spot in Tokyo is almost assured given his healthy Road to Tokyo ranking score, the 3:33.00 qualification standard, just 0.15 faster than he’s ever run before, must surely be on his mind.

The Rome Diamond League will be shown live on Virgin Media 3 from 8-10pm on Friday night. The Men’s 1500m is due off at 8:16pm, while the women’s race is at 9:49pm.

Continental Tour Gold comes to Hengelo

After breaking his own Irish 800m record and taking the win at the last European-based Continental Tour Gold meeting a week ago, Mark English is entered for the FBK Games in Hengelo on Monday.

Paralympic medalist Orla Comerford is also due to race in the para-athletics 100m.

All Continental Tour Gold meetings can be viewed in Ireland via the World Athletics platform.

World Racewalking Tour Gold

David Kenny finished 11th in the 20km walk at the recent European Racewalking Team Championships. His time there was his second fastest ever, and he'll be hoping to go close to his 2022 PB of 1:19:44 when he takes to the streets of La Coruna on Saturday.

Matthew Glennon and Ciara Wilson-Bowen are entered for 10km races which are run alongside the highly competitive 20km events.

Continental Tour bronze and challenger meetings and other events abroad

Darragh McElhinney, Oisín Ó Gailín (5000m), Emma McEvoy, Danielle Donegan, Fiona Everard and Aoife O'Cuill are all on the startlist for the FAST5000, a series of track 5000m races in Fance on Saturday.

Several Irish athletes are entered for the British Milers Club meeting at University of Birmingham on Saturday evening, including Roisin Flanagan in the 1500m, and seven Irish athletes in the women’s 3000m steeplechase. Many athletes will be seaking European U20 and U23 qualification standards.

Victoria Amiadamen will race the 400m hurdles at the Meeting International de Limoges in France on Saturday, while Margaret Hayden is on the startlist at a hammer meeting in Germany on Sunday.

The FC Putbos Memorial Buyle in Oordegem (Belgium) has several Irish sprinters on the startlist.

Leinster Senior, U20 and Masters Championships

There is a bumper entry for the Leinster Championships, which will be held at SETU Carlow on Saturday and Sunday. While not all those on the entries will compete, there should still be a competitive men's 100m, where Sean Aigboboh, Paul Costelloe, Max O'Reilly, Michael Farrelly and Marcus Lawler are among the entries and the men's discus where the top three athletes in the country (Eoin Sheridan, Michael Healy and Padrig Hore) are all entered. Other standout athletes listed include Nichola Tuthill, Molly Scott, Saragh Buggy and Sarah Leahy.

Also...

We have listed several other Continental Tour meetings on our calendar page, most of which have livestreams, and we are awaiting some startlists for events on Sunday. 

And don't expect next week to look any quieter. Rhadisat Adeleke will race the 400m at the Oslo Diamond League on Wednesday, seven Irish athletes will compete at the NCAA Div 1 Nationals, and Cillín Greene, Nicola Tuthill and Ava O'Connor will compete in Finland, all before we get anywhere near a weekend.

There’s no doubt but that Irish relay running is on the rise. In Paris last summer, the women’s 4x400m team came ever so close to what, just a few years ago, felt unimaginable: an Olympic relay medal.

But the current success didn’t happen overnight. The current Irish relay story is the blossoming of seeds that were planted in the unlikeliest of places. Two races in particular spring to mind.

And then there’s been the success. The silverware, the record-smashing runs, the beginning of what feels like something that will provide further fruit in future years.

These are five of our favourite relay races with Irish interest from the past decade.

From the Depths of Hell

Women’s 4x400m, IUAA Intervarsity Championships, 2016

This race had it all.

Three future Olympians (Phil Healy, Louise Shanahan, Michelle Finn), plus other future national medallists at various distances, including Ellie Hartnett and Jenna Bromell.

Athletes who had competed in multiple disciplines over the two days of the championships.

Those who had been coerced into running one more lap of the Morton Stadium track. And those who were there very much by choice.

A breakout run.

A finish for the ages.

And the soon-to-go-viral commentary to match.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVhjAXEyjMI

Rare World U20 medal

Women’s 4x100m relay, World U20 Championships, Tampere, 2018

Irish medals at World U20 Championships are a rare thing. In fact, when the women’s 4x100m relay team took the starting line at the 2018 event in Tampere, Finland, generations of Irish athletes had between them accumulated just two.

Therefore, a silver medal was a pretty big deal for the quartet of Molly Scott, Gina Akpe-Moses, Ciara Neville and Patience Jumbo-Gula who ran a national U20 record that day, the reserves (Rhasidat Adeleke, who’d raced in the heats, and Lauren Roy), the Irish team, and a nation of aspiring relay runners.

For some of that squad, Adeleke in particular, their athletics story was only just beginning. Others, like Roy, have taken till 2025 to blossom. Jumbo-Gula, has since retired, while Scott, Akpe-Moses and Neville, have learned just how difficult turning junior talent into senior success can be.

But no matter their story, this is a moment in time of which they should all be proud.

Watch the race here!

Just the Beginning

Mixed 4x400m, World Relays, Nassau, May 2024

Having secured Olympic qualification for both in the qualification rounds, the tight schedule and restrictions around the use of reserves meant that Ireland prioritized the mixed 4x400m over the women’s 4x400m at last summer’s World Relays.

Still a relatively new event, it’s not surprising that the Irish quartet of Cillín Greene, Rhasidat Adeleke, Thomas Barr and Sharlene Mawdsley set national records in both the qualifying rounds (3:12.50) and the final (3:11.53).

Some of this quartet were involved when mixed relay made the final of both the Olympics in 2021 and the World Championships in 2022, but the addition of Rhasidat Adeleke gave them their first serious chance of a medal. The team duly delivered, as they finished a close third behind the USA and the Netherlands.

Most of Ireland may well have been sleeping when the quartet won their bronze medals, but the 48.45 split from Adeleke made the world sit up and take notice.

Watch the conclusion of the race here!

The full race can be watched in Ireland via Eurovision Sport coverage (mixed relay is 2hrs 46 mins into the day two coverage).

Goosebump Moments in Rome

Mixed 4x400m relay, European Championships, Rome, June 2024

The World Relays, it seems, was just a prelude for things to come. With Adeleke, Mawdsley, Barr and Chris O’Donnell all making themselves available to run on the first night in Rome, despite each also having individual hopes for the championships, it was clear that the Irish meant business.

And again they broke the Irish record as they won Ireland’s first European gold medal since 1998. Their time, 3:09.92, was just over a second outside the then World record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-lV4hErGUQ

Ever so close

Women’s 4x400m relay, Olympic Games, Paris, August 2024

Sophie Becker. Rhasidat Adeleke. Phil Healy. Sharlene Mawdsley. Four athletes having the collective run of their lives. A national record of 3:19.90.

Ultimately short of the sport’s biggest prize. But only just. A mere 0.18 of a second between them and a medal.

We may never see an Irish relay run like this again.

But you can’t help but suspect that these four have other ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pf1Ap5Cl0Mg