RHASIDAT ADELEKE RETURNS to boost Ireland’s hopes of maintaining their impressive recent relay record by qualifying for the Paris Olympics later this year.
893 athletes from across 54 countries are in the Bahamas this weekend at the World Athletics Relays, at which Olympic qualification will be decided.
Ireland have teams running in the women’s 4x4oom and the mixed 4x4o0m, events at which they have reached global finals in the last 12 months.
The mixed 4x400m team finished eighth in the final of the Tokyo Olympics, and then sixth in the finals of last year’s World Championships in Budapest. The women’s 4x400m team, meanwhile, finished eighth in the final in Budapest and then went better with a fifth-placed finish at the World Indoor Championships in Glasgow earlier this year.
Adeleke was not part of any of those squads, but she is named in both the women’s and mixed squads in the Bahamas. She arrives in outstanding form, having clocked a wind-assisted 10.84 100m in Texas last weekend.
Sharlene Mawdsley, Sophie Becker, Roisin Harrison, and Phil Healey – all of whom ran the Glasgow final earlier this year – have also been selected, and the team is rounded out by Lauren Cadden and Rachel McCann.
Thomas Barr is included in the men’s selection, along with Cillín Greene, Christopher O’Donnell, and Jack Raftery. O’Donnell ran in both the Tokyo and Budapest finals, while Greene competed in the former and Raftery in the latter.
The final selection for each of the Irish teams will be announced later today, at around 2pm Irish time.
There are 14 places in Paris up for grabs in each discipline. The top two in each heat across day one will secure their Olympic qualification, along with progression to the final on day two, where they will compete for prize money and a favourable lane draw in Paris. $40,000 will be awarded to the winners, while the eighth-placed team in the final will take away $2,000.
The remaining teams drop into a repechage to be held on day two, from which the top two teams across three heats will also book an Olympic spot.
The weekend features five relay events in all: the women’s 4x100m and 4x400m, the men’s 4x100m and 4x400m, and a mixed 4x400m, across which the stars of global sprinting will compete, headed up by double world individual champion Noah Lyles.
Lyles added a third world gold in Budapest last year after anchoring the US team to victory in the 4x100m relay. He will be joined this weekend by Olympic 200m silver medallist Kenny Bednarek and in-form Courtney Lindsey, while four women who helped USA to gold in the 4x100m in the Hungarian capital will also be present: Gabby Thomas, Tamari Davis, Tamara Clark and Melissa Jefferson.
Also present are Dutch 400m hurdler Femke Bol, Italy’s Olympic 100m champion Marcell Jacobs and a trio of Bahamian stars in the form of Shaunae Miller-Uibo, Olympic 400m champion Steven Gardiner and world indoor 60m hurdles gold medallist Devynne Charlton.
Bol leads an incredibly strong Dutch women’s 4x400m team also featuring world champions Cathelijn Peeters and Lieke Klaver.
Other big names present include South African 400m world record holder Wayde van Niekerk, reigning world 800m gold medallists Marco Arop of Canada and Mary Moraa of Kenya, and Botswana’s sprint star Letsile Tebogo, a surprise double world medallist from Budapest.
The event will be live streamed on the World Athletics website.
World Athletics Relays – Irish in action (Local Time/Irish Time)
Day One (Saturday 4 May/Sunday 5 May)
- Mixed 4x400m – Heats (19:05/00:05)
- Women’s 4x400m – Heats (21:05/02:05)
Day Two (Sunday 5 May/Monday 6 May)
- Women’s 4x400m – Repechage Round (20:30/01:30)*
- Mixed 4x400m – Repechage Round (21:04/02:04)*
- Mixed 4x400m – Final (21:40/02:40)**
- Women’s 4x400m – Final (22:10/03:10)**
*Subject to not qualifying for the final
**Subject to advancing from the heat
Irish selection
- Rhasidat Adeleke (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Sharlene Mawdsley (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Phil Healy (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Sophie Becker (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Roisin Harrison (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Lauren Cadden (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Rachel McCann (women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m)
- Thomas Barr (mixed 4x400m)
- Cillín Greene (mixed 4x400m)
- Jack Raftery (mixed 4x400m)
- Chris O’Donnell (mixed 4x400m)
With reporting by – © AFP 2024
