Sarah Lavin and Mark English have progressed to the semi-finals of the women's 100m hurdles and the men's 800m respectively at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
While Lavin qualified with a minimum of fuss, running close to a personal best to finish third in her 100m hurdles heat, English faced an anxious wait after placing fourth in the second of seven 800m heats.
The two-time European bronze medallist ran a season's best time of 1:45.71, putting in a terrific late surge to recover from a damaging tangling of legs with Jamaica's Navasky Anderson in the first leg.
While he was unable to break into the three automatic qualification spots, English's time placed him as the second fastest non-automatic qualifier, wiith three advancing to the qualifiers.
There was still five heats to endure, watching from his perch in the Q-room but no non-qualifier could better English's time, with Poland's Filip Ostrowski replacing Anderson as third fastest loser.
English, who took bronze in Munich last summer, can now look ahead to Thursday's semi-finals.
Kildare's John Fitzsimons bowed out at the first hurdle in the 800m, finishing fifth in a comparatively slow heat in a time of 1:48.20.
The current 800m national champion finished strongly in a brave run but finished two spots outside the qualifying places in a heat won by Kenya's Alex Ngeno Kipngetich.
It was all more straightforward for Lavin.
With the first four in each of the five heats guaranteed to progress, Lavin came home third in a time of 12.69 in the opening heat. That mark was .02 of a second outside her personal best time set at the Citius Altius meeting in Bern earlier this month.
Lavin's semi-final is scheduled for 7.45pm on Wednesday.
Afterwards, The Limerick athlete was quite clear in what it will now take for her to reach the final.
She told RTÉ Sport: "I need to be more clinical about the start; you are against the best girls in the world and only 40 are good enough to come here. Now you are down to the 24; it just keeps dropping and dropping t0 the final eight.
"It will require something special and everything really, really precise in the moment. I think it's going to require something beyond the national record and we know Derval {O'Rourke time of 12.65] is one of the most prolific athletes. It's no mean feat."
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