Seven Irish athletes have achieved qualification times for the Rio Olympics in 2016 at the stroke of a pen.
The qualifying standards for several events were recently revised upwards.
Ireland now has four men’s marathon runners with a qualification time under their belts, though each country can only send a maximum of three in this event.
Gary Thornton, Thomas Frazer, Sean Hehir and Eoin Callaghan all ran under the revised time of 2:19:00 and now it will be up to Athletics Ireland to decide who to send.
Ciara Everard has now got a qualifying time for the 800 metres thanks to her 2:01.21 from May. Ciaran Mageen also has reached the 1,500 metre mark thanks to her 4:06.09 from September.
The other athlete now eligible for selection thanks to the revised time is Barbara Sanchez in the women’s marathon. She achieved 2:42:43 in Valencia in November, well inside the revised 2:45:00 mark.
Meanwhile, Athletics Ireland confirmed on Monday that the revised qualification process has now been adopted for the Rio Olympic Games.
Under the ‘two way’ qualification scheme athletes can qualify in one of two ways.
One is to achieve the entry standard within the qualification period and the other is to be invited by the IAAF, athletics’ world governing body, as the best ranked athlete at the end of the qualification period to fill the remaining quota places by event.
However, qualification in the 5,000, 10,000 race walks and marathons will be administered by entry standards only and not by invitation.
The updated entry standards will apply to both past and future performances within the qualification windows.
