Mark Carroll was yesterday compensated for his disappointment in having to withdraw from the Atlanta Olympic Games, with a place in the squad to compete in the European championships, starting in Budapest next Tuesday.
Carroll gets in despite the fact that he didn't meet the stipulation for selection by missing both the European Cup and national championship meetings at Santry.
His absence from the national championships was attributed to 'flu, but a timely return to domestic competition, when he competed for Leevale in the finals of the Mazda National League championships, went a considerable way towards rehabilitation.
Even then, however, it seems that some of the selectors were not wholly convinced and the discussion over his nomination was one of the reasons why the announcement of the team was deferred until yesterday.
The selection of Nick Sweeney, the national discus record holder who has so often been an automatic choice in the squad, was also in doubt for some time. Unlike Carroll, Sweeney took part in the European meeting but was detained in Sweden with a shoulder injury at the time of the national championships.
Ultimately, the decision to include the two athletes, both well versed in the demands of top class competition, will be seen as the right one but the agonising which preceded their nominations is, perhaps, indicative of a new, more critical approach by the selectors.
There is, too, some evidence of a toughening up in the manner in which qualification standards for major championships are achieved. From next year onwards, an amended set of criteria will be introduced by the IAAF in this area and it will no longer be possible for athletes to qualify solely on performances recorded in collegiate competition.
Apart from Sonia O'Sullivan, who has never run a competitive 10,000m races on the track, all of the 23 athletes named in the squad for Budapest have attained qualifying standards. More than that, they were recorded this year, with the exception of Una English, who gets into the 5000m on the basis of her performances in 1997. Yet, given the quality of her run in the worst of the weather during the recent championship meeting, she is richly deserving of recognition.
O'Sullivan, who makes her last appearance before the championships at Zurich tomorrow, requested a nomination for the 10,000m.
The race will be staged as a final on Wednesday evening, giving the Cobh athlete a break of 36 hours before she returns to the track for the heats of the 5000m championship on Friday morning.
With Catherina McKiernan declining an invitation to compete in the marathon in Budapest, Susan Smith will join O'Sullivan in leading the women's team in which Karen Shinkins, Sinead Delahunty and Valerie Vaughan will also command interest.
Predictably, the men's team features the first major championship appearance of James McIlroy, the 21-year-old Larne runner whose progression in the 800 metres rankings has been quite the most encouraging aspect of the season to date.
From a situation in which he can have had only modest ambitions of making the squad, McIlroy suddenly emerged as a serious contender when returning career best figures of 1 mn 45.32 secs last month.
He will be joined in the 800m by the two UCD men, James Nolan and David Matthews. Out for three months because of injury, Matthews was only touched off by his clubmate at the end of a memorable championship final and has since confirmed his recovery by achieving the qualifying standard.
Like Matthews, Niall Bruton has experienced a difficult season, only making the qualifying standard for the 1500m with weeks to spare. He now teams up with Mark Carroll, however, in the hope of rediscovering the spark which made him a valuable member of the squad.
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