Athletics Ireland raise the bar for marathon runners to qualify for Korea

ATHLETICS:ATHLETICS IRELAND (AI) have confirmed the qualifying standards for the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, next August, which unlike some recent championships exactly mirror the standards laid down by the IAAF, with one exception – the marathon.

In other years, including the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, AI toughened the qualifying in certain cases, particularly the distance running events and race walks. For Daegu, however, qualification for all the track and field events will be based on the same criteria as the IAAF, mainly because the IAAF have themselves toughened up several standards compared to previous championships.

Yet the marathon, somewhat puzzlingly, remains the exception: the IAAF standard is sub-2:17 for men and sub-2:43 for women (there is no B-standard in the marathon), whereas AI require the men to run under 2:16 and the women under 2:38.

Considering no Irish man broke 2:20 in 2010 (Joe McAlister was fastest with his 2:21.05), it’s hard to see how there’ll be any Irish qualifiers for Daegu.

“In all honesty, 2:17 and 2:43 are still pretty poor times for the marathon,” said Patsy McGonagle, Irish team manager both for Daegu and for next year’s London Olympics. “We also know conditions in Daegu will be very tough for marathon running.

“But what we are trying to prioritise here is qualifying Irish marathon runners for London in 2012. We’re working with the Olympic Council on this and also the Dublin marathon mission. The suggestion is the standards for London will be 2:17 and 2:43 respectively, and that we will also go with that.”

The full list of qualifying standards for London are set for release in April, and should also mirror the qualifying standards for the World Championship in Daegu, which take place from August 27th to September 4th.

But not only did the IAAF make the qualifying standards for Daegu more difficult, they also tightened up the qualifying period – which for most events in effect requires athletes to qualify this summer, rather than carrying over qualifying marks from last season, as has been the case for previous World Championships.

Among the events where the qualification bar has been raised is the men’s 1,500 metres, where the A-standard is now 3:35.00 compared to 3:36.20 for Berlin, and the men’s 10,000 metres, where the A-standard is a seriously quick 27:40, compared to 27:47 in 2009.

The men and women’s 100 metres A-standards are also tougher, at 10.18 and 11.29 respectively, from 10.21 and 11.30.

The qualifying criteria for London, however, should allow athletes to carry over times from this summer. In other words, the qualification period will begin sometime around late April or early May – meaning athletes chasing qualifying times for Daegu will have the additional carrot of potential Olympic selection.

The issue of whether the Olympic Council of Ireland will accept B-standards for London has yet to be decided (they eventually relented and accepted B-standards for Beijing), but in the meantime AI have agreed that one B-standard athlete per event can be sent to Daegu, provided no more than two athletes have the A-standard in the same event.