One of the longest standing Irish records in the books has fallen, after the quartet of Michael Farrelly, Bori Akinola, Marcus Lawlor and Israel Olatunde clocked 38.92 seconds in the 4x100m relay at the World Continental Tour Meeting in Geneva.
In finishing in second place, their time improved the previous mark of 39.26 seconds set 25 years ago by John McAdorey, Gary Ryan, Tom Comyns and Paul Brizzel at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, when finishing fourth in their heat.
Farrelly, Akinola, Lawlor and Olatunde combined their youth and experience to break the 39-second barrier for the first time, with the promise of more to come. Last August, Olatunde improved his own Irish 100m record to 10.12 seconds, and this season trained over the winter months in Florida in the same training group of US Olympic champion Noah Lyles.
Akinola beat Olatunde for the first time to claim the Irish indoor 60m title back in February, and at the same meeting in Geneva on Saturday, improved his 100m best to 10.25 seconds, the fourth-fastest ever by an Irish man, when finishing fifth in his heat, into a -0.4 headwind.
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Racing again on Sunday at the Stratford Speed Track meeting in London, the 23-year-old Akinola clocked 10.10 seconds, where the wind reading of +2.9 was over the permitted legal limit of +2.0, although this was still the fastest wind-aided time in the Irish record books, surpassing the 10.11 clocked by Jeremy Phillips in California in 2017, when the wind was +5.0.
