Westmeath's Oisín set to compete in World Athletics Championships
Ballymore's Oisín Lane will be the first Irish athlete into action as he bids for glory at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.
Lane will compete in the 35km Race Walk Final at 12.00 midnight tonight, Friday, Irish time (8am on Saturday, Japanese time).
It will be possible to see Lane's race on the RTE Player, with coverage starting from 11.55pm tonight.
The road to Tokyo has involved great planning and competing at the highest level for Oisín. The qualifying method meant the Mullingar Harriers athlete had to compete in a number of competitions listed on the World Athletics calendar. Rigid standards including a minimum of three graded and qualified international racewalking judges were a prerequisite for each event to be listed.
An athlete’s time at each event is converted into points. Additional points are earned based on finishing position and the ranking of the event, based on the standards achieved previously by the competing athletes. With other criteria around course specification and measurements, it means all competitions across the world can be evaluated against each other.
Oisín firstly focused on the Irish National 35km championship held in Raheny last December. He achieved a 6th place finish behind Tokyo Olympic Champion Massimo Stano (1st) and Paris Olympic silver medallist Caio Bonfirm (2nd) in a time of 2:37:35.
While achieving valuable ‘Road to Tokyo’ points, he still needed to improve his time over the distance and earn more points to meet world championship selection criteria.
Three weeks of warm weather training followed in January in the Algarve. That set Oisín up for the Spanish national 35km championships in March and the 23-year-old finished 4th in an excellent time of 2:31:53. This was 3 and a half minutes inside the qualifying standard. While he had achieved the qualifying standard, Athletics Ireland policy requires that current form and fitness are proven before selection. Oisín did that in style when finishing 11th and setting a new 20km PB at the World University Games in Germany in July.
Turning his focus to the World championships, Oisín headed to the Swiss Alps for a month of altitude training, and he was notified of his official selection on the Irish team in mid-August.
He took part in a training camp with other elite Irish athletes, amid the heat and humidity of Hong Kong, in preparation for the world championships, before moving on to Tokyo. The challenge of similar conditions awaits in the Olympic Stadium on Saturday morning.
Mullingar Harriers AC has extended best wishes to Oisín as he prepares for his hugely exciting Tokyo adventure.
“We wish Oisín the best as he takes the best in the world. There to support will be father and coach Michael, who has contributed so much work to race walking at both club and national level over the last 25 years since retiring himself from a stellar career of race walking both nationally and internationally,” said the club.
RTÉ will broadcast live coverage of the World Athletics Championships, with coverage scheduled to start at 9.45am tomorrow (Saturday).