No luck for the Irish on day two of the World Athletics Championships in Beijing, with both Mark English and Thomas Barr missing out on a place in the final in their respective events.
English only made the 800 semi-finals as one of the fastest losers, and the task of making the final proved every bit a challenging as expected. With only the top two making the final - plus the two fastest losers - it was always going to be tough.
English ran a largely cautious race, and although he finished strong, appearing to close on one of the qualifying places into the homestretch, could only manage fifth in 1:45.55. Victory went to one of the gold medal favourites Amel Tuka from Bosnia, who looked very comfortable with his time of 1:44.84. English ended up 11 fastest of the three semi-finals, but only the leading eight advanced.
Earlier, Thomas Barr also fell short of him ambition of becoming the first Irishman to reach the final of the 400m hurdles, finishing fourth in his semi-final, clocking 48.71 seconds.
Drawn in the outside lane, and thereby relying largely on instinct when judging his pace against the other runners, Barr also needed to finish in the top two to be sure of qualifying.
Barr’s time of 48.71 wasn’t far off his Irish record of 48.65, but it wasn’t enough to see him through as one of the two fastest losers either. The Kenyan Boniface Tumuti took the win in a personal best of 48.29 seconds, ahead of the American Kerron Clement (48.50), with Thomas Chalyy from Russia taking third ahead of Barr in 48.69
The fastest qualifier was Denis Kudryavstev from Russia, who won the second semi-final in a personal best of 48.23 seconds.
Out on the roads around Beijing, Alex Wright’s appearance in the 20km walk ended in disappointment after he was disqualified from the 20km walk.
The 25-year-old, who competed for the UK in the 2013 World Championships in Russia, was penalised three times for losing contact with the ground and was pulled from the race after 50 minutes. Wright, a training partner of Rob Heffernan, will also go in the longer 50km race next Saturday.
The gold medal there went to Spain's Miguel Angel Lopez who finished in 1 hour, 19 minutes and 14 seconds, 15 seconds clear of home favourite Wang Zhen.
