Right now, her best is the 3:57.15 she ran to finish runner-up in Paris last month, one of four top-three finishes she secured across the Diamond League season.<\/p>\n
But at the final in Zurich on Thursday, she would love to add a fifth and to edge closer to Ciara Mageean\u2019s Irish record of 3:55.87.<\/p>\n
Conditions are unlikely to comply, with cool weather and heavy rain forecast, but Healy comes into it after a lifetime best over 800m in London last weekend, clocking 2:00.19. Before that she clocked 3:57.95 to finish ninth at the Silesia Diamond League \u2013 her third 3:57 in a row.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was an OK day for me, not amazing, not too bad,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m a little bit disappointed with the place. I just keep running 3:57 at the minute, but the season is going really well so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 24-year-old goes into Thursday evening\u2019s 1500m as the sixth quickest in the field this year and while Kenyan superstar Faith Kipyegon is absent, there is a formidable cast of rivals including Olympic 1500m silver medallist Jess Hull of Australia and Ethiopia\u2019s Birke Haylom, a 3:53 performer at her peak.<\/p>\n
Healy\u2019s mission for next month\u2019s World Championships will be to make the final but to get there, she will need a top-six finish in her semi-final, and this race \u2013 against the same women she\u2019ll face in Tokyo \u2013 will be ideal prep for that final exam. Having won European Indoor gold over 3000m and after finishing a decent sixth at the World Indoors, the outdoor season has so far been a strong one. But now it\u2019s really crunch time.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s the sole Irish competitor in Zurich, where Olympic 200m champion Letsile Tebogo will square off with Olympic 100m champion Noah Lyles in the climactic event of the evening, the men\u2019s 200m, at 8.39pm Irish time, with Healy\u2019s 1500m setting off at 6.40.<\/p>\n
Athletics Ireland has announced a provisional team of 27 athletes for next month\u2019s World Championships in Tokyo, spearheaded by recent indoor medallists Sarah Healy, Kate O\u2019Connor and Mark English.<\/p>\n
With the withdrawal last week of Rhasidat Adeleke, who cited injury as she called a halt to her season, the team has 17 individual athletes, with eight additional members selected for the women\u2019s and mixed 4x400m relay squads along with two non-travelling reserves.<\/p>\n
Eight of the selected athletes achieved the automatic qualification standard, while others secured their place via their world ranking. More names could be officially added in the days ahead, with eight athletes provisionally selected pending potential invites from World Athletics. Those athletes are currently outside their respective event quotas based on their world ranking but could yet earn a place if athletes ahead of them don\u2019t accept their spots in the coming days.<\/p>\n
The most likely of them to earn a place is Darragh McElhinney, who was 43rd on the \u2018Road to Tokyo\u2019 rankings list when the qualification deadline closed this week, just one spot outside the 42-man quota for the 5000m, having come up just shy of the automatic standard of 13:01.00 when clocking 13:02.06 in Belgium recently. Laura Nicholson is five places outside the 56-woman quota in the 1500m, as is Efrem Gidey in the 10,000m, while Sophie Becker is 56th on the rankings list over 400m, with 48 spots available.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 30 years since Ireland won a medal on the track at the World Championships \u2013 Sonia O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s 5000m gold in 1995 \u2013 while their last medal at the event came 12 years ago, Rob Heffernan striking gold in the 50km race walk in Moscow. Ireland secured two fourth-place finishes at the last edition in Budapest through Ciara Mageean in the 1500m and Adeleke in the 400m.<\/p>\n
Kate O\u2019Connor will travel to Tokyo as Ireland\u2019s top-ranked athlete, the Dundalk multi-eventer the only Irish athlete who is ranked in the top 10 in their event. She\u2019s fifth on the world top lists for 2025 via her Irish heptathlon record of 6487 points to win the World University Games title in Germany last month, and while some big names who are set to compete in Tokyo have not yet posted a mark, she looks well placed to be the leading Irish performer and contend for a top-five finish.<\/p>\n
Rising star Conor Kelly, who recently powered to 400m gold at the European U-20 Championships, has been selected for the mixed relay squad, alongside Olympians such as Cill\u00edn Greene, Cliodhna Manning, Sophie Becker, Jack Raftery and Rachel McCann, while Sharlene Mawdsley has secured a spot in the 400m via her world ranking and is likely to also race both the mixed and women\u2019s 4x400m.<\/p>\n
Irish team \u2013 World Championships, Tokyo (13-21 September)<\/p>\n
Sarah Healy (1500m), Sophie O\u2019Sullivan (1500m), Mark English (800m), Sarah Lavin (100m hurdles), Sharlene Mawdsley (400m, mixed 4x400m, women\u2019s 4x400m), Cian McPhillips (800m), Cathal Doyle (1500m), Andrew Coscoran (1500m, 5000m), Kate O\u2019Connor (heptathlon), Nicola Tuthill (hammer throw), Brian Fay (5000m), David Kenny (20km race walk), Oisin Lane (35km race walk), Eric Favors (shot put), Fionnuala McCormack (marathon), Hiko Tonosa (marathon), Peter Lynch (marathon), Sophie Becker (mixed 4x400m, women\u2019s 4x400m), Rachel McCann (mixed 4x400m, women\u2019s 4x400m), Jack Raftery (mixed 4x400m), Conor Kelly (mixed 4x400m), Cill\u00edn Greene (mixed 4x400m), Cliodhna Manning (women\u2019s 4x400m), Michelle Duggan (women\u2019s 4x400m), Jenna Breen (women\u2019s 4x400m), Erin Friel (non-travelling reserve, women\u2019s 4x400m), Ciaran Carthy (non-travelling reserve, mixed 4x400m).<\/p>\n
Provisional selections (pending invitation from World Athletics)<\/p>\n
Efrem Gidey (10,000m), Darragh McElhinney (5000m), Nick Griggs (1500m, 5000m), Laura Nicholson (1500m), Sophie Becker (400m), Jack Raftery (400m), Alex O\u2019Neill (800m), Jenna Bromell (800m).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Right now, her best is the 3:57.15 she ran to finish runner-up in Paris last month, one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[4632,18,19,17,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-27761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-cathal-dennehy","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}