BY KIERAN McCARTHY
TWO of West Cork’s top athletes, Phil Healy and Nicola Tuthill, will soon learn if their efforts to qualify in individual events for the Olympic Games in Paris have been successful.
While Healy, fresh from a silver medal at the European Championships, has already helped the Irish women’s 4x400m team to qualify, the Bandon AC sprinter also hopes to race in the individual women’s 200m at the Olympics but is currently outside the quota.
The athletics qualification window shuts this Sunday, June 30th, but with the National Senior Track and Field Championships taking place this Saturday and Sunday at Morton Stadium, it offers Irish athletes the final opportunity to boost their qualification hopes.
‘At the moment I am just outside the quota for the 200. Hopefully the points I’ll get at the nationals will bump me in but if I don’t, it’s not the end of the world,’ said Healy, whose focus will be on the women’s 200m this weekend.
Kilbrittain hammer thrower Nicola Tuthill, one of the rising stars in Irish athletics and after a top-10 finish at the Europeans, will defend her national title this weekend, and a good showing could book her ticket to Paris, depending on results elsewhere as the rankings are constantly changing. Tuthill is currently inside the cut-off point. The 20-year-old, who came up through the ranks at Bandon AC, is focussed on putting in a strong performance this weekend, and will discover then if that is enough to catapult her into the Olympics in Paris this summer.
