Last year Rhasidat Adeleke turned up for the National Championships to meet supporters even though she couldn't race. Photograph: Bryan Keane/Inpho
Adeleke will feel it’s important for her to be there. It’s also the perfect chance for the public to come out and show their support and appreciation in that truly positive way, cheering her on in her hometown of Dublin, after the three medals she won at the European Championships in Rome earlier this month.Sporting heartache hits hard from missing out on selection to painful defeats
Back then every Irish athlete was also quietly told that the expectation was we would run. There was no get-out clause, unless you were properly sick or injured, only in recent years more of our top athletes have opted to skip the championships. Most finals at our National Championships next weekend are being staged on the Sunday afternoon in a compact programme from 1pm-4pm, and because there are no qualifying marks, any registered senior athlete can enter and potentially line up alongside the biggest stars of the sport.
There are also World Athletics points available for placing that can help to boost an athletes’ rankings, which could mean ending up in a position to be invited to fill the field for Paris when all automatically qualified athletes have declared their intentions.