A Season of Nightmares - A Season of Dreams

special to Irish Runner.com by Eoghan Young-Murphy.

The onset of the cold winter evenings and inclement weather conditions signals the end of what has been a turbulent summer season for Irish track and field athletes in Major Championships. The dismal performances of our elite at the World Championships in Paris, the marquee event of the season, have been laced with a period of unprecedented success for youngsters at underage competitions.

The inept displays from the vast majority of our athletes at last year's Athens Olympics ensured they were subjected to intense levels of criticism. Of course, this was entirely justified; unprecedented money was invested in them but they fell considerably short of even fulfilling their potential.

At first glance, it seems that little has changed: no-one even made a final at the Paris spectacle. It was harrowing to sit and watch one Irish runner after another either fail to finish, be disqualified, or simply prop up the field. You wondered what happened the halcyon days of Sonia and Carroll and Co.

Yet considered scrutiny of the list of those marked absent paints a rosier picture. Never before has this country had such an unfortunate run of injuries. Our two newly crowned European Indoor Champions, Alistair Cragg and David Gillick, spearheaded a platoon which also included high jump star Adrian O'Dwyer and former World 20km walk silver medallist Gillian O'Sullivan.

If any country were devoid of such a myriad of stars, they would experience a disaster of equal measure. Unlike after last year's Olympics, the postmortem into the failings of the team was unjustifiably scornful.

The unremitting hard articles written by some journalists were completely off the mark; one even suggested that we should not send a team to future major championships. Another encouraged budding stars to withdraw from the sport and channel their energy into GAA and its ilk.

It was also intriguing to see that many newspapers designated scant coverage to the prolific Irish team which landed five medals at the World University Champions in Turkey. And the remarkable exploits of Colin Costello and Danny Darcy, who won gold and silver respectively at the European Junior Championships metric-mile, also attracted very little fanfare. As did the medal showings of the quartet - Eoin Healy, David McCarthy, Ciaran O'Lionaird and Amy Foster - at the European Youth Olympics.

All in all, it has been a turbulent period for the sport here. But maybe its time the spotlight be taken off the failings and redirected towards those who excelled.