Team Ireland has officially selected seven athletes to compete across the Marathon and 50km Race Walk events in Sapporo at the Olympics.
A team of five marathon runners and two race walkers will compete across four days in Sapporo from August 5th to 8th.
In the Marathon, Fionnuala McCormack is heading into her fourth Olympic Games and will be joined by Aoife Cooke in the Women’s Marathon.
Paul Pollock, Kevin Seaward and Stephen Scullion will compete in the Men’s Marathon.
Brendan Boyce is approaching his third Games, and was the first Irish athlete across all sports to achieve an Olympic qualification time.
Boyce will compete in the Men’s 50km Race Walk alongside Rio Olympian Alex Wright.
These events were originally scheduled to take place in Tokyo but were moved to the more northern city of Sapporo where the temperatures were considered more suited to endurance events.
Sapporo additionally holds a special place in Olympic history, having hosted the Winter Olympics in 1972.
This is the first of two Team Ireland Tokyo announcements for athletics, with the second one scheduled for early July, and which will name the track and field athletes who will be selected, as well as athletes in the 20km Race Walk.
Athletics Ireland Performance Director Paul McNamara said "This has been a unique, protracted and challenging qualifying campaign for these athletes with postponement, change of venue, limited qualifying opportunities, and the vagaries of the new qualification system, but these athletes have risen to the many challenges and now are primed to put in their very best performance on the greatest of stages."
TEAM IRELAND TOKYO ATHLETICS ANNOUNCEMENT:
Athletics Marathon Men:
Paul Pollock (Rio Olympian)
Stephen Scullion
Kevin Seaward (Rio Olympian)
Athletics Marathon Women:
Aoife Cooke
Fionnuala McCormack (Beijing, London, Rio Olympian)
Athletics Men’s 50km Race Walk:
Brendan Boyce (London, Rio Olympian)
Alex Wright (Rio Olympian)
