Thomas Barr is on the home stretch of preparations for the Tokyo Games.
The delayed Olympics get underway on the 23rd of July after 12 months of potential cancellations, changes to travel restrictions and an all-out chaotic build-up to the world's showpiece sporting event.
The man from Dunmore East has shown great early season form, running his third-best time ever in recent weeks. The diamond league circuit has proven to be the needed proving ground ahead of the flight to Tokyo. Barr says that he's more than happy with his preparations as the clock continues to tick away until the off.
"Like it's all it's all sort of ramping up now. I have two more races in Oslo and Switzerland next week, and I have the national championships in Dublin, this coming weekend. Then I have a couple of days before I fly out on the seventh of July to the holding camp for Team Ireland. It's a month then until the games. It's mad how quickly it's come around."
Concerns are still rife as to whether the games could or should go ahead. Tokyo has only just emerged from a state of emergency this past week, while the city has transitioned to intensive anti-virus measures from June 20 - July 11. Barr is happy that the games are still set go ahead, even though they wont be quite as planned.
"I'm delighted that it is all going ahead. I know that it's going to be a completely different experience to any other Olympics because of the fact that there's going to be so many restrictions and you know, crowd control, and also all the different safety measures because of COVID, but I am just glad that it looks like it is going ahead."
"I've gotten a lot of questions in the last couple of months and weeks about whether or not it's going to go ahead or not, but I think we're on the right track. I am looking forward to getting going"
Ever the calm-natured competitor, Barr is known for taking the big occasion in his stride.
"Sometimes it's like a swan on the surface, they look good, but there's always something going on underneath the surface."
"In general, when I'm in good shape - which I am at the moment - I love my sport, I love running and I love going out and performing to push myself to the limit. So I'm looking forward to hopefully doing that on the biggest sporting stage in the world"
