Ferrybank's Thomas Barr will line out in the World Championships 400m hurdles semi-finals this evening in Eugene Oregon after an impressive run in his heat overnight.
The Waterford Olympian ran a 49.15 to comfortably make the semis despite coming to the event with recent injury worries. An achilles concern has hampered Barr so far this season, but he ran well in the National Championships a couple of weeks ago to pick up his tenth national title over hurdles.
Running in a stacked heat, Barr knew that he couldn't leave anything to chance in his pursuit of qualification.
"Yeah, it's definitely familiar territory coming into a Championships with haphazard preparations. Very very happy to get a big Q. My shape has been pretty good in the past two weeks so we kind of knew that if I could put it together today I should be able to qualify. We had the most stacked heat. It could have been a semi-final out there were 6 out of the top 10 of 15 in the world were in our heat so I knew it was going to be tough to qualify. In some ways, because I was in lane eight I just had to go for it. I couldn't leave it to chance."
The semi-finals will take place just after 2 am on Monday morning.
