Dunmore East hurdler Thomas Barr will be back in action at the World Athletics Relays in Poland on the first weekend of May.
The man who brought the nation to their feet in 2016 with his performances in Rio has his sights firmly set on Tokyo and the delayed Olympic Games.
Having been held to Irish soil since last September, Barr is short on quality opposition with the Cork City Sports and Morton Games called off this year due to Covid restrictions.
"The Cork City Sports and Morton games would always have quite a large amount of international guests, and it was just proving too difficult to have athletes coming over. It's so hard to plan on anything at the moment because the rules are changing every second day and every week. So it's difficult for them to plan ahead for that."
"It is disappointing for athletes obviously because they are two really good meets in the country that aren't going to go ahead. So it does mean that except other than the Nationals really any competitions that we want to go to, we need to run competitions to get standards to get race practice. So we will have to travel abroad and, it's a bit of a kind of a catch 22."
"You're not supposed to travel you're not supposed to you know do anything like that but yet to get a competition in you will have to go abroad so it is a little bit frustrating but at the same time, a lot of my season will be spent overseas in any given year anyway."
"I do always like racing at home but I love racing at home in front of a crowd which there wouldn't really have been this year so it is what it is we just have to kind of play the cards that we're dealt and kind of keep moving forward really"
Thomas Barr poses for a portrait at the University of Limerick Sports Arena in Limerick, Ireland on September 10, 2019. // Szymon Lazewski /
Tokyo will present a challenge that some other countries won't - the humidity in Japan is something European athletes won't be overly familiar with, but Barr is comfortable that his preparations in Tokyo will be enough to cross that hurdle.
"In fairness, I remember, we were in Beijing for the World Championships in 2015, and we went to a holding camp in Hong Kong, and I can remember, the humidity was insane - you walk outside, and you just immediately start sweating before you've even done anything."
"I have raced in those climates before, but I'd be going out a couple of weeks before beforehand to acclimatise to that, and do training sessions in that weather."
"I'm lucky that my body does react well to the heat and I actually run a lot better in warmer climates, than I would say at home, so I'm lucky in that respect that I'm not overly affected by it. If anything once I get used to it, it's a plus. So it's just a matter of getting used to it when we get out there."
The latest hassle in preparations for elite athletes is the quarantine they will be required to complete on returning to the country from abroad. Earlier this week Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly confirmed that exemptions for elite athletes to avoid hotel quarantine were signed in to law, with the caveat that governing bodies would have to "put in place equivalent situations".
It's not something that's overly bothered Barr.
"We're no different to the general public, you know, we should still have to follow the rules and I have no problem with the quarantine, it means that when it comes to planning my competitions and planning my training schedule and stuff, I have to make sure that I use countries that aren't on that list, I'm going to have to quarantine for that amount of time, you know, it just takes a little bit more careful planning when I am choosing where I want to go for competitions in the summer"
Thomas Barr seen at the University of Limerick Sports Arena in Limerick, Ireland on September 10, 2019. // Szymon Lazewski
Tokyo will be a distant sight from the spectacle and pageantry that went with the games in Brazil. No foreign travelers to fill the grandstands will mean the tricolor won't be draped around the track for the Irish team to revel in. Barr is an athlete who has often spoken of how he feeds off the buzz of race day and its something he'll have to do without this time around
"Yeah, it is, it's going to be a very, very different experience to any championships really, because there's always a big crowd, and I love that, I love the fact even you know, in Rio, and in Berlin, there was massive amount of Irish came to watch and support. I buzz off of that, I love that."
"I get just as much of a buzz off of, you know, looking at the social media, and there's always well-wishers through social media."
"It is going to be a strange one going into the stadium where it's either very empty or just full of locals. I suppose at the world student games where won it out in 2015 and there's a lot of the diamond league events also; they aren't always full, or they'd be just a just local crowd. So I just have to try and switch into that mindset more so than it being a normal major championships."
"To be honest, I'm not going to be fussy and I'm not going to be picky if the games is going ahead. I'll take it in whatever form it's gonna take."
Thomas was speaking with Nigel Kelly on WLR's On The Ball
https://open.spotify.com/episode/4cu5S31GM4cSZn815Vg6EH?si=wQL5rvCfSG-u6h4ukAF66A
