West Waterford athlete Kate Veale has been left frustrated and annoyed with Athletics Ireland following their decision to abandon its own selection criteria at the 11th hour ahead of this week's World Championships in Oregon.
Veale, along with another Irish athlete Luke McCann have been replaced by shot putters John Kelly and Eric Favors who qualified based on world ranking from an invite through Athletics Ireland.
Speaking on last night's "On The Ball" programme, Kate outlined how the disappointing news emerged; "It's quite a confusing system but I would have got an invite from World Athletics because they have a ranking system so based on your performance if you were within a certain number, top places in the world you will get the opportunity then to compete at the world Championships and that's how it works".
Kate's passion for race walking and athletics in general is second to none and this came across in last night's Interview; "They (World Athletics) brought out this system to make it fair for every country and to make it one system, they're the big governing body over it all, so I was within that" said Kate. "They would have sent invites out to Athletics Ireland and then Athletics Ireland rejected that invite so they basically withdrew me, they brought out their own criteria making it more difficult to qualify. They actually brought out a time standard, the standard they brought out would have placed me 4th at the last time World Championships was on and it was minutes faster than previous Olympic standards have been so it was a difficult standard to reach".
Athletics Ireland writes selection policy.
Athletics Ireland ignores selection policy.
And who gets screwed - yet again? The athletes. https://t.co/I7S6NzVJkT— Cathal Dennehy (@Cathal_Dennehy) July 9, 2022
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After putting in savage hours of training, Kate described her frustration with the decision which certainly leaves more questions than answers; "I had my season all planned out because I thought in December I was going to be safe in the 35k (walk) from a performance I did. You are planning your training to peak at the right time, I didn't really plan on doing another 35k because I didn't need too. So I did have to change around plans again when I heard about the new criteria, my last opportunity then, because a lot of the races, it was very difficult to find races, they're on abroad and you have to go to a certain official race walk event which costs a lot of money as well. A lot of them had been on earlier in the year and there wouldn't be that many on closer to the actual Championships so my last opportunity would have been a few weeks ago when I went to Spain. There was a lot of pressure going into that race, it was actually the time of the heat wave in Spain. I started the race, it was like 32 degrees and from about 8k, I started feeling sick and I got heat stroke, I did finish the race but I was in quite a bad place even just to finish it so then it was too late to get my time basically".
One can imagine the frustration of having a massive opportunity pulled from underneath you, and Kate is hoping to overcame this set back and drive forward; "It's quite frustrating that World Athletics set out a criteria and then Athletics Ireland didn't follow that criteria, they came out and set their own standards".
Kate released the following statement via Facebook over the weekend following the disappointing news;
"Athletics Ireland declined the invite from World Athletics for us to compete at this years World Championships in Oregon. We qualified under the ranking system but it's our federation who have decided not to send us.In 2011 I wasn't sent to a major champs for 'being too young'. I was in the best shape of my life and believe I would have come home with a medal. It left me in a really bad place mentally. I became disillusioned with the sport and to be honest I'm not sure if I will ever be fully over that missed opportunity.Sport like life isn't always fair. I will have a listen to Boulevard of broken dreams and then it's get over it, back to controlling the controllables".
You can hear Kate Veale's Interview by checking out the listen back section on our brand new website, https://www.wlrfm.com/listenback?date=11-07-2022.
