The IAAF have rejected the Irish team’s request to sanction a last-minute 4×400m relay at the Lucerne Grand Prix in Switzerland this coming Wednesday. Following the cancellation of the last sanctioned race, this was the last and only possibility of the team meeting the required standard to qualify for the Olympics in the team event.

With the hopes of the team competition now faded, the project400 members concentration will return to their individual efforts. David Gillick has already achieved the A qualification standard for Beijing and continued his good form with a 45.52 second run at the Golden League meet in Rome last Friday.

Paul McKee is currently one second off the A qualification standard and has lined up several races over the coming week in the hopes of achieving the time before the deadline expires. For further details on his competitions please visit the BBC Sports page to read more.

Elsewhere, Brian Doyle ran an excellent 47.14 at the Cork city sports on Saturday. Brian Murphy and Gordon Kennedy were competing in Uden, Netherland and Ghent, Belgium over the weekend and a report on their results will be up in the next few days.

The AAI National Senior Track and Field Championships will be held next weekend at Santry in Dublin and project400 members will be out in force over the two days. There will also be live coverage on the Sunday by RTE, more details to follow during the week.

We got the bad news this morning that the 4*400m relay in the Salamanca Grand Prix on Wednesday night has been cancelled.

As things currently stand there are no additional qualification opportunities on the IAAF list. To say we are upset would be an understatement, but we will do what we can to see if another attempt can be made in another meet.

Paul McKee will be running in the individual 400m race at the Grand Prix.

Both David Gillick and Paul McKee were in action in the Golden Spike tour in Ostrava tonight.

Running from the unfavourable lane 8, David produced a fantastic last 100 to get up for a clear 2nd place in a season’s best equalling 45.65.

Paul lined up in the seldom run 300m alongside training partner and Irish 200m record holder Paul Hession and World 400m Champion Jeremy Wariner. Paul finished in 4th place in a personal best 33.33 while Hession claimed a fantastic new Irish record of 32.47.

The boys will travel on to Namur to meet up with the rest of the team to make their first qualification attempt at the 4*400m.

On Monday Brian Murphy will return to Montegordo for another warm weather training stay, after a full week back in Ireland. This time however, Brian will be joined by his fellow project400 members, Paul McKee and Brian Doyle.

At Montegordo, they will rejoin Gordon Kennedy, who had stayed on while Brian flew home last week. However, they will not be the only Irish athletes this time at the renowned training facility, as the AAI have organized a special training camp and there will be many other athletes in attendance for the 2 week stay.

Among those expected to attend will be fellow project400 member David Gillick who will fly out later in the week as well as Paul Hession and many other stars of the Irish athletics team.

Stay tuned for even more reports, photos and stories from the training camp.

With the sky clear we made it up table mountain in our second attempt. I don’t have a great head for heights so it was a challenge taking the cable car, but I’m very glad I did. The view was impressive, over looking Cape Town and Robben Island. We got some great photos which I’ll try and put on this site when I get home. (more…)

Last Wednesday was our rest day so we headed to table mountain. Unfortunately it was to cloudy to get the cable car and travel to the very top, but we will try again on monday. We had a nice day out in cape town and got some nice pictures. (more…)

Training well and hard in 25 degrees today, so that was nice. Today’s session was 4×300m, 10 minutes recovery. Myself and Paul Hession did this, and it was hard towards the end. Paul suprised me with his strength at the end, may be there is a possible 4×400m in him! not sure Stuart (coach) will agree to that though. (more…)