The athletics community in Ireland is understandably delighted with Olive Loughnane’s fantastic silver medal in the 20km race walk at the World T&F Championships in Berlin on Sunday 16th August.

The last World medal won by Ireland was also a silver medal in the women’s race walk, which was won by Gillian O’Sullivan in Paris in 2003 and she was coached by our own Michael Lane.

Michael is in Berlin as the Team Ireland race-walk coach and doubtless was very excited to witness Olive’s performance up close and it must have brought back some terrific memories of Paris in 2003.