‘I’m lucky, my sports shrink sister will travel with team’
Thomas Barr on his marks to make some new records on Tokyo track
SILENT meals, diluted crowds and no Irish flags in the stands will make Thomas Barr’s Tokyo Olympics a more solitary affair.
The Irish 400 metres hurdler had the athletics world doing double-takes when he shot out of the starting blocks in recent years, breaking national records and coming fourth in the Olympic final in Rio, only missing out on a medal by an agonising 0.5 of a second.
Thomas is one of nine athletes to feature in a new RTÉ documentary, Horizon Tokyo, tracking their preparation for the postponed games.
Athletes in the Olympic village will dine with screens between them and are not permitted to talk to each other at meals as part of Covid-19 restrictions.
At the games, the Waterfordman, who is regularly captured running through the finish line with a thousand-watt smile on his face, will have the backing of one family member as his sister, Jessie Barr, is flying out to Tokyo as a sports psychologist with Team Ireland.
‘It will be weird not having my parents because they’ve been to every major championship with me. It just so happens that Jessie is a sport psychologist and she’ll be heading out with Team Ireland.
‘She’ll be out in Tokyo with me so there will be somebody there from the Barr family,’ said Thomas.
Foreign spectators will not be permitted to attend so there won’t be any tricolours in the stands.
‘I won’t be going out looking for Irish flags, it will be quite solitary but hopefully the support will still be there,’ he said this week from hotel in Switzerland, where he was competing in one of his last races before flying to Japan.
The games, still called the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, are scheduled to proceed in the last week of July.
While Ireland has previously had a tradition of middle and long-distance runners, having a contender in the 400-metre hurdles – one of the marquee events of track and field – is a rare phenomenon.
In Rio de Janeiro in 2016 after an injury-plagued year, which cost him vital training time, Thomas ran into the nation’s consciousness when he came fourth, just behind the bronze medallist.
It was the first time he ever ran the race in 47 seconds.
‘I ran a PB [personal best] in the biggest race my life and ended up finishing fourth so it was pretty special. I was injured for most of the year so to be able to come out the other end of it on a high was even extra kind of emotional or special.’
And Thomas insists he doesn’t have a hint of regret.
‘Not once did I ever think “Oh God if only I had won that, had that 0.5 extra. To be in fourth position was more than I ever could have dreamed of,’ he said.
Life has changed for Thomas since Rio, when he came home to a hero’s reception in his native Dunmore East as he was driven down the main street in a Gardahis escorted open-top car.
Now he is a full-time professional athlete with top-tier sponsors such as Red Bull, New Balance and Irish Life Health attached to his name.
He’s very much out there competing with the best in the world and pushing for major medals.
‘It added that little bit of pressure and expectation but over the last couple of years, I’m able to deal with that because I know that in the back of my head when I stand on the line the hard work is done no matter what else is going on,’ he says.
The RTÉ cameras follow the runner on their road to Tokyo as they did with setbacks and the cancellation of the games.
‘When they finally made the decision about postponing it for a year, there was a massive relief and a weight off our shoulders because everything was closed, gyms were closed, tracks were closed, it was becoming increasingly more difficult to try and train at an Olympic level without so much as a track,’ he said.
In the end, he thoroughly enjoyed his first summer off in years and even indulged in the odd takeaway and pint during his break.
‘It was nice to let the hair down for a couple of weeks,’ he said.
Since then he had been fuelling his body with a diet of unprocessed, healthy food,
As for Tokyo, Thomas says he is raring to go in his event, and is heading out on July 7 to get a two or three-week training block in before his first race on July 30.
He adds: ‘I’m going to probably have to run a PB in the semi-finals to try and get into the final. I would love to be challenging for a medal.
‘Anything can happen if I just put myself in the right position.’ n Horizon Tokyo airs on RTÉ One tomorrow night at 10.35pm
‘I ran a Personal Best in my life’s biggest race’
‘Everywhere was closed. It was difficult to train’