St. Laurence O’Toole’s clubman Marcus Lawler was “disappointed” with his performance at last weekend’s ILH Micro Meeting.
Lawler finished 2nd in the 200m sprint on Saturday before a 4th place finish the next day in the 60m race.
With the 200m race not going ahead at this year’s European Indoor Athletics Championships, Lawler will not be travelling to Gdansk in Poland for the 2021 instalment of the competition as his 60m finish was not sufficient for a qualification position.
The Carlow man says that it is a huge disappointment to not be part of the Irish squad for the championships.
“I felt that my preparation was good coming into the race,” said Lawler.
“I didn’t run as well as I would have liked, and I was a bit disappointed. We’ll have to go back and take a look at where we can improve because it’s not nice to not make it to Poland.”
Despite competing in the 60m race, Lawler was desperate for a 200m victory last Saturday. He believes that the chance was there for him to win but that he did not do enough.
“60m has been a bit hit and miss for me in the last couple of years, so I wasn’t relying on it. My main focus was on the 200m so it was a shame that I couldn’t win it because there was such an opportunity,” lamented Lawler.
Regardless of his performance at the Micro Meet, the Carlow sprinter was full of praise for the organisers of last weekend’s event. He compared the competition to previous ones he had taken part in on the continent.
He said: “It was run really well, and it was very strict. It made life a lot easier.
“I flew to Vienna and France before the Micro Meet. It was great to do them all and they posed different challenges, but they were not up to the same standard as last weekend.”
While Lawler did not run as well as he would have expected at the Micro Meet, the St. Laurence O’Toole’s athlete is confident that he can cement his place on Team Ireland for this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo.
“I am in a healthy position to qualify for the Olympics now, but I’m not guaranteed anything. I just have to go about my business and see where that takes me,” said Lawler.
Listen to the full interview with Marcus on our Scoreline Extra Podcast:
