Crowe heads to European Championships with Olympic hopes

Talented Sixmilebridge athlete Timmy Crowe is still clinging to the hope that he may yet make it to the starting blocks at this year’s London Olympics.

Crowe flew out to Helsinki this week as part of Ireland’s 4 x 400 senior relay team for the European Championships and if the Irish athletes secure a time that pushes them into the top 16 in the world, they’ll be London bound.
However, it’s a very big ask and a more realistic target for the 20-year-old, who specialises in hurdling and runs in the singlet of Limerick club Dooneen AC, is the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
Crowe has been selected on the relay team that also includes former European indoor champion David Gillick, current Irish champion Brian Gregan and Brian Murphy.
In fact, Crowe, a relative late-comer to athletics, missed out on achieving the qualifying standard for the individual 400m hurdles in Helsinki by just one hundredth of a second. His personal best for the 400m hurdles is 51.2.
Crowe’s rise to prominence in Irish athletics has been meteoric over the last few years and his father Tim, a former international hurdler, has closely monitored his progress.
Timmy competed in the U-20 championships in Canada two years ago, then qualified for the world indoors in Doha. Last year, he competed in the European U-23 championships in the Czech Republic and this year qualified for the European Champions in Helsinki.
“I suppose the last few years has been a learning process and all about incremental development. Timmy is still pretty young and is developing all the time. In truth he’s probably two years behind where he should be to get to London,” his father admitted.