Thomas Barr and Mark English narrowly missed out on world championship finals

Ireland's Thomas Barr and Mark English have missed out on places in the finals at the World Championships in Beijing

Waterford man Barr was unlucky to be drawn in the outside lane in the first of three 400metres hurdle semi-finals and delivered a trademark late surge to finish fourth in a time of 48.71 seconds, just six-hundredths outside his Irish record time. With only the top two from each race, plus the two fastest losers, to qualify, Barr needed to hope the following two heats would be slow, but the 23-year-old was eliminated once the times from the second semi-final came in. English was in the fortunate position of being the in the last of three races, so the 22-year-old knew exactly what was required. With the current fastest losers coming in at a fraction outside 1:45, the Letterkenny man knew something close to his personal best of 1:44.84 would likely be enough, but he left himself far too much to do coming into the last 200metres, finishing quickly in fifth in a time of 1:45.55. Earlier this morning, Alex Wright was disqualified from the men's 20km Walk.