Sarah Lavin: "I was underwhelmed by my performance and that's the truth"

Everything pointed towards a big one. Every metric Sarah Lavin could measure suggested an Irish record was coming her way in Paris, the kind of time that’d put her into an Olympic final. But it just didn’t happen.

The 30-year-old Limerick athlete clocked an Irish 100m hurdles record of 12.62 in the world semi-final last year and needed 12.52 in Paris to make her first global outdoor final.

But in her bid to find the extra fraction, she ended up getting too close to the eighth barrier and clattered it with her trail leg, Lavin still running the fourth-quickest time of her career, 12.69. How does she reflect on the Games now? “You come home and you’re underwhelmed by your performance and that’s the truth, simply because I know what I did a year ago,” she says.

“It was 12.62 and 0.1 (faster) would have put me in that Olympic final.

Of course I think I’ve improved by 0.1 this year. Did I put it out at the right moment, the right time? No.

Did all my markers suggest I would? Yeah. And that’s the nature of this level of sport; precision is absolutely required. “You’re better in all your markers: your flat speed is faster, your flying 30s, your technique, you’ve worked with your biomechanics specialist on your start – that’s where all your expectations come from.

” Still, the Olympics proved magnificent in other ways, with Lavin carrying the Irish flag during the opening ceremony alongside Shane Lowry and returning to a surreal level of support. “You�.