Competitive Commonwealth Games Nomination Process explained

The Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games takes place in Queensland, Australia between 4^th – 15^th April next year and many of our top athletes are competing to be nominated by Athletics NI for the Northern Ireland team.

Nomination Process

The nomination panel will consider athletes, for individual events in four rounds as follows:

Round 1 - those who have achieved two or more standards during the qualification period that opened on 1^st January 2017 and closes on 30^th September 2017. For combined events, marathon and 10,000m, athletes with at least one standard achieved between 1^st September 2016 and 30^th September 2017 will be considered.

Round 2 - those who have achieved one standard during the qualification period that opened on 1^st January 2017 and closes on 30^th September 2017.

Round 3 – those that may compete in the relays.

Round 4 – In the unlikely event that places are available after rounds 1 – 3, those that have not achieved the standard may be considered using the same criteria.

Standards achieved to date

Dempsey McGuigan (Finn Valley) has already achieved the standard twice in the Hammer Throw and Sommer Lecky (Finn Valley, Niall Wilkinson) hit the High Jump standard at the open meeting that was held at the Mary Peters Track on 6^th May and went on to better it at the Ulster Schools Championships last weekend.

Paul Pollock (Andrew Hobdell/Kent) achieved the Marathon standard at the Beppu-Oita Mainichi Marathon, Japan in February and Emma Mitchell (Eamonn Christie/Queens University) achieved the standard for the 10,000m when she ran at the Highgate Night of the 10,000m PBs last weekend.

Amy Foster (David Reid/City of Lisburn) hit the 100m standard in Australia earlier in the year and Adam McMullen (City of Derry) achieved the standard for the Long Jump when he competed in Florida on 13th May.

On 1^st October 2017, athletes will be ranked based on percentage of standard achieved (as seen in the current rankings table below) and based on Commonwealth Rankings. We will aim to publish the current nomination tables twice before the nomination meeting so that athletes and coaches are aware of their current standings as they inevitably change throughout the season.

 Jackie Newton, Director of Coaching and Athlete Development said, “It has been tremendously exciting to see three more of our athletes hitting standards over the last three weeks in a row. At present, we don’t know how many places we will have at this competition but we predict that there will be more athletes hitting the standards and surpassing the criteria than we have places for and that is a great position to be in! Throughout the summer months we will be working closely with athletes that have already hit the standard or are close to it and do everything we can to support them and their coach. Our target is to achieve as many top eight places as possible and so, on 1^st October, we will nominate those athletes that have the greatest potential to deliver those performances.”

One of the conditions for nomination is that athletes compete at the 2017 NI & Ulster Senior Championships on 10^th June, unless there are exceptional reasons and circumstances for absence. This competition also serves as the trials for the Manchester International and promises to offer strong competition throughout the programme.

The nomination policy for the Commonwealth Games can be found HERE