An Olympic Story
Just a quick post to mention a wonderful Olympic story. Louise Shanahan (pictured above) from Cork is competing in the Olympic Games in Tokyo in the 800m for Ireland. She is also in the second year of a PhD in Physics in the University of Cambridge, working in the Atomic, Mesoscopic and Optical Physics (AMOP) group in the Cavendish Laboratory. I wish her all the best in the heats on Friday 30th July and hopefully beyond!
UPDATE: Louise came seventh in Heat 3 so is now eliminated. She kept pace with the leaders before falling away on the final 150m stretch, finishing in a time of 2:03.57.
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In the Dark 
July 26, 2021 at 4:47 pm
Here’s a good part of the backstory, from a recent interview with her in Cambridge:
https://www.varsity.co.uk/sport/21733
I presume that by “leave Cambridge” she means temporarily, and will be returning to resume her PhD.
She is on an improvement curve and I predict she will do better in Tokyo than she thinks.
July 30, 2021 at 11:19 am
Louise came seventh in Heat 3 so is now eliminated. She kept pace with the leaders before falling away on the final 150m stretch, finishing in a time of 2:03.57.
July 26, 2021 at 4:57 pm
She only just made the qualifying time, and is ranked 46th out of 48 qualifiers, so realistically will do very well to get through the heats.
I understood the “leave Cambridge” bit to mean she had to travel around to run competitive races to improve her time enough to qualify, which she succeeded in doing.