Irish sporting fans will be on tenterhooks at 7pm on Friday, as Rhasidat Adeleke takes to the Stade de France in pursuit of a 400m medal at the Paris Olympics.
The 21-year-old sprinting sensation is in lane four for the final, having finished second in her semi-final on Wednesday evening.
She will have her work cut out for her if she is to take a first-ever Olympic sprint medal for Ireland but plenty of big names in the world of track and field have tipped the Irishwoman to go all the way.
Adeleke has prioritised the solo 400m event, opting out of the mixed 4x400m relay earlier this week. As she prepares for the biggest race of her career to date, the extra freshness in her legs will only serve to help the Dubliner.
Speaking on RTÉ on Thursday night, Rob Heffernan hinted that the 400m hurdles final showed that Rhasidat Adeleke had made the right choice in foregoing the relay events.
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Rob Heffernan makes intriguing Rhasidat Adeleke comparison after 400m hurdles final
Team USA's Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone put in one of the best performances of the Paris Olympics on Thursday evening, as she motored to a sensational world record to crush the field in the 400m hurdles final.
McLaughlin-Levrone recorded a time of 50.37 to finish a second-and-a-half ahead of American teammate Anna Cockrell.
Dutch runner Femke Bol was in third place, and appeared devastated with bronze in the immediate aftermath of the final.
"It's not at all what I wanted" - Dutchwoman Femke Bol won bronze in the
women's 400m hurdles but gave an honest assessment of her performance afterwards to @DavidGillick #RTEsport #Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/pHI9gQbmhR— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 8, 2024
Bol spoke to RTÉ's David Gillick in Paris and said that she had been in pain for much of the race with lactic acid buildup.
I want to run my best race and, if my best race is bronze I would have been happy. But it was a really, really bad race.
I really got a lot of lactic and I really don't know why. I couldn't move, I couldn't get my strides right. I don't know why.
Earlier this week, Bol had run another contender for race of the Olympics, with a sensational anchor leg winning the Netherlands gold in the mixed 4x400m relay.
Despite that result bringing Bol the gold medal she so desperately wanted, it may not be a coincidence that four races in the Dutch runners' legs may have contributed to her disappointing performance on Thursday.
Analysing the race on RTÉ, London 2012 bronze medallist Rob Heffernan suggested that Bol's decision to run the relay had impacted her performance in the hurdles final.
Up the back straight, Bol went for gold. She wasn't settling for a medal. They were neck-and-neck up the back straight. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone broke her.
You have to look then - did the relays take a bit of sting out of Femke Bol as well? She's had a lot of runs up until this point and the 400 is so brutal.
We saw with Rhasidat and [Lieke] Klaver in the European Championships. They went at it with no plan and Klaver blew up.
It may be no coincidence that Heffernan mentioned Rhasidat Adeleke, given the Irish sprinter's decision to forego the relay which Bol chose to run in.
Time will tell if the decision to have more down-time will play into Adeleke's hands. We wait in hope.
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