Mayo javelin talent ready for U-20 World Championships

The big adventure starts on Thursday for Oisin Joyce when he hops on a plane to Peru's capital Lima to represent Ireland in the U-20 World Championships. The flight is not something the 18-year-old from Ballinrobe is particularly looking forward to: “I've been to Australia because I have cousins over there so I've done a long haul flight before. They're not the nicest in the world but there'd be a few of my mates to be out there anyway so we'll pass the time, probably play some cards on the plane,” Oisin says speaking to The Mayo News before departing for South America.

When it comes to the actual competition, Joyce seems to be peaking just at the right time. He has been making headlines during the last year. His highlight was at a tournament in Germany throwing a personal best of 73.72m, which is also a new U-20 national record.

“It was great, I actually didn't have a great leading up to it, I had a bit of a sore shoulder I wasn't really training too much but my physiotherapist got me right and then I came out with a big personal best, by 3 metres, so I was delighted.”

Regarding the upcoming U-20 World Championships which will run next week, Joyce is currently in a good position: “At the minute I'm ranked seventh in the world and top 12 make the final so that'll be the main goal, I would be annoyed now if I didn't make the final.”

If Oisin needed any extra motivation, watching the recent Olympics certainly helped: “The Irish team did unreal, even other sports like the rowers and the swimmers and all of them, I really enjoyed watching the events. It kind of makes you hungry, you kind of want to get out there yourself kind of thing.”

Especially now after weeks of tough training, that weren't always easy: “I went through a tough block of training the last months just to get ready but now I'm kind of coming out of it so I feel good. I'm just starting to taper down so that's kind of how it works. You go through a really tough block and then you come out of it and then you feel good.”

Oisin's javelin qualifying event at the U-20 World Championships will take place on Tuesday, August 27 and the final will be two days later.