20th June 2013 10:34
Three teams will be hoping history is on their side, too, when the city stages the 4th European Athletics Team Championships 1st League on Saturday and Sunday.
Two years ago in Stockholm, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Sweden were relegated from the European Athletics Team Championships' top division.
They are the favorites to return and if they do, it will be a repeat of the events of 2010 when they were promoted having all gone down the year before.
It will not be easy, though, as they will face opposition from Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland as Morton Stadium in Santry stages the event.
It has been quite a summer for the Czech Republic's athletes and they are bringing their big stars to Dublin.
Zuzana Hejnova, the Olympic 400m hurdles bronze medallist, swaps the barriers for the flat 400m in a team where Pawel Maslak, the European 400m champion, both indoors and outdoors, runs the 200m.
Ladislav Prasil moved to the top of the European Athletics' shot put rankings back in April with an effort of 21.47A in Potchefstroom and no-one has improved upon that.
But both Lukas Melich, in the hammer, and European javelin champion Vitezslav Vesely will find themselves needing to be at their best to achieve maximum points.
Melich is second on the European lists with 80.28m and will face the man who is leading the rankings with 81.02m, Hungary's Olympic champion Krisztian Pars.
Vesely, who has thrown 86.94m this year, faces Finland's Ari Mannio who has a 2013 best of 84.65m.
Portugal's Jessica Augusto, a four-times gold medallist at the Spar European Cross Country Championships, should win the 3000m while her teammate Ana Dulce Felix, the European 10,000m champion, will take some stopping in the 5000m where Ireland have been forced to lose their leading athlete, Fionnuala Britton, with a chest infection. Switzerland's Sabine Fischer, runner-up in the 3000m in 2011, cannot be ruled out.
Sweden's Emma Green Tregaro is having quite a 12 months.
She has won bronze medals at the last two European Championships - outdoors in Helsinki last June and indoors in Göteborg in March - and last week she was second at the Diamond League in Oslo last week with a 2013 best of 1.95m.
European 100m champion Ivet Lalova will spearhead Bulgaria's challenge after their promotion as runners-up behind Estonia in Novi Sad in 2011 while Romania were so close to reaching the top division last time - they missed out by just 7.5 points – and will use that as a base to start in Dublin in a team where Angela Morosanu should win the 400m hurdles.
She is second on the European rankings with 53.85 behind Hejnova (53.60) but it is Denisa Rosolova (55.11) who is running for the Czech team here.
Ireland finished just one position out of the relegation zone last time, all be it with 24 more points than Slovenia, and David McCarthy, the 2009 European Under-23 5000m bronze medallist, will be one of their big hopes in the 3000m.
The men's 100m could be quite a race as both Churandy Martina, of the Netherlands, and Denis Dimitrov, of Bulgaria, have run 10.16 this year while Belgium's Pieter-Jan Hannes, with a personal best of 3:38.87, will be among the favourites for the 1500m.
As Estonia won the 2nd League in 2011, Kaur Kivistik triumphed in the 3000m steeplechase and he returns chasing glory again.