Zurich next stop for medal hero Derval
“I don’t know when I will get home to Cork,” she said last night. “After Zurich I have Brussels the following week.”
Life will be different for the European silver medallist after an exciting few days in Gothenburg. She has been on the circuit before but then, with slower times than most of her competitors, she found herself scrapping for outside lanes.
“I have been to the Super Grand Prix meetings and running in the B races, but now it is great to get into the Golden League meets. It’s so different,” she said.
“Andy Norman (her agent) spoke to me on Friday morning and told me that if I did not win a medal in the 100m hurdles final here I would be going to Tallinn — but if I did I would be going to the Golden League in Zurich. He told me to choose which life I wanted.”
And now she wants the other young Irish athletes to benefit from the success the team the team enjoyed in Gothenburg and asked the powers that be to put their faith in them and give them every support.
“This is the kind of championship where people can make a bit of a breakthrough,” she said. “People can qualify for those championships while it is more difficult to qualify for a world championships.
“I think some people have come here and shown great potential — Deirdre Ryan, Liam Reale, Martin Fagan and Mary Cullen — while Joanne (Cuddihy) was phenomenal. Making that final was a huge step up and she knows it herself and the fact that she is disappointed is just brilliant as well. It shows she know she can do better.
“I think they should not wait until people get medals to support them. Try and put some faith in people. It is two years to the Olympics and then six years to London and I think we have shown here that we are good enough.
With her gold medal from the world indoor championships and now silver from the European championships, she is already turning her attentions to next year’s world outdoor championships in Osaka.
“I am 99% certain I will do the European indoor championships next year in Birmingham — unless something happens in the meantime — I would like to win a European indoor medal,” she said.
“Then I will target a final at the world outdoors rather than saying I want to win a medal. We all know 12.4 is the winning time at the world outdoors and you are going to have to run 12.7 just to get into the final.
“I think even if I make it into world outdoor final next year I’ll still have another year before Beijing. I have to look at things realistically. This is still a huge step for me because it is an outdoor championship but it is not the whole world.”
While she likes to make one big change every year she will not be changing the team around her. Jim Kilty, her coach, and her technical coach, Sean Cahill, and his wife, Terri, have worked wonders this year despite the fact that a late start to the season left them racing against time.
“It is funny I was talking to Jim before the relay and I was saying we need to put a plyometrics programme in place — that’s something we have never done,” she said. “We have lifted for four years and I have reached a stage where I don’t think I can get much stronger in the gym. I need more functional strength. Hopefully I can get functionally stronger in the next two years and that will help. I have the speed and the technique is coming on every year but I need the strength.”
She wants to run some more races as many or six or seven — and carry her season into the middle of September because it only began on July 1 in Cork.
“If I can get some more 12.8s and maybe some more 12.7s I’ll be happy. I don’t know if I can go much quicker than 12.72 to be honest because I missed those seven weeks and my fitness just isn’t where I’d like to be so I think it would be asking a lot of myself to run 12.6 now, but you just don’t know — a hot day, the right people — I’ll give it a go and see what happens.
“If this was a normal year I’d probably do one or two races, call it quits and just enjoy myself but I need more races because you cannot replicate racing in training. I don’t want to come off the season having done only six races. I want to get a proper season so I need to make up for it.”
She revealed yesterday that she could not prepare properly for Friday night’s final because of cramp. “I cramped before the final so I didn’t do any run over the first hurdle,” she said. “I would always run over the first hurdle just to check the wind. I just stretched them and just ran. It was probably just another distraction. They were fine but they are sore now.”
After a hectic night on Friday — she had an ice bath, massage, food and spent some time with her parents but was walking around the hotel lobby at three in the morning when everyone else was asleep — she turned out on Saturday to lead off for the Irish 4 x 100m who set a new Irish record at 43.38 seconds when finishing sixth in their semi-final.
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