Heffernan walking on air for the road to Rio
Victory went to Russia’s Sergey Kardyapkin in a new Olympic record, 3:35:59, with a string of personal best performances behind.
Robert Heffernan’s 3:37:16 was more than seven minutes inside his Irish record (3:45:30) and it would have been good enough to win every Olympic 50k up to Beijing four years ago where drug cheat Alex Schwazer set the Olympic record at 3:37:09.
The performance will rank among the great near miss stories that punctuate our Olympic history and it won admiration from across the board.
“Just personally being from Cork and seeing Robert perform at that world level — was truly fantastic,” Finbarr Kirwan, Performance Director with the Irish Sports Council, said.
“The performance itself was heroic. He’ll be very disappointed he didn’t win the medal but in due course it will rank as one of the greatest ever Irish athletic performances.
“He can be very proud of what he achieved and everybody is very proud of him as well. He is not finished at all yet. Fourth at the Europeans two years ago in the 50k and now fourth in the Olympics — who knows what comes next. The curve is right.”
Olympic team manager, Patsy McGonagle, who also managed the Irish track and field team at Sydney in 2000 when the Corkman made his Olympic debut, described it as a phenomenal performance.
“When you look back on this it will rank as one of the all-time best ever performances by an Irish athlete in an individual event at an Olympic Games,” he said.
“It will take us a day or two to get around to that. People at home need to understand that this was a phenomenal performance. It has been one of the great performances.
“We knew and he knew and everyone close to him knew that he was in unbelievable shape. He spent so many years away from home — not just days away from home — with a young family growing up. You would hope he would get a medal at the end of it.
“In a global sports like athletics that’s an unbelievable performance. It is such a building process. You have to understand Robert has been building this for the about 14 years. He stayed with the story.”
In the immediate aftermath, Robert himself expressed bitter disappointment.
“In one part I’m gutted,” he said. “I did everything I could, it’s just hard to take — to finish fourth. I’ve dreamt of winning a medal. Everything I’ve done all year and in the last four years has been aimed at winning a medal in the Olympics so you know, it’s tough coming away with fourth but I’ll be happy with it.”
He had a race plan and he played it out to near perfection, only the medal was missing at the end, hanging back from the early 12-man split and settling into a three-man chasing group.
He surged clear with Li hanging on until Heffernan’s astonishing 5k between 35k and 40k which he covered in 21:10.
Suddenly the teak tough Togher man was in contention. Yohann Diniz (France), fell but dragged himself up again. Heffernan overtook the young Guatemalan, Erick Barrondo as well as Australia’s Nathan Deakes and suddenly, with Jared Talent on two red cards and Tianfeng Si apparently in agony, the medal was within reach.
“I was working off Li,” he said. “It was good because Sandro Damilano is coaching him. Damilano is after being around such a long time and I was feeding off what Damilano was saying to him.”
He has not abandoned his dream of an Olympic medal and, on this performance, he must also have a big chance of medalling at next year’s world championships.
“Robert Korzeniowski coached me for five years and when I broke away from Robert in 2009 I put Liam [O’Reilly] in place,” he said. “Liam takes all the thinking out of the training. I make up a plan, I run it by Ivonne [Cassin], Ivonne puts all the maths and the figures on it.
“Liam looks after everything else — he looks after my massage, my drinks, anything that needs to be done. I’ve a full support team in one man every day. Very professional set up and I don’t have to think. Ideally I just go out and train and I rest and I train and I try not to worry about anything .
“It was Liam’s birthday today and I wanted to get him a medal for his birthday. This year, the way my training went, if my curve started going downwards I’d gladly retire. Every year I’m getting better and I’m going, ‘Ah s**t, I have to keep going.’
“I was putting my career on hold until this week as well, I wanted to see.
“I had to see how these results went. If it didn’t go well and I walking around the place like a madman Marian wouldn’t be too happy. I’ve some armoury now to keep going.”
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