Irish athletes must react in right way to mixed bag of performances at European Indoors

Ireland’s Sean Tobin feels the strain in the Men’s 3000m final at the 2021 European Athletics Indoor Championships, in Torun, Poland. Picture: Inpho/Morgan Treacy

Anytime an Irish athletics team returns from a European Championship without a medal, the natural inclination is to label it a failure. Part of that is due to being spoiled in the past by the exploits of an elite few.

In Glasgow two years ago, it was Mark English and Ciara Mageean netting a pair of bronze medals, keeping that long line of medallists growing at a championships where Ireland is consistently competitive.

But when Mageean pulled out of this year’s edition early last week and the search began for potential Irish medallists, the shortlist soon became alarmingly brief. In the end it boiled down to five athletes: Phil Healy, Síofra Cléirigh-Buttner, Nadia Power, Mark English, and Andrew Coscoran.

That none of the 800m athletes on that list — English, Cléirigh-Buttner and Nadia Power — could win a medal was not a surprise. But the fact none made the final suggested they either were not arriving in the same form as at previous championships (in English’s case) or simply found the white-hot heat of championship racing an altogether different prospect to paced races on the circuit (as seemed to be the case for Power and Cléirigh-Buttner).

In the end, the Irish medal hopes boiled down to one athlete, racing over two lightning laps of the track, on Saturday evening. Phil Healy, like that 800m trio, went in ranked in the top six on season’s bests but she was the sole athlete in that quartet to perform to the best of her ability.

In truth, she went even further, breaking new ground and joining the ranks of the European elite by taking victory in both her 400m heat and semi-final, before that ferocious effort in the final which came up just one-fifth of a second shy of a medal. It is a race she will replay a thousand times in her head in the coming years, but the reality she will already have accepted is that was she was beaten by three better athletes on the day, her performance one of which she and her long-time coach, Shane McCormack, should be forever proud.

Before the championships, Ireland had four 800m women ranked in the world top-20 on season’s bests, and there’s no point pretending it was anything other than a collective under-performance that none of the trio competing here could make the final, with just one of them, Power, making the last 18 in the semi-finals.

Power had championship credentials in the past, with a bronze at the European U23s in 2019, but this was another level again and, devoid of pacemakers she was used to running behind on the circuit, she was forced to utilise her strength to put the hurt on her rivals on the third lap of her semi-final. In the end, she broke herself rather than her rivals. Such experiences, difficult as they are, can discourage and sap the strength out of many careers, but they can also embolden. If something stood out from chatting to Power afterwards, it was her distaste about her result, the resolve to go away and come back stronger.

That, you’d hope, is exactly the kind of attitude 18-year-olds Cian McPhillips and Israel Olatunde will take away from their first experience at this level. McPhillips looked fully at home when breezing through his 800m heat on Friday but the back-to-back nature of championships found him out a day later, a lesson in the strength and endurance needed to be able to produce, as Healy did, day after day. Olatunde wasn’t far off his recent Irish U20 and U23 records in the 60m and in truth, that’s all you can ask of the athletes in green — to bring their best or something close to it.

If someone can do what Derval O’Rourke so often did, and access a different level when it matters most, all the better, but such breakthroughs are the exception and not the norm. One who managed that feat was Sarah Lavin, whose superb 8.06 in her 60m hurdles heat carved a decent chunk off her lifetime best. After years of injury, of having to learn lessons about the sport in the hardest way, she’s fast becoming the athlete everyone thought she could be when she won European U20 silver back in 2013.

And then there is the middle-distance crew. Training partners Andrew Coscoran and Paul Robinson both made the 1500m final, finishing 7th and 10th respectively. For Coscoran, that result was evidence he can compete at the global level, with the Olympics seeming assured if he can now stay healthy until the summer. For Robinson, it capped a glorious comeback, making his first European final since 2014, with too many injuries to count in the intervening years. Few, if any, deserved their place more.

Sean Tobin turned in a typically strong showing to make the men’s 3000m final, his performance and that of teammate Brian Fay proving that the work being done by Feidhlim Kelly at the Dublin Track Club — in bringing many of Ireland’s athletes together and refusing to settle for mediocrity — is reaping huge dividends.

Elsewhere, the performances of Sophie Becker and Sharlene Mawdsley showed that Ireland has the bones of a strong women’s 4x400m team for the years ahead which, if coupled with the speed of Healy and US-based youngsters Rhasidat Adeleke and Davicia Patterson, could be a regular fixture on the global scene if they get the right backing.

All in all, it was the typical mixed bag for the Irish, some falling way below expectations, some levelled off right around them, and a select few managing to surpass them. The path to changing that ratio in the future hinges on how they all react.