Meet John Coghlan, the Irish sprint coach who helped deliver Olympic gold for Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico’s Jasmine Camacho-Quinn with her gold medal and Irish coach John Coghlan. Picture: INPHO/Bryan Keane

In many ways, what he did was mad — but John Coghlan saw the method in it. As the pandemic took hold in 2020, the Dubliner had a good, steady job with Meath GAA, training their best players across various levels for speed and strength. But as a former sprinter who’d worked with some of the world’s top athletes, his eyes were always open for a return to athletics.

That came in 2020, a phone call from his friend Paul Doyle — one of the athletics world’s leading agents — offering him the chance to steer the career of a young, gifted sprint hurdler, Jasmine Camacho-Quinn. The Puerto Rican had been a college star, but she lost her way a little in the professional ranks, Doyle telling Coghlan she needed someone with his hurdling expertise to work with her full-time.