Tall tale: six-foot-seven Jack Raftery the man to beat after sprint switch

The DCU student will look to lay down a marker at this weekend’s national indoor championships in Abbotstown.

Jack Raftery of Ireland competes in the 4x400m mixed relay final during day one of the World Athletics Championships at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon last year. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

At six-foot-seven, with a background as a middle-distance runner, Jack Raftery isn’t exactly made for the indoor 400m – an event that rewards vicious speed from the blocks, agile coordination on the banked turns, and an ability to engage your elbows at halfway.

But ahead of this weekend’s national indoor championships in Abbotstown, the 21-year-old Dubliner is very much the man to beat, having clocked 46.75 earlier this month, moving him 10th on the Irish all-time list. Before Christmas Raftery set an Irish indoor 300m record of 33.27 in Athlone, proof that for this former-half miler, speed is no issue.

Sitting in a lecture hall in DCU, where he’s studying mechanical engineering, Raftery explains his transformation to becoming a sprint specialist came about via the carrot of an Irish singlet. In 2019, believing he wasn’t going to qualify for the European U20 Championships over 800m, he switched his focus to making the Irish men’s 4x400m team. He had juggled both distances before, but clocking 48.40 that summer convinced him his future looked brightest in the 400m.

He's made rapid progression ever since, lowering his PB to 47.02 in 2021 and to 46.17 last year, which earned him a spot on the Irish mixed 4x400m team for the World Championships in Oregon. While Rhasidat Adeleke rightly hit the headlines with her astonishing split in the heat of 49.80, lost in the shadows was Raftery’s split of 45.37, the fastest in the race. The team finished eighth in the final, with Raftery saying the whole experience “felt like a dream.” 

“It didn’t really hit me until I was ready to fly home,” he says. “The buy-in from the team across the whole week was huge, and I’d never run in front of 15,000 people before – that always helps.” 

Since then, the Donore Harrier has been working hard with his training group, the Dublin Sprint Club, which is overseen by Jeremy Lyons and includes the likes of Sophie Becker, Cillin Greene, assistant coach Gerard O’Donnell and Eanna Madden. The one thing they all have in common: national senior titles. Raftery is yet to win one. 

“It would be huge,” he says. “I kind of need to make that step up there and join them.” 

The group trains together five times a week, the weekend activities of your average 21-year-old student kept in check by the hill sessions they slog through in the Phoenix Park on Sunday mornings. “I wouldn't be where I am without the group,” he says. “We do have a slightly competitive edge which is always needed. We push each other on.” 

In 2021 Raftery pulled his hamstring at the European U23 Championships, but still underage for this year’s edition, he hopes to be in medal contention come that event in Finland in July. But his next appearance in an Irish vest could be weeks away, with Raftery holding a 400m B-standard for next month’s European Indoors in Istanbul. A win and a decent time at the nationals on Sunday would go a long way to getting him on the plane.

“The technical work is starting to come together,” he says. “I just need to put together that race now. I think I've that little bit more in me and I want to unleash it in that first lap on Sunday.” 

Raftery has a six-month work placement ahead of him and, beyond the summer, he plans to split his final year at DCU, allowing him to give athletics a higher focus ahead of next year’s Paris Olympics. As he puts it: “I’m going to go all-in.”