‘Tough women’ helping Joan Healy find her stride

The Cork woman will go in the heats of the 60m at the European indoors in Istanbul on Friday. 

PASSING THE BATON: Joan Healy has been getting help from Derval O'Rourke and Marian Heffernan. Picture: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

Joan Healy ran a season’s best at the National Indoor Championships the weekend before last. Having finally found some rhythm in her sprinting, she wanted to keep racing. She wanted to push out her indoor campaign for longer than her two coaches had planned.

Those two coaches are Derval O’Rourke and Marian Heffernan. Chances are you’ve probably heard of them.

Two “tough women”, as Joan labels them. Aren’t all Cork women?

Anyway, Joan mentioned to the pair after running 7.33 for silver in the 60m that she felt she had turned a bit of a corner and so wanted to get back onto the start line to see if she could go quicker again.

Their response went along the lines of, ‘tough luck, your indoor season is over, and you’re going for a week of testing’.

Fast forward a fortnight and Joan will this morning settle into her blocks in the heats of the 60m at the European indoors in Istanbul.

What happened in between to reignite her indoor season we’ll come back to later on. But first to the backstory of how these three Cork sprinters - two past, one present - came to be a team.

Shortly after the 2021 European indoors, Joan parted ways with her coach Alan Mahoney. They’d gone as far as they could go. It was time for change.

Out on her own, the Cork-based sprinter did a couple of sessions in Waterford with younger sister Phil and her coach Shane McCormack. The latter happened to come into conversation with O’Rourke around the same time and mentioned to the former World indoor gold medallist that Joan was without a coach.

We’ll let Joan take it up from here.

“In typical Derval fashion, she rings me up and says, let's go for coffee. So, we met and had a chat.

“She was like, ‘even if I am just company at the track or company at the gym, let's start there and see where it goes’. So it didn't start off with ‘I need a coach’, or ‘I am willing to coach you’,” the 30-year-old recalls of their first get-together in late spring of 2021.

Derval mentioned during coffee that if she was to help, she’d like another Olympian, Marian Heffernan, to also come on board. The pair are good friends and it's never any harm to have another there to bounce ideas off.

Injury meant the three women were slow to get going. An Achilles injury sidelined Joan the summer of the Tokyo Olympics. That November, another Achilles injury took her off the track for four months.

And while she did get back to equal her 100m PB of 11.57 last summer, this current season is the first without interruptions.

“They bring huge experience to the table and complement each other very well,” Joan continues. “Marian is brilliant for the hard work, she's definitely the tougher one on the sessions. Derval is more the technician, given her hurdling background.

“It is great having two women, it has been a long time since I have had a female coach, and I have to say we do have a lot of craic at the sessions.

“The two of them are on a mission to get themselves moving, so when I am on my recoveries, they are doing drills or something and documenting it all on their Instagram. They are a laugh to watch and bring great energy to every session, but they are two tough women.

“They have young kids and so it is a big commitment coming down to the track looking after another 30-year-old woman and helping her to try and live out her track dreams. I am very grateful to have them on board.” 

An 11th hour jump in the Road to Istanbul rankings two days after nationals earned her European selection. The planned week of testing went out the window, with Joan running a 7.30 PB in Dublin last Friday as a sharpener ahead of Europeans.

Her intuition that she had indeed found some rhythm was on the money. The hope today is that she’ll enter 7.2 territory.

Knowing that the spikes will be put into retirement after the 2024 Olympics, changes outside of the track have been made to allow her go all in this season and next. Changes she hopes will get her to the starting line in Paris.

From full-time teaching at Terence MacSwiney Community College in Knocknaheeny, she’s now part-time and works Monday through Wednesday. The additional days off allow for greater training but also greater recovery.

Led by two fellow Cork women, the early results are more than encouraging.