Noble: 'We just need to get out of Adeleke's way and not interfere'

Truth is plenty of kids bloom at underage without showing the same colours at the elite level. Not Adeleke.

Thu, 15 Jun, 2023 - 07:03

Brendan O'Brien

Gavin Noble saw Rhasidat Adeleke turn heads long before the sprint sensation lit it up in a green singlet at last year’s European Championships in Munich, or with the University of Texas on the NCAA circuit.

A London 2012 Olympian in triathlon, Noble is chef de mission for Team Ireland for the upcoming European Games in Poland and for next year’s Olympics in Paris, and he held the same post in 2019 at the European Youth Olympics in Baku.

Adeleke had already won a gold medal over 200m at the European U18 Championships the summer before but she claimed a pair of them in Azerbaijan four years ago when adding the 100m to the 200m title.

Fast forward to last week and she was capping a stunning collegiate season with a new Irish 400m record time of 49.20 and, in the process, becoming the first Irish athlete to win an NCAA sprint title.

This is the point where Noble might be expected to say something about how he always saw this future for her after Baku. Truth is plenty of kids bloom at underage without showing the same colours at the elite level.

“A lot of them fall by the wayside,” said Noble.

Not Adeleke.

Noble describes a poised and confident athlete who carried a presence into a room with her long before she surged ahead on the senior stage so he is confident that she has the mental strength to push on even further.

"We just need to get out of her way and not interfere,” he said of future meets where the woman from Tallaght will spearhead Ireland’s efforts. “It's 'what do you need and what does your coach need?' and I'm going to get it.

“That's our job. We don't have any bearing on her result beyond making sure she has everything that she needs and it's also trying to cut out some of the noise and protect her a little bit come Games time.”

Noble’s immediate priority is those European Games which kick off in Poland next week and for which he will again serve as chef de mission, this time to an Irish team made up of 121 athletes across 17 sports.

Adeleke won’t be part of a 44-strong athletics contingent that mixes youth with experience and competes in Division 3 in a team format at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzow.

That doesn’t mean her successes can’t act as a spur to others, regardless of their sport, given she is now a very real medal contender at the World Championships later this summer and next year’s Olympics.

Noble agrees with that assessment but he is loathe to load the still-young athlete with too much burden given she has still only run 15 times outdoors over 400m and another nine indoors.

“If we rank her in the top eight in the world then there are still a lot of girls who can go 48 seconds and she is 49.2. She still has to improve. She knows that but she is in the best environment to do that.

“People see her in the NCAA and think she is a student, which she is, but it is professional. She has a daily performance environment where she is going down to the track in among 10/15 people of different nationalities trying to do the same thing. That in itself should be inspiring for other people.”

Most eyes here will be on boxing and the men’s rugby sevens team come the European Games with 12 of the former aiming to make it far enough to secure places at the 2024 Olympics and the latter needing to win their event outright to do likewise.

Whatever happens this next 12 months, the majority of Ireland’s medal hopes will again rest with boxing and rowing, but Noble is keen to get the point across that podium places are possible elsewhere too.

“Boxing and rowing, of course, but we need to put equal weight on other people. If we only think that we are getting medals from two sources then that is a weakness in the system. We have I think 12 opportunities and we need that in order to get four medals. If we have only four opportunities then it’s not good.

“I think we have a great opportunity in swimming with Daniel Wiffen and men’s and women’s golf. We have an opportunity in equestrian and now in athletics with someone like Ciara Mageean knocking on the door and Rhasidat Adeleke coming to the fore.

“Then things like Ben Healy in the road race in the cycling. If you are winning one-day stage races in the world tour that is incredible. Add all those up, it’s a good game to play and you might have a different answer to the 12 I have. I don’t think we had 12 going into Tokyo.”