New York ballerina helped Molly Scott through rare injury

There have been dark, dark days over the past year as Scott managed her comeback, trying to keep the blinkers on and not get distracted by those faring better

Sat, 29 Jul, 2023 - 07:15

Cathal Dennehy

Warren Buffett used to say it takes 20 years to build a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it. The US business mogul wasn’t talking about sprinting, but the principle still applies in a career where years of fastidious toil can fall to pieces in seconds.

In July last year, Molly Scott was doing one of her final sessions before the World Championships in Oregon, where she was due to compete in the 4x100m relay, when she felt a sharp, sudden pain in her lower leg. She’d torn her posterior tibial tendon.

“It was a 17cm tear so I had to stop everything, take six months off,” she says. “It’s taken quite a long time to come back. It’s been incredibly difficult.”

The Carlow sprinter wasn’t allowed to run a step until December, and then it was just jogging. She was back sprinting by February, jumping into one indoor 60m race to blow the cobwebs off, clocking 7.41 at the nationals. She had a qualifier for the European Indoors in March but, given how far she was off her PB of 7.19, she didn’t fancy being a championship tourist. “I knew it wasn’t going to get much better,” she says.

She was healthy in the spring, having rehabbed extensively with physio Ciara McCallion at the Sport Ireland Institute, where the medical team had never seen that injury before, such was its rarity. The dearth of information online led Scott to seek out others who’d walked this path. She searched the tendon on TikTok, discovering a professional ballerina in New York, Candy Tong, who’d experienced the same tear.

“She was the only person in the world that I could find with the same injury. Hers was a bit more extensive than mine. It took her 18 months to return to studio and perform again. I made a connection with her, we still stay in touch.”

After recovering her health, a new challenge arrived for Scott’s athletics career. With her final exams for a barrister-at-law degree in King’s Inn taking place between January and May, it left her precious little time, or energy, to train.

“I talked about pressure I experienced in sport and how difficult that has been but, honestly, nothing could have prepared me for that degree. It was not a sprint, it was most definitely a marathon. There was about seven weeks of back-to-back exams and studying. I was getting four hours’ sleep and to train on top of that, there was no balance.”

After missing most of March and April, she got back on track in May, and this weekend’s National Championships in Santry will be her first race of the season. Scott will race the 100m, unsure of what to expect. What would make her content?

“Well, the athlete in me, I’m not thinking I just want to run down the track, I’m going out there to try win,” she says. “But I really don’t know what to expect from my body. In training I’m finally back running my pre-injury times, but it will be different in a race. I’ll be much more nervous (than usual).”

There have been dark, dark days over the past year as Scott managed her comeback, trying to keep the blinkers on and not get distracted by those faring better.

“You do sit there thinking, ‘Why me? Why has this happened to me?’ But every athlete has to deal with a significant injury. I was seeing all my peers all summer, who I would have been up there with, not always beating, sometimes beating, and they’re running Olympic qualification standards. That was the hard part because I felt so behind. I still feel behind but I had to realise it did all happen for a reason. I came out much stronger on the other side.”

She now sees her physio weekly and while her mother, Dee, remains her coach, they’ve added the input of strength and conditioning specialist John Cleary. “I now have a team around me now to help me get to Paris.”

Scott will give athletics her full focus ahead of next year’s Olympics, aware that a legal career simply requires too much to move in tandem with her track dreams. “That kind of work, it’s like athletics, you have to give 100 per cent, if you want to make a name for yourself. It has to be all in.”

That’s how she is now with sprinting, seeing just where her talent will take her. She’s still only 23. There’s lots of road ahead. The qualification window for the Paris Olympics opened earlier this month and Scott could secure a place there with enough fast times at the right races. That journey begins in Santry this weekend: “For the next year, I’m going to go all guns blazing towards Paris qualification.”

Irish Athletics Championships: Live, 6pm Sunday: RTÉ 2. Live stream, Saturday and Sunday: Athletics Ireland YouTube.