Gillick: Adeleke now perfectly poised for Paris

Olympian David Gillick with Mary O'Connor, Chief Executive Officer of the Federation of Irish Sport and Graham Russell.

David Gillick stopped short of an outright declaration that Rhasidat Adeleke should turn pro when asked last May.

He was clearly leaning towards the view that Tallaght’s track sensation should opt for the paid route one year out from Paris 2024. Gillick knew the toll that another year running NCAA college meets would have on her approaching the Olympics.

The flip side was his understanding that the University of Texas looked to be the perfect environment for her under coach Edrick Floral and alongside a host of other top-class athletes. Adeleke solved that conundrum by going pro but staying in Texas.

A win-win scenario.

The difference will be enormous. There will be no January start to the track season for Adeleke in 2024. No punishing schedule of indoors and outdoors through to the NCAA Championships mid-year. The focus now has shifted.

Consider that Adeleke finished just over half a second off the 400m bronze medal ultimately claimed by Sada Williams of Barbados at the World Championships in Budapest during the summer just gone.

That she was a week shy of her 21st birthday and the youngest of the eight finalists. That she finished fourth in the world after a college campaign in the States that had her run 29 races in four different distances across six months.

And that she had ran just twice in over two months before the Worlds in Hungary.

“Realistically, if she's looking at targeting an Olympic 400m final, or even a little bit more, into the podium places, you have to be selective and focused on what is the ultimate goal here and of course it's the Olympic Games,” said Gillick, launching the 2023 Volunteers in Sports Awards.

"It's a good decision for her in the fact that she's kept her focus, she's kept her environment and there are a few other pro athletes now in Dina Asher-Smith and people like that in a good group, so it's just not her training with collegiate athletes, she's now training with other athletes who are focused on Paris next summer.

"In sport, as we all know, you have a very short shelf life and you never know what's around the corner, so I think to grasp it now and go for it is the right attitude and that's what she's doing. Hopefully it will stand to her.” 

Gillick speaks from experience. He was just 23 when he won the second of his European Indoor 400m gold medals in Birmingham in 2007 and, while he continued to put in high-class performances, that was his last major medal before retiring eight years later.

It’s a decade now since he last competed and, while he has filled his days since with a family and an impressive portfolio career, it was last year before he reached again for the running shoes and tried his hand at the Dublin Marathon.

That first run was backed up in the latest edition a few weeks back and an improved time of 2:58.59, banked on the back of a more committed training regime, has given him the bug to run the distance again, both in his home city and elsewhere.

Then again, that depends on events.

Reports in the last week have mentioned grumbles about the route and the disruption it causes traffic in and around Merrion Square on the October Bank Holiday Sunday. Meetings have taken place to look at the map for the 2024 hosting.

Suggestions that the race could be shunted away from its city centre home don’t sit well with Gillick who spoke of the joy he found in running past the city’s landmarks, his mother’s homeplace in Terenure and the church where his grandparents had their funerals.

“It would be a shame to take all of that out of the city,” he explained. “And then also you have the communities and the people on the street. You’re going through Castleknock and it's five or six people deep.

“They’re great places. And even in your head you’re looking forward to those places. I would hate to see it be a kind of out-and-back sort of thing where you’re kind of going out for loads of miles and then you just swing back into it.”