Sarah Torrans takes the path less travelled to Olympic goal

“I chose hockey at the end of the day just because it’s a team sport and athletics was very competitive," she said.

Wed, 13 Dec, 2023 - 08:20

Brendan O'Brien

A unique buzz attaches to any ticket for an elite underage sporting event. An understanding that a future star, maybe even a generational talent, could be on hand but not yet fully revealed in all its glory.

A heady cocktail of promise and uncertainty. Tullamore ten years ago was a case in point.

Of the hundreds of athletes who competed at the All-Ireland Schools Track and Field Championships that summer, eight would wear singlets for Ireland at the delayed 2020 Olympic Games. Another would wear green in Tokyo, but not on the track or on the road.

Sarah Torrans was that outlier. The Dubliner won a bronze behind Sharlene Mawdsley in the Junior Girls’ 200m in 2013. Eight years later and she was part of the Ireland women’s hockey team that fell just shy of making it past the pool stages in the Japanese capital.

Quite the journey.

“I chose hockey at the end of the day just because it’s a team sport and athletics was very competitive and I knew I had a better chance of getting into the hockey scene and getting internationals caps that way.

“The team aspect was very strong for me,” she explains now, as she bids for a second Games. “I just really enjoyed it from a young age but the speed I got from athletics really stood to me and my game so a lot of benefits from that.”

The talent on show a decade ago bordered on ridiculous. Louise Shanahan, Nadia Power, Síofra Cléirigh-Buttner, Phil Healy, Eilish Flanagan, Marcus Lawlor, Andrew Coscoran and David Kenny all ran (or walked) at the last Olympics. Consider too the Junior Girls’ 100m.

Mawdsley and Molly Scott, both of whom came close to making the last Games and are now gunning for Paris, finished first and third. Gina Akpe-Moses, who would win a gold and three silvers at World and European underage levels, came in second.

More than just Torrans has pivoted since.

James French has played rugby for Munster and Ulster since winning the Junior shot putt, Jason Foley (silver in the 100m Intermediate Hurdles) has won an All-Ireland with Kerry, and Niamh Cotter (silver in the Girls’ Intermediate 3000m) became a senior Cork footballer.

Torrans actually earned two Schools medals for herself before choosing hockey but she still bumps into some of the people she competed against back then - Mawdsley, Scott, Ciara Neville - at the Sports Institute on the Sport Ireland Campus.

“It was great competing with them and it’s great to see that age group coming through.”

As for Torrans, her focus right now is next month’s Olympic qualifying tournament in Valencia and a warm-up invitational tournament at the same venue that gets underway on Saturday.

Among the teams they’ll meet either side of the New Year are Belgium. Ranked fourth in the world, they will be favourites to take one of the three spots available for the 2024 Games but three others – GB, Spain and Korea - sit higher in the pecking order than Ireland.

Canada and Malaysia aren’t exactly a mile off the Irish in ranking status terms either and the cold hard fact of it is that Ireland will have to beat one, if not two, top-ten team to make it to the big Olympic ball for the second time in a row.

“We have done that recently. We beat Spain twice there in two friendly games at the start of [November] and they are a top-ten team. So we know it will be a huge challenge but we are looking forward to it.”

The team sits at an interesting juncture. Their fifth-place finish at the EuroHockey Championships in early autumn equalled the side’s best ever at that event and yet captain Katie Mullan couldn’t help but grumble about their efforts after a closing 1-1 draw with Italy that booked their place in the last qualifier.

The squad has changed since Tokyo with a clutch of veterans moving on and new blood filtering in but eight of that Olympic collective featured against the Italians and two more, Anna O’Callaghan and Chloe Watkins, have since returned to the flock.

Familiar challenges abound. Ireland’s players are semi-professionals which means training three times a week in Abbotstown when they’re not abroad prepping or competing, and they don’t yet compete in the FIH Pro League either.

They have a chance of rectifying that latter issue at the Nations League in May but Torrans, who has to complete her last six weeks of nursing placement before graduating, will admit that Paris is the main repository for their thoughts and dreams.

“It’s really important to qualify for these tournaments back-to-back, so that is the main aim.”