Whatever happened to Gina Akpe-Moses?

Athletics is a sport with a short memory. One sub-par season and the spotlight soon shifts to someone younger, someone faster.

Mon, 12 Feb, 2024 - 12:23

Cathal Dennehy

Maybe it’s distance, the fact she lives and trains in London – out of sight and so often out of mind for those in Irish athletics. Maybe it’s time, the fact her biggest achievements date back to 2017, 2018, when she was just a teenager. Whatever the reason, the question has been posed time and again in recent years: Whatever happened to Gina Akpe-Moses?

This is a sport with a short memory. One sub-par season and the spotlight soon shifts to someone younger, someone faster. Akpe-Moses will turn 25 this month, and it’s coming up on seven years since she won the European U-20 100m title, and almost six since she helped Ireland to 4x100m silver at the World U-20 Championships. The years since have been chaotic, inconsistent and sometimes cruel.

The reasons she didn’t truly kick on are varied. There were injuries, fleecing her of her natural ability. There was the game of musical chairs she played with training groups. There was tragedy. There was work. There was life.

Yet she’s still here – training, racing, dreaming. “I haven’t achieved what I wanted to achieve and until I do that, it’s very hard for me to go,” she says. “I have the ability to be back on the world stage, to be up there again. That’s what’s kept me going.”

Akpe-Moses was born in Lagos, Nigeria, her family moving to Ireland when she was two, settling in Athlone for a few years before moving to Dundalk, where her sprinting talent was discovered. She was 15 when her family moved again, this time to Birmingham, though she stayed loyal to Ireland, winning a silver medal at the 2015 European Youth Olympics. She followed that with silver at the European U-18s in 2016 before striking gold against Europe’s fastest teens over 100m in 2017. The following year, she capped a stellar junior career with world U-20 relay silver alongside Molly Scott, Ciara Neville, Patience Jumbo-Gula and Rhasidat Adeleke.

Few need reminding what Adeleke has done since, but the trajectory of the others illustrates how rocky the path is to senior success. Neville had a superb season in 2019 but a severe hamstring injury in 2021 scuppered her Olympic dream and she’s still trying to get back to that level. Scott had her best year in 2022 but a severe tear in her tibial tendon that summer left her in a similar boat. Jumbo-Gula hasn’t raced since 2020.

Then there’s Akpe-Moses, whose first year at senior level – in 2019 – was a decent one. She was part of the Irish team that came up one place shy of Olympic qualification at that year’s World Relays and she lowered her 100m PB to 11.45 a few weeks later. In 2020, she ran a 60m PB indoors while the pandemic shut down her outdoor season. In 2021, Akpe-Moses picked up an illness in the summer, and before she’d fully recovered she was “chucked into races”, which led to a hamstring injury. She went to the European U-23s that year and couldn’t break 12 seconds in the 100m heats. She moved coaches after that, then moved again a month later, settling on Mike McFarlane, a 1980 Olympian who was “a great person who always had the athlete’s interest at heart.”

Ireland's Gina Akpe-Moses, Phil Healy, Joan Healy and Ciara Neville after setting a new national record in the Women's 4x100m Heats in Berlin in 2018

Still, her progress stalled on the track. Akpe-Moses moved to London in 2018 to study psychology, and in 2022 she was on placement as a support worker on psychiatric wards, doing 12 or 13-hour shifts. “I wasn’t getting the right training in, I needed to make sure my finances were in the right places,” she says. “I didn’t race that season for those reasons.”

Last year, things finally began to click. She was healthy at last. She had a job, which she’s still doing, as an assistant psychologist with the NHS, her bosses giving her the flexibility to train as she needed. But then tragedy struck.

Akpe-Moses remembers the night at training last May when McFarlane complained of a fever and earache. No one thought it was serious, telling him to get well soon as they parted ways. “We had a race a couple of days later but he couldn’t attend, he was still under the weather. When we were at the competition we were informed he went to the ICU. Later, we were told he had a heart attack.”

McFarlane passed away at the age of 63, the impact only truly hitting Akpe-Moses at his funeral. “I was flooded in tears,” she says. “It was so much to deal with.” She considered him a father figure. They lived near each other so he’d pick her up on the way to training and they’d share many laughs on the way, McFarlane a friend as much as a coach. “I could trust what we were building,” she says. “We were going to do something great.”

But just like that, he was gone. As Akpe-Moses puts it: “Life has to keep going.” She joined a new coach for the remainder of the season and ran 11.50 for 100m, her fastest time since 2019. Then she switched coaches again. These days, she’s working under Clarence Callender at Calco Athletics. “I feel settled with him, like we understand each other. It’s making sense right now.”

This indoor season has been low key, though Akpe-Moses clocked 7.47 for 60m, her fastest time in four years. It’s not what she wants, but it’s progress. She has one more race indoors – a 60m in Newham on Wednesday – then the focus will switch outdoors. She’ll head to Florida for a training camp at the end of March and open her track season while there.

Mike McFarlane winning the Men's 100 Metres at Crystal Palace in 1979

Off the track, Akpe-Moses has applied for a doctorate and if successful, she’s looking forward to returning to university, given the freedom it will allow her to chase her athletics dream. “I do have a time frame I’m giving myself to achieve certain goals,” she says. “I’ve started off (my career) so well, I don’t want to finish on a low.”

What would be a good year? Akpe-Moses hopes to get back in an Irish vest at the Europeans in Rome and she’s also part of the 4x100m relay panel, which could earn a spot at the Olympics if they make it to the World Relays in the Bahamas in May. She’s ruling nothing out this season. “I want to be at the Olympics,” she says. “That’d be the ultimate.”

Looking back, she knows now there are things she could have done differently.

“I think what I didn’t have was the right support system around me after juniors. When I came to London I wasn’t in the right space and that definitely had an effect on the following years. I wish I had more information about the coaches here before I moved and spoke to more people, but everything is a lesson. It’s (about) having people around you who mentally and physically know what they should be saying, what they should be doing.”

What would she say to a young athlete in that position?

“It’s (about) standing strong, asking loads of questions to really understand what you’re doing, how it’s going to benefit you, and to think about things in the long run. Don’t stay in a place that isn’t really serving you. You should have certain expectations for yourself and if they’re unable to be met, it’s okay to leave.”

Such lessons were learned the hard way, but Akpe-Moses has absorbed them and there’s still lots of time, lots of track, to achieve what she wants. For now, she’s grateful to be healthy, happy and adamant once again that her best days are ahead. “I know I can do it,” she says. “I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again.”