Class permanent as Sarah Healy still running on the rocky road

Sarah Healy took time to  convert junior potential into senior success but has found a way to get the best out of herself.

PERMANENT CLASS: Sarah Healy of Ireland during the official team training session ahead of the World Indoor Athletics Championships 2024 at Emirates Arena in Glasgow, Scotland. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

As a teenager, Sarah Healy used to hear all about how rocky a road it was to convert junior potential into senior success. Still, she had to live through it to believe it, to truly understand it.

She thinks back to when she was 17, carving up Irish record books at schools and underage level. “I ran some really fast times and thought, ‘Gosh, I’ve made this hard for myself now. I’ll have to keep getting better,’” she says. “But I wasn’t overtrained, I was still doing hockey and I thought, ‘That whole plateau people talk about isn’t going to happen to me.’ But it did.”