Sharlene Mawdsley's far-from-linear road to the pinnacle of the sporting world
RUNNING FREE: Sharlene Mawdsley during the Team Ireland Paris 2024 team announcement for Athletics at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Pic: Sam Barnes, Sportsfile
he path is never linear. The road to her first Olympics is one that’s zigged and zagged, that’s chewed her up and spat her out more times than she cares to remember. But now Sharlene Mawdsley is finally here: at the pinnacle of the sporting world.
She hoped, and thought, this would happen back in 2021.
Mawdsley had helped Ireland secure qualification for the Tokyo Games in the mixed 4x400m relay but then things went awry in the final selection race — nationals — where she underperformed and stepped off the track entering the home straight.
She and Rhasidat Adeleke — two of the figureheads of this year’s team — were both left at home, Mawdsley having to watch from afar as the Irish team powered into an Olympic final.
“It was awful,” she says. “Like, it was honestly one of the worst times in my life. I know people might think that’s dramatic, but you put everything into this sport and I felt so hard done by because I don’t believe that team would have qualified if I hadn’t been on it that day (at the World Relays) in Poland.
Then to fall out on the last race was the biggest (blow) of all.”
She watched the Games at home in Newport, Co Tipperary, rising early with her mother to follow every run, jump and throw — cheering on the Irish athletes.
But missing out left a wound that took an awful long time to heal. She was at that crossroads age then at 23 when her career could have gone either way: Give up or get better. Make your choice.
But she’d been there before. A gifted teenage prodigy, Mawdsley’s career ran into several roadblocks during her college years in UL. She stopped running entirely in 2018 following a string of injuries. It was a coach from Sligo, Roddy Gaynor, who convinced her to return. He suggested she link up with Gary Ryan, a two-time Olympian who has coached her ever since.
“It was either hang up my spikes or give it everything I have over the next few years and that’s what I decided — the latter.”
In the years since, she kept chipping away at her 400m best until it had the look of world-class about it: 51.70 in 2021; 51.09 in 2023; 50.72 in 2024.
Then there were those relay performances, Mawdsley repeatedly rising to a new level in various 4x400s, running unencumbered by tension or overthinking, which have sometimes scuppered her individual chances.
As she was improving physically, Mawdsley knew she also had to work on her mind. She linked up with psychologist Jo-Anne Browne ahead of the 2022 season. Before, she’d been “going into a lot of races underprepared, not due to a lack of training but on the mental side,” adding: “I was almost beat before I got to the start line.”
But Browne taught her about regulating emotions, channelling nervous energy, balancing her mind.
“The biggest one for me is that you run a race on Saturday and you forget about it on Sunday,” she says. “I used to genuinely think it was end of the world if I had a bad performance, but I don’t think that way anymore because I know it’s not the reality. At the end of the day, no one really cares five minutes after the race.”
These days, she doesn’t need to check in with Browne as often, only if something is amiss or on the build-up to big events when the pressure is highest, getting refreshers on what to do in those crucial final minutes, hours or days.
“She’s helped me with breathing techniques that bring me back to the present,” says Mawdsley. “That’s really helped me in my warm-up, in the call room, when I’m on the track.”
In Budapest last summer, Mawdsley enjoyed a stunning World Championships, helping Ireland to sixth place in the mixed 4x400m, eighth in the women’s 4x400m and reaching a 400m semi-final individually. Six races in nine days.
At that level, it takes an awfully heavy toll. Not long after the Championships, she developed a stress reaction in her knee — a pre-cursor to a fracture — and was forced to take 10 weeks off. Going into Olympic year, that left her a ball of stress, feeling she was already two steps behind.
“The first week I refused to do anything because I thought the world was over,” she laughs. “Then I went on the bike, did everything on the cross trainer. I probably trained harder in that time than if I was on the track. I was giving 120% every single session because I knew I was missing out on the small things.”
She started back running in November, booking a training camp in Tenerife to lift her mood as she inched forward in fitness week after week, month after month. She shocked herself in her first race back in February, clocking 52.04, just a tenth of a second outside her best.
She ran the same time to win the national title then went to the World Indoors in Glasgow in March, qualifying for the 400m final before being swiftly disqualified for obstruction as she overtook Austria’s Susanne Gogl-Walli entering the final turn.
Two days later, she channeled the fury over that decision into the relay, helping Ireland to fifth in the women’s 4x400m final.
Then there was Rome, and that magical week at the Stadio Olimpico when Mawdsley and many of her teammates became household names. Mixed relay gold, women’s 4x400m silver, and an individual 400m final.
She produced the performance of her life on the anchor leg in the opening mixed relay, sitting and kicking away to glory — a run that will live on through the spine-tingling commentary by RTÉ’s Greg Allen.
“Greg stepped up,” says Mawdsley. “It was so raw, so emotional. It definitely brought me to a few tears.”
But the 400m final was one she got wrong, Mawdsley went out hard, chasing the medals, then faded to eighth, the run not a reflection of her form. “I just completely gave up, lost the head,” she said at the time. “It was so unprofessional.”
Still, in her first major individual final, it was a key lesson in running free — the way she does in relays. What does that mean?
“It’s literally when I just don’t think about it,” she says. “My back straight is usually good but sometimes I don’t transfer that through the whole race which is what cost me a lot (in Rome). Paris is everything I’ve ever dreamed of, so I think I’ll be running free there.”
ome was such a high that there was always, inevitably, going to be a comedown. Mawdsley, like many of her teammates, fell ill in the week after, and was still on antibiotics when she lined up in Madrid nine days later, keen to get back in the racing groove, not allowing herself to bask in the glow of the Europeans with the Olympics right around the corner. But she refused to engage too strongly with the idea of Paris until she knew it was 100% certain.
In recent months, the Olympic Federation of Ireland reached out many times with requests for various forms she had to fill out: kit sizes, opening ceremony uniform measurements, all that jazz.
Mawdsley went as far as uploading the mandatory passport photo and ignored the rest. Tokyo had left too big a scar to tempt fate.
“When I ran the (qualifying) standard for the individual, I thought my life would be great and it was done. But honestly, you have to stay injury-free, there’s a lot of other factors. It wasn’t all rainbows. The last two weeks, not having any confirmation of anyone telling me, it brought up some PTSD.”
While at an airport in the Netherlands, she got the email to say she was selected for Paris. And now it’s all starting to feel very real.
The hype machine has kicked into overdrive, and Mawdsley can’t often stop for petrol without being asked to take a picture with strangers. But still, the blinkers must stay on until the Games are behind her.
She will compete in the mixed 4x400m at the start of the athletics programme (August 2-3), the individual 400m in the middle (Aug 5-9) and the women’s 4x400m at the end (Aug 9-10). Individually, she hopes to lower her 400m PB from 50.72 to 50.5 or below — do that and she knows she’ll get to the semi-final at least.
As for the mixed relay, Ireland will have a medal chance if Adeleke chooses to run, though that’s no guarantee given she may want to save her energies for the 400m, where the Dubliner has a huge chance.
Mawdsley has “no information on the relay situation” but whatever the line-ups, she’ll show up for every round of every event. “You could put me out as many times as you want,” she says.
She knows the expectations are higher now than at previous championships, given all they’ve achieved, but these days Mawdsley can be aware of that and not feel burdened by it.
She’ll turn 26 on the final weekend of the Games, and she hopes to be running in an Olympic 4x400m final on her birthday.
She goes to Paris fitter than ever, wiser than ever. Knowing the road she’s taken to get here, every experience will be savoured — on and off the track. “It was everything I worked for,” she says. “So why would I not enjoy it?”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
