Rhasidat Adeleke: 'It just wasn’t meant to be today but I think I still have so much more to give'

DISAPPOINTED: Rhasidat Adeleke was disappointed with her fourth place as she was aiming for a podium finsh. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

Kenny Bednarek sat down with Kenya’s Capital FM last year and made it plain that he was tired. Tired of being the silver specialist.

The American had finished second in the Tokyo Olympics, and in the 2022 World Championships, and he spoke of his intent to come at the dawning season with a new mentality and a hunger for nothing less than gold.

He finished seventh in the 100m here in Paris and, yep, second in the 200m. RTÉ’s David Gillick collared him afterwards and what could the Wisconsin native do but shrug and accept that, in the grand scheme of things, another silver was no bad thing.

Second is not the cruelest of fates.

Rhasidat Adeleke knows this.

Fourth at the World Championships in Budapest last year, the Tallaght woman sat in the same purgatorial spot again here on Friday night with a time of 49.28 that was 0.30 seconds off Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek in bronze.

Don’t think those earlier meets didn’t cross her mind.

“I was just staring at the screen for a minute, 'oh my God, no way I came fourth again'. I'm like, 'can someone just give me the medal?'” 

She said it with a laugh, and there was admirable perspective about health and gratitude, but the pain was raw.

When a positive spin was put before her, she didn’t jump at it.

“No, that’s not possible at the moment. Some people, I guess, come here to participate and just happen to be at the Olympics. Their goal is to become an Olympian. I knew what I was capable of, I was definitely looking at a podium.

“I definitely wouldn’t be happy coming fourth and my coach knows I could’ve got on that podium. It just wasn’t meant to be today but I think I still have so much more to give. We’ll just look forward to the future.” 

Adeleke is still only 21. It’s easy to forget that as she mixes it with the world’s best - most of them five or six years her elder - or when she stands remarkably poised in a post-race mixed zone only minutes later and absorbs the deluge of faces and questions.

There isn’t any guarantee that this is a starting block rather than a plateau.

Eamon Coghlan never did get that Olympic medal. Thomas Barr never did come as close to the podium again after that superb run for fourth in the final of the 400m hurdles in Rio in 2016. The sport is riddled with these cautionary tales.

This is not to see the glass as half-empty, merely to call the glass as it stands.

You wouldn’t fear it for her. Everything about Adeleke points to bigger and better to come. Usain Bolt and Michael Jordan are among her heroes and the basketball star, as everyone knows, has a great line about how even he lost far more than he won.

More apt maybe is another of Adeleke’s heroes, Shaunae Miller-Uibo, who didn’t even finish her 400m heat in her first Games in 2012, finished fourth in her first major global final, a World Championships 200m, then went on to rack up the podiums.

The Bahaman won the Olympic 400m title in 2016 and in 2020, and the World crown in Eugene in 2022. Adeleke will know all that. She spoke maturely here about the path still ahead of her, and how the experience of more races will steel her to that journey.

“Going forward it’s just about repetition and being able to put down a perfect race-plan that fits me.” 

Miller-Uibo is an interesting name drop for another reason. Beaten in to second at the 2019 World Championships in Doha by Salwa Eid Naser, she spoke later of her outrage that doping charges had been dropped at the time against the Bahraini runner.

Eid Naser ultimately served a two-year ban for four missed anti-doping tests over a 12-month period. She missed the Tokyo Games and the Worlds a year later, but she took silver here in Paris with a time of 48.53.

You could grit your teeth at that, but not Adeleke.

“Each athlete to their own. All I know is I do my very best. I train hard, I work hard and I hope every other athlete does the same.” 

She’s right. The holder of multiple national records, she blazed a trail for Irish athletics again just by standing on the starting line in the Stade de France for this final. She is a three-time European medallist, a three-time NCAA champion and a multiple champion at underage.

The future is hers to make of it what she wants. It starts on Saturday night after her confirmation that she will line up for the final of the women’s 4x400m relay final alongside Sophie Becker, Phil Healy and Sharlene Mawdsley.

“I’m hungrier than ever,” she said.