After years out, Kerry native has sporting gaze fixed firmly on the track

Killarney's Sarah Leahy heads to this weekend's National Indoor Championships as the second fastest Irish woman over 60m this year.

Tue, 18 Feb, 2025 - 06:22

Cathal Dennehy

Just when she thought she was out, they pulled her back in. It was May 2021, and Sarah Leahy’s sprinting career looked like it was a thing of the past. The Killarney athlete hadn’t raced in over two years, letting her spikes gather dust as she focused on Gaelic football and her engineering studies at the University of Limerick.

But then she tuned in to the World Relays from Poland, watching as the Irish women’s 4x200m team finished second and the Irish mixed 4x400m team finished seventh, thereby securing Olympic qualification. Leahy had grown up racing many of those athletes, sometimes beating them.

“I just got this kind of realisation like, ‘I really want to do that, that looks so much fun,’” she says.

“It made me realise it was possible. I wanted to do that, to go back, give it a go.”

And so she did, resuming training and qualifying for the national 100m final about eight weeks later. In 2022, Leahy earned a spot on the Irish 4x100m team and raced at the World Championships in Oregon.

With her studies completed at UL, she moved to Dublin and joined the group in Tallaght overseen by Daniel Kilgallon, which has produced Rhasidat Adeleke, Israel Olatunde and many other top sprinters. She progressed rapidly, smashing her PB to win the Irish indoor 60m title in 2023 in 7.30 seconds – a time that puts her joint fourth on the Irish all-time list.

“I didn't expect how quickly I would have improved,” she says. “It was the best decision I made (to return).”

Leahy was 10 when she started athletics, joining Spa Muckross AC (now Killarney Valley). But Gaelic football typically won the tug-of-war for her talent during her teenage years.

“As much as I wanted to balance both, football just kind of kept coming out on top,” she says. “You can't miss training, there's a whole team (depending on you).”

These days, her sporting gaze is fixed firmly on the track, and life has a different rhythm. Leahy now works as a technician with Winthrop Technologies, a construction company based in Ballymount, Dublin, and her days are long. She wakes up at 7am and after work and training are in the books, she usually lands home around 9.30pm.

“Shower, eat, bed, repeat,” she laughs. “So interests outside of athletics are quite small. There's not a lot of time for anything else, but that's what we chose to do, and we love it. So I'm happy.”

Leahy, who has a 100m best of 11.54, hasn’t hit the required level to get funding from Athletics Ireland and so training must be juggled with full-time work, the Kerry native often taking unpaid leave to travel abroad for races or training camps. She raced in Denmark and Belgium in recent weeks, though her season’s best is the 7.35 she ran for 60m in Dublin last month.

That makes her the second quickest Irishwoman in 2025, behind only the US-based Lucy-May Sleeman, who will not compete at the 123.ie National Indoor Championships in Abbotstown this weekend. Former champions Molly Scott and Ciara Neville will be there, however. At 25, they’re the same age as Leahy, two of the peers she watched ascend to international class in recent years.

Last April, Leahy got a close-up look at the world’s best during a training camp with Kilgallon’s group in Florida. She met Noah Lyles, “a pretty chill guy”, wishing him the best of luck on the road to Paris where he won Olympic gold over 100m. She also got to know China’s Su Bingtian, one of the best starters in sprinting history. “It was an unbelievable experience,” she says. “I'd love to go back.”

As she looks to this weekend’s 60m showdown, she feels ready to produce her best. “The body is feeling fresh, the gym is going well, I'm the strongest I have ever been and fingers crossed that transfers to the track. The competition is fierce. It's going to be a really tough field and that's what we want in Irish athletics. You want everyone to be at the top of the game, and you want the competition to be hard. That will push you and push everyone else.”