'I think that there's a bigger score in me' - Kate O'Connor eyeing pentathlon breakthrough

The Dundalk natice will look to medal at this week’s European Indoors in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands.

Tue, 04 Mar, 2025 - 08:15

Cathal Dennehy

It was the biggest breakthrough of her career, a performance that moved Kate O’Connor from being a participant at major championships into the realm of a true contender.

In Tallinn, Estonia, last month, the 24-year-old Dundalk native obliterated the national pentathlon record, setting personal bests in all five events to rack up 4683 points. If she can repeat that tally at this week’s European Indoors in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, she could win Ireland its first ever senior multi-event medal at a major championships.

The big thing about that breakthrough? It felt like a natural, expected step forward. “Maybe it sounds a bit big-headed and I don't mean it that way, but I knew it was going to happen,” she says. “In each event, if I didn't score what I did I would have been a little bit underwhelmed. I'm very confident I can reproduce those performances because I think that's just where I am and where I'm sitting at a kind of standard.”

It ranks her second for the European Indoors and on Sunday, O’Connor will get a hectic day under way at 9am in the 60m hurdles. After the high jump, shot put and long jump, she’ll race the climactic 800m that evening. Ireland might never have won a major senior medal in the multis, but O’Connor has long seemed capable of changing that, having won heptathlon silver at the 2019 European U-20 Championships and silver for Northern Ireland at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

“I think that there's a bigger score in me, whether or not it'll come out, who knows?” she says. “I'm in good shape. I've been training really well so I'm just looking forward to going over there and putting it up against those other girls.” Like most multi-eventers, O’Connor had a slew of injuries over the years, missing the Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Europeans due to foot problems. But since the Paris Olympics last summer, where she finished 14th, she’s had a clean, consistent run. “Coming out of Paris, I’ve just been training really well, training quite smartly, and just doing what we need to do to get into that place we want to be. In Paris, although I really, really enjoyed it, an amazing first experience of an Olympic Games, I came away and thought I could be up there with those top girls. And I fully believe I’m capable of that.”

O’Connor splits her time between her native Dundalk and Belfast, where she’s doing a masters at Ulster University. She has multiple coaches for her various events, though her father Michael steers the overall ship. All went well during their recent three-week training camp in Tenerife to prepare for this weekend.

Of all the breakthroughs in Tallinn last month, her biggest was in the long jump, O’Connor smashing her PB with 6.16m. “It's always been an event that kind of has been a little bit, ‘Oh no, how many points am I going to lose?’ But this year we've made really good advancements and I've just been enjoying it.” With Olympic champion Nafi Thiam and world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson bypassing the event, the pentathlon favourite is 21-year-old Saga Vanninen of Finland, who beat O’Connor in Tallinn with 4843 points. With five events to deal with on Sunday, there’ll inevitably be ups and downs, but O’Connor is well used to that.

“There's five chances for things to go well and five chances for things to not go well. It's just really about taking one event at a time and keeping the pressure to its lowest. The biggest thing that people don’t realise is the emotional challenges of the event. If you run the hurdles and it goes amazingly you’re on this real high but then you’ve got to settle down and compete in the high jump. The high jump mightn’t go well and then you’re on a low. You’ve got to pick yourself back up then and go to the shot put. It can be very up-and-down which is really draining.”

She knows a medal is within reach, but fixating on that is a surefire way to sabotage her chance. “I like to just go into competitions and not put any pressure on myself, just turn up and perform,” she says. “I don't think people really look at me and think, ‘This girl is 100% going to medal.’ So I'm just looking to perform as well as I possibly can, and hopefully the outcome will be a good one.”