How Sarah Healy stopped her mind from sabotaging her body

For Sarah Healy, a crossroads was reached in 2022. Much has changed since that Munich disaster.

Ireland’s Sarah Healy celebrates with her 3000m European Athletics Indoor Championships gold medal. Pic: ©INPHO/Morgan Treacy

There’s only so many hits you can take. So many times you can walk off the track disillusioned about a sub-par run at a major championships. Suffer enough of those and you’ll eventually be backed into a corner with two choices: to give up or start fighting back.

For Sarah Healy, that crossroads was reached a few years ago. She was just 21 when she raced at the European Championships in Munich in 2022, but that event went the same way as the three previous major track championships she’d raced: with a performance devoid of her true, undeniable class, her mind sabotaging her body.

“I just decided to check out – again,” she said at the time, that last word carrying so much frustration. “Obviously, it was terrible.” Healy said she struggled “a lot mentally” on the big stage, adding: “It’s like my energy just goes. It’s like I don’t care when I’m racing, even though I care so much.” 

But that was then, and this is now.

Two and a half years later, the Dubliner is the European Indoor 3000m champion, the first Irish female gold medallist ever at the event, having run Sunday’s final with an assured confidence, coasting through the first 14 laps before picking off her chief rival in the home straight like a skilled assassin.

Much has changed since Munich. It wasn’t long after that event when, with her studies completed at UCD, she moved abroad to join an elite training group in Wigan overseen by coach Trevor Painter and his wife, former elite athlete Jenny Meadows. The move was the suggestion of her longtime coach Eoghan Marnell, who’d done a superb job nurturing her vast talent to that point.

“It’s lower mileage, higher intensity,” says Healy of the adjustment in training philosophy. “There’s no holding back, you come to training ready to push yourself, ready to hurt.” 

She trains alongside Keely Hodgkinson, the Olympic 800m champion, and Georgia Hunter Bell, the Olympic 1500m bronze medallist. “They push me in all the areas I need. I’ve been able to work on my weaknesses with them. Having a group made it more fun, and I changed the way I train. I’ve become more professional, and it feels easier to do it when you have a team around you.” 

Physically, the progress has been steady, consistent, but mentally, her victory at the European Indoors last Sunday was one giant leap. But it was a process that required a hundred small steps.

A few years back, Healy began working with psychologist Kate Kirby at the Sport Ireland Institute, and these days she works with Sam Porter in the UK. Both taught her a lot about how to handle that swell of nerves on the big stage. So did her world-class training partners.

“I have some strategies, things that work for me,” she says. “It really helps to keep things light, chatting to people, having a bit of fun beforehand. It just takes time. You learn things that work and don’t work. I’ve been learning from the people around me, the people I train with. I tried to have a bit more fun with it this season, realise there’s no pressure on me.” 

One of the things she tells herself now? “It’s just running. Taking this pressure off that you put on yourself, it’s a lot more fun when you do that.”

Going into the Euro Indoors, she refused to envision any medal moments, only the actions that might lead to it. “I’ve been really strict with myself. Anytime my mind goes to that feeling, I’ve been like, ‘Stop. Think about the process.’ 

“Putting those outcome goals creates a lot of pressure for me, so I’ve really tried to avoid thinking about how it’d feel. I wanted a medal, I knew I could get one, but I also knew if it didn’t work out I was going to be fine and I’d get on with things. The world goes on.” 

Part of the progress required changing the narrative, not allowing a poor performance to develop outsized importance or to say anything about who she is.

“It’s hard if you put that label on yourself as someone who underperforms at championships to take that off,” she says. “But Eoghan (Marnell) said to me, ‘Everyone has their own challenges.’ And I’m pretty lucky, so far, that I’m not injury prone, I respond well to training. So the mental aspect was what I needed to work on and you don’t get given everything. That’s been my challenge.” 

That label, I suggest, must now surely have been left behind her in Apeldoorn?

“Definitely,” she says. “I just felt so different this indoor season, it felt different today. This is such a weird feeling, not having this massive weight on my shoulders.” 

Healy’s story is a common one in athletics, but what’s rare is finding athletes so honest and open about the mental battles faced at the sport’s top end. “I’m definitely not fully there, it’s still a work in progress,” she admits. “But that (race) was a big step.” 

Healy won European medals at U-18, U-20 and U-23 level, but the bridge to emulating that at senior level was substantial. What advice would she give to young athletes struggling with similar issues?

“Whenever people get asked that, they always say to ‘enjoy it’ which is like, ‘Yeah, OK,’” she laughs. “But you have to expect it not to all go smoothly. It’s important to find a balance with who you are as a person and an athlete – that makes it easier to navigate the ups and the downs so that when it doesn’t go right, you’re still OK. Find a good team around you. And be patient.” 

It took a lot of hurt to develop such wisdom. But now that she’s got it, this might only be the beginning.