Adeleke absence diminishes Irish Worlds hopes, fears Heffernan

Rob Heffernan would love to pass on mantle as Ireland's last medalist at a World Athletics Championships

Champion race walker Rob Heffernan has organised a feast of one-mile racing along the Marina promenade in Cork city. Picture Chani Anderson

International matters first, then we’ll deal with local initiative.

The starting gun fires on the World Athletics Championships this Saturday. Ireland achieved a pair of fourth place finishes at the most recent edition two years ago in Budapest. Ireland also recorded a pair of fourth place finishes at last summer’s Paris Games.

Two of those fourth-place finishes belonged to Rhasidat Adeleke. Of the remaining two, she was central to the women’s 4x400m relay team being just .18 of a second off the Olympic podium.

Sandwiched in between those two global meets was the 2025 European Championships. Ireland returned home from Rome with four medals. Three of them again bore Adeleke involvement.

The unaccounted fourth-place finish from the 2023 Worlds and fourth medal from last year’s Europeans belong to Ciara Mageean.

Because of illness and injury, neither Mageean nor Adeleke will toe the line in Tokyo. Irish aspirations are significantly altered for their absence. Adeleke pulling an early curtain on her season has a two-pronged impact. Beyond the individual 400m, relay ambitions have been reeled in in the knowledge she won’t be collecting the baton on the second leg to split 48-something.

Rob Heffernan and his 50km racewalk gold from Moscow 12 years ago remains the last Irish medal at a World Championships. He’d love for that mantle to pass on, but with Rhasidat recuperating rather than competing, he can’t see it happening.

“It is a hard one with Rhasidat gone,” Rob begins. “She’s a huge loss. To be honest, she papers over a lot of cracks because she's so talented. She's going to be a big loss to the women's relay team, as well.” 

None of the three medals Ireland won at this year’s European Indoors belonged to the 400m sprinter. They belonged to Sarah Healy (3,000m gold), Mark English (800m bronze), and Kate Connor (pentathlon).

In a breakthrough year of seismic proportions, O’Connor has since captured World Indoor pentathlon silver and World University heptathlon gold, improving her own Irish record in the latter to 6,487 points. She’s ranked fifth going into the heptathlon competition beginning on Friday week.

Rob extolled the 24-year-old’s major competition temperament. It’s a trait he wants replicated by the rest of her Irish teammates.

“Kate is our biggest prospect. By all accounts, she's after getting her training right over a longer than usual season. If she nails all her disciplines, she’ll be top six. We could dream of medals, but I think if we're going to have a heptathlete like Kate being competitive in the multi-events, it's going to capture the imagination of the nation because she has so many years in front of her.

“When you get good, people will pull off you left, right, and centre. But it is the really good athletes who’ll keep their eye on the ball for the Championships. Kate has done that. She has really delivered this year already.” 

Looking across the rest of the 28-strong Irish team, the London Olympic bronze medalist is hopeful of final involvement for Sarah Healy and the mixed 4x400m relay squad, while also believing that if Mark English “nails” his semi-final, there could be a historic 800m final appearance for the 32-year-old Donegal doctor.

Much closer to home, and on the eve of the World Championships this Friday, Rob has organised a feast of one-mile racing along the Marina promenade in Cork city. The objective is to see a first sub-four-minute mile on the roads of Cork.

The first of six races - there will be the sanctuary runners mile, the Daily mile, the U18 boys and girls mile, the senior women’s mile, and senior men - goes off at 5.30pm, starting at the Lee Rowing club and finishing in Blackrock village, where there will be music, food, and conversation with Irish track legends Derval O’Rourke and Sonia O'Sullivan.

Part of the men’s field are Italian Enrico Riccobon, who has clocked 3:40 for 1,500m, and Romanian Cristian Gabriel Voicu who has a 1:47 800m best.

“Having seen mile races in big American cities, the promenade is such a beautiful area of Cork that I said to myself, I want to have a mile down here and try and get the first sub-four-minute mile ever run in Cork. Showcase Cork and our love of sport in Cork, and we are hoping to do that around an iconic distance.

“This is the first year of it and for kids to see international athletes running down the Marina at that pace, that should have a massive positive effect and harness that huge appetite for athletics at the moment.”