Ciara Neville finally back on track after five years of misery

The Limerick sprinter last competed at a major championship in 2021. But her body is ready for a Polish return this weekend.

Thu, 19 Mar, 2026 - 07:15

Cathal Dennehy

“I always had faith it would come back,” says Ciara Neville. “I don’t think I’d have got through four or five years of misery if I didn’t think I could come out the other side and push past where I was before.”

In many ways, 2021 feels like a lifetime ago. That was the last time the Limerick sprinter competed at a major championship, lining up at the 2021 European Indoors in Torun, Poland, blissfully unaware of how just a few months later, her career would be under serious threat.

But on Saturday morning, the 26-year-old will be back at the same venue, the Kujawsko-Pomorska Arena, for the 60m heats at the World Indoor Championships.

“When something is taken away from you for so long, it’s just really exciting to get back,” she says. “The body is feeling really good, the season has gone really well so far, so I’m excited to go out and see what I can do.”

At first, the niggle she felt in her hamstring tendon in June 2021 didn’t seem like a big deal. Neville was 21, on course to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics, and she raced on ahead of the qualifying deadline, hoping to fulfil that lifelong dream.

But it soon morphed into a nightmare. She had partially torn the conjoint tendon off the bone, and was forced to watch the Games from afar. She initially went the conservative route in her recovery, getting PRP (platelet-rich plasma) injections and rehabbing, but early in 2022 it wasn’t much better. She went under the knife in April that year and it was six months before she took her first, tentative steps back running.

Neville returned to competition at the end of the 2023 season, over two years on from her last race, but the clock told the story of her time away, as it did in 2024 as she came up well short of the 11.33-second 100m she’d run to win the national senior title when aged just 19.

“When I first got back running, it felt like I was running with someone else's leg. It just didn't feel like it was a part of me. Nothing was moving smoothly. It just took a lot longer than anticipated to get back sprinting. We couldn't get the strength back in the right leg to match the left leg, which obviously is really frustrating as a sprinter.”

By her side, through it all, was her coach Noelle Morrissey – a former elite hurdler whose Olympic dreams had also been scuppered by injury. She had brought Sarah Lavin through a similar rocky patch in her early 20s, eventually leading Lavin to the Irish 100m hurdles record and to two world indoor finals. She was a big reason Neville never lost belief.

“Without her, I don’t think it would have been possible,” says Neville. “She really picked me up on the days that were hard and she's just great for the confident boost or just telling you where you can improve. It was so important to have the group down at Emerald (AC) as well, to push me on. All those training sessions where I was suffering, they were picking me up off the ground – literally.”

Late last summer, Neville finally started to feel like her old self and lowered her 100m time to 11.42. She had a clean, consistent winter block of training and was eyeing up the World Indoors from months in advance. “People probably thought I was being a bit delusional, but you have to be sometimes.”

Neville was just 17 when she ran her previous 60m best of 7.30, which had equalled the Irish senior record at the time. But in Glasgow in late January, she finally surpassed that mark, clocking 7.28, which she later lowered to 7.26 before winning the national 60m title in 7.27.

“To have broken my PB after nine years of trying and waiting, it definitely felt really sweet,” she says. “But I know there's so much more there when I can put all the pieces together properly.”

She hopes to do that this weekend. Lavin will be in Torun alongside her, competing in the 60m hurdles, while Morrissey will be there as a team coach. Neville knows how cutthroat the standard is in global sprinting. Success will be measured first and foremost against her previous self.

Her goal?

“To go out in the first round and do a PB,” she says. “To get under 7.20 would to be really nice, obviously. The national record (7.15) would be extra sweet. But I just want to go out and nail the first round, qualifying for the semi-finals and then just see how far up the scoreboard I can place. Everything is feeling really good. The body is ready to go.”