Fortnight before winning world bronze, Kate O'Connor was struggling to walk

Earlier this month, Kate O'Connor developed an issued with her knee which meant she was struggling to walk. An Achilles tendon issued then followed

HIGH HOPES: It's a measure of how far Kate O'Connor's expectations for herself have risen that she was somewhat disappointed to leave the World Indoor Athletics Championship with just a bronze medal in the pentathlon. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

Up until the last two weeks, it had been a dream preparation for Kate O’Connor, who smashed her personal bests in two events at the nationals at the start of March.

But a week after that, things started to go awry. First there was an issue with her knee, which she aggravated while doing a stride in training, and she was left with a nagging pain stemming from a defect in the cartilage. All of a sudden, it left her debilitated.

“I literally couldn’t walk,” she said shortly after claiming pentathlon bronze at the World Indoor Championships in Torun. O’Connor has known about the defect for a long time but said this was the first time it forced a layoff from training. 

“It was just really unfortunate timing,” she said. “It’s been really stressful. I have a cartilage defect and it essentially got caught. It’s something I deal with and it’s something I’ll forever deal with, unless I get it operated on, but we’re erring on the side of, ‘Let’s not do [surgery].’” 

It meant that just two weeks out from the event she’d been targeting for several months, O’Connor was suddenly a doubt to even make the start line. 

“It was really awkward whenever the team was announced and I was like, ‘I can't really walk right now,’” she said. “So I was kind of quiet for a week, but I got myself back on track.” 

However, soon another issue arose, an Achilles tendon problem that hampered her during the final week before she claimed her second world indoor medal in successive years. “It was just a lot of things coming in but again, my team worked really hard behind the scenes to try to get me in the best possible shape,” she said.

O’Connor was aware that she was the leading medal hope for the Irish team and she knew how people were hyping her chances in the media. “Yes, there was definitely pressure,” she admitted. “I don’t really feel pressure, but it comes out in subconscious ways and that’s probably what I was dealing with over the last while, and that’s something new.

“I tried to keep myself in the mindset of just going out and do what you do day in, day out. I know other people are expecting and there’s a lot of pressure from the outside, but I ultimately put the most on myself.” 

It’s a measure of the 25-year-old’s ambition and ability that she wasn’t quite jumping for joy about a world bronze medal, but when she reflected on the journey of late, O’Connor had to remind herself to bask in this achievement.

“Is it awful that I'm a little bit disappointed in myself?” she smiled. “I mean, I came here and I wanted to win the gold. I suppose that's the competitiveness of me coming out.

“I have to check myself a little bit and say, ‘Come on, Kate. You just did a national record. You scored around 100 points more than you did last year, and you came away with another global medal.’”