With O'Connor ready to pounce, can Irish metric-milers add to medal haul?

Kate O'Connor of Ireland celebrates.Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

The metric mile. The old reliable.

Ireland’s most medaled distance on the European stage. From 23 podium waves, the three-and-three-quarter-lap event is responsible for six.

The current medal haul in Birmingham - thanks to 22 glorious minutes on Thursday night - stands at two. If the final tally is to match the four from Rome two summers ago, then the metric-milers must again step up.

Barring disaster, the utterly dependable Kate O’Connor will increase the count to three. It is then onto the 1,500m family to find a fourth.

At 9.07pm on Saturday evening, Andrew Coscoran will toe the line for his third consecutive European Championship final. Add in his two indoor final appearances from 2021 and ‘25, and this is a fifth in all on the continent.

The 30-year-old is the Irish record holder over 1,500m and the mile. He’s also national record holder over 3,000m and 5,000m indoors. When you consider this country’s roll call of middle-distance icons, that hefty collection of unmatched times is a fine, fine feat.

But as Mark English articulated during Thursday’s green-themed evening session at the Alexander Stadium, it is the thought of medals, far more than times, that drive you, that bring you back, that dominate your upstairs from the moment you return in September to start a fresh season’s training.

Coscoran has no medal. He has yet to come properly close to medalling.

Fifth at the bell in last year’s 3,000m European indoor decider, he was unable to elevate himself thereafter. He instead dropped to sixth. Where podium waves are concerned, that’s as close as it’s been.

With no King Jakob in the event, one additional podium spot has opened up.

Mind you, there’s still reigning World Champion Isaac Nader, 2022 World Champion Jake Wightman, 2023 World Indoor bronze Narve Gilje Nordås, and three-time European indoor medalist Azeddine Habz, among many others.

The Portuguese Nader is proof plenty of how 1,500m major championship finals can conclude without rhyme or reason. 

His late surge, from sixth back, stunned the global elite in Tokyo 12 months ago. A reminder to Coscoran, and no doubt one he has long heeded, that if you’re in the picture on the homestretch, possibilities abound.

Last year, he raced four times over 5,000m. In 2026, he hasn’t once gone near that distance. Speed is his priority. 

And those greased wheels were on show in a semi-final where, after worryingly drifting back to sixth on the final bend, he surged to fourth in 3:41.86.

“1,500m is such an event that you just have to be really aerobically fit, but also really fast. I think I moved from the 5km strength towards the more speed side of things in the last year or so, and I am still availing of that 5km strength, so yeah, it is working out well for me,” Coscoran said after booking his final ticket.

“I am really, really looking forward to it. European Athletics is so strong right now, especially in the 1,500m, so if I can go in there and be competitive, I am going to be really happy, and I think I am in the shape to do it.” 

He won’t be joined by Cathal Doyle, who fell, along with Spaniard Carlos Saez, with 550m remaining in the first semi. Doyle was furious ever before his appeal came to nought.

“If you are a big name, you are probably going to get through,” he opined of the protest process.

“I am sick of this now. This is the second Europeans in-a-row, I get the same stuff every time, ‘Ah, he puts himself in that position’. I didn’t deserve that at all. I didn’t do anything wrong.” 

Nine hours before Coscoran bids to join Ronnie Delany, Frank Murphy, Eamonn Coghlan, and Ciara Mageean as a European 1,500m medalist, Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy begin the Irish defence of Mageean’s Rome gold.

The curiosity surrounding both is utterly contrasting and equally fascinating. 

Four days on, how will Healy respond to her frustrating fourth in the 5,000m? And six days on from becoming only the third Irish woman to break two minutes for the 800m, what can this ripe form of Sophie O’Sullivan’s translate to over her favoured distance?

Early answers to both will be provided when they line up alongside each other in the second semi at 12.25pm. The top six advance.

Sarah was seventh in Rome, Sophie has yet to reach a major championship final. The latter’s 1:59.65 from the British Milers Club meet last weekend, a time which bears no correlation to her 1,500m season’s best of 4:05.62 from two weeks earlier, points to two green vests vying in Sunday’s final.

If Coscoran cannot, don’t rule out Sarah or Sophie finding that medal.