'I just missed a moment where the race was gone': Sarah Healy finishes fifth in 1500m final

Sophie O'Sullivan finished eighth, saying "I felt I should have done better"

Sarah Healy: “At 300m to go, I just feel like there was a gap, and the girls were kind of gone." Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

The medal count stays at four. No final night green fireworks. The metric mile could not again deliver. Fifth for Sarah, eighth for Sophie.

On Day 7 of 7 at the European Championships, Sarah Healy and Sophie O’Sullivan went after history.

Two Irish women had never shared the same podium at a major track championship. They were attempting to follow the feat of Frank O’Mara and Paul Donovan who went one-two over 3,000m at the 1987 World Indoors in Indianapolis. They were attempting to bring Ireland’s European championship medal tally to a figure it had never climbed to at any previous edition.

Alas, there was to be no fairytale finish in Birmingham. There was no history made. There was no podium shared. There was no podium full stop.

Five days after her fourth-place finish in the 5,000m, Healy again arrived at the winners' enclosure after the door had been slammed shut. The charge was again too late. The defining move with 250m remaining again happened without her.

Seventh at the bell, 25-year-old Healy was sixth when the deciding burst and breakaway materialised.

Her training partner and eventual gold medallist Georgia Hunter Bell, Poland’s Klaudia Kazimierska, Patricia Silva of Portugal, and France’s Agathe Guillemot were four raiders who shot off into the night. The gap came in an instant and Irish interest was cooked.

As she did in the 5,000m, Healy stayed the course and climbed to fifth at the end of the home straight in 4:10.76. Patricia Silva’s bronze was a full second and a half further up the track. The winning time of Healy’s training partner, Hunter Bell, was 4:07.78.

“Fifth is decent,” said Healy.

“I probably would have been happy with fifth and up-ish, and I think when I look back on the week, I do think fourth in the 5,000m and fifth in the 1,500m is a pretty impressive body of work. But obviously, I would much rather like a medal in one or the other.

“At 300m to go, I just feel like there was a gap, and the girls were kind of gone. And they're so quick. So whatever position I was in, I just missed it, jumped a bit, and then got caught in traffic.

“And you know, I did work really hard. I stuck to my game-plan, and I closed as hard as I could, but I just missed a moment where the race was gone.”

In her first major championship final appearance, Sophie O’Sullivan crossed eighth in 4:11.72. Having taken up and held a top five position through the opening two laps, the 24-year-old could not keep with the injection of pace by Hunter Bell from 550m out. She had dropped to 11th at the bell, and while she did close strongly, the conversation did not include her.

“I just think like I felt I should have done better. I’m not really sure where I kind of went wrong,” said Sophie.

And so, Ireland’s medal haul stays and finishes at four. While it equals the Rome haul from two years ago, this is the first Europeans where Ireland head home with four individual medals.

Earlier on Sunday morning, Fionnuala McCormack and David McGlynn failed to finish the women’s and men’s marathon respectively. Ryan Creech was unable to start because of a minor medical issue. That left Paul O’Donnell who came home 43rd in 2:20.41.