Welcome break for Molly and foal Maeve
Molly and Maeve have had about enough of Rachel's endless hammer throwing practice at this stage. It starts with a morning session at eight o'clock, winter and summer, hail, rain or snow. There are two more through the day, every day, and each time, the horses have to be moved into the next field where the grass is not quite so sweet. So mare and foal were delighted when Brian and Rachel climbed into the car a while ago and headed off to the women's All-Ireland Hammer competitions in Santry.
Rachel Akers is 17, five feet five inches, about ten stone in weight, a blonde slip of a schoolgirl, bubbly and engaging in manner, and there is no way you'd think she should be going to Dublin to compete in one of the most demanding disciplines, against bigger and older opposition. But she is, and she does, and she has collected a raft of medals this year in competitions at home and abroad. She's a speed merchant, you see, where the hammer is concerned.
Come back with me to Blackpool in England two years ago, on July 15 and the international schools' Under-17 championships there. It's a quadrangular competition involving the home country's best and our Rachel (then 15), has the coaches of all the nations scratching their learned heads when she tows her hammer into the circle. Now, until then, the hammer record, if broken at all, was broken by only a centimetre this summer, maybe another centimetre the next summer.
And when the slight schoolgirl from Scariff CC starts to spin inside the caged circle, the schoolgirls' record is standing at a highly respectable 45.26m. But Rachel spins at twice the speed of bigger throwers, releases, and out soars the hammer to 48.61! And the coaches of England, Scotland and Wales can hardly believe their eyes.
"I'll never be six feet tall," she says, "And I'll never have the build of the big Russian champions, so my father, Brian, who is also my coach, says that I have to compensate with speed for that. So far it has been working and it is great fun, a great sport, I love it."
A couple of days ago, in Germany, in international competition, she threw a personal best of 51.68m and, according to what I hear, she's getting better just about every day. Russian coaches have told her she needs to stack about another three stone of muscle on to her body to be really international class but, in the meantime, with that unorthodox speed and a natural skill honed by Brian, she is doing very well her way.
She finished 12th in a high-class field in Hungary last year and now, no matter what the Russian coaches say, the sky is the limit.
So she goes to Santry today with a spring in her step. She says she does not expect to win because the talented Eileen O'Keefe is the reigning champion, is in her early twenties, and is getting out to 61m nowadays. And there is the possibility of an overseas (American) challenge as well. But Rachel's PBs are getting closer to the standard all the time.
The Horses' Field is about 60m long, I'm told. Molly and Maeve should know that it is Rachel's aim to throw the hammer into the next field as soon as possible. That will happen soon. And then the horses will have to move again. Three times daily. Starting at eight o'clock in the morning in Bodyke.
That's the start of just one of the many athletic roads that lead to Morton Stadium this weekend. With Ireland's speediest hammer in the boot!
