Even if, as some people suspect, Rhasidat Adeleke may have run her last race in college in America, what she ran in Texas on Saturday night will never be forgotten.
Because it’s one thing winning an NCAA title over the pre-race favourite; it’s another thing winning in a championship record, an Irish record, and a time which would have won her a medal on the global stage.
The NCAA championships, long considered one of the most competitive track and field stages outside of the global events anyway, also brings proper pressure and expectation, and Adeleke embraced all of that too, winning the 400 metres on her now home track at the University of Texas in Austin, her time of 49.20 seconds improving once again her previous best of 49.54, clocked last month.
This, remember, is the one-lap race Adeleke has only been training for specifically over the last nine months, having previously specialised in the shorter sprints. Indeed before the start of this outdoor season, the question was whether or not she could break 50 seconds; now she’s touching on sub-49 seconds. With that the possibilities are properly shining.
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What is certain, at least for now, is that Adeleke won’t be leaving Texas: only that lure of “turning pro” may well be increasingly impossible to resist.
“I’ll see what happens,” she said once again. Her Coach Flo – Edrick Floréal to the few who don’t know him as that – is also acutely aware of this juncture too, adamant he won’t be standing in her way, but would continue to coach her, within the same Austin limits, right through to next summer’s Paris Olympics and beyond.
There will be pros and cons to that move, Adeleke unquestionably thriving in the competitive team spirit at Texas.
An hour before her record run, she ran the third leg of the 4x100m relay, with Texas winning in 41.60 (just shy of the NCAA record of 41.55 set in the semi-finals) and would have run the 4x400m relay too had Texas not been disqualified in Thursday’s semi-finals. That would have made for six races within the two days.
Her time of 49.20 is, incidentally, is faster than the British women’s 400m record of 49.41, set by Christine Ohuruogu, who also won the Beijing Olympic 400m in a time of 49.62. It would also have won Adeleke the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics.
Britton Wilson, who most expected to take the title on Saturday, had won her semi-final in 49.36, a full half a second faster than Adeleke. At the time that was a meeting and stadium record. Already a World champion in the 4x400m relay with the US last summer, the 22-year-old Arkansas athlete was unquestionably the favourite, only Adeleke was simply not settling for second, where she finished behind Wilson at the NCAA indoors back in March.
“Yeah, he gave me tactics, but honestly I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” Adeleke said of Coach Flo’s pre-race advice. “But, thank you. It went in one ear, and out the other.
“I’m just going to do what I feel is right. Because I remember the last time I used tactics, I was trying to remember ‘okay he said do this, do that’, and I was just getting confused. So he said, alright, scratch that, do whatever you feel is right. ‘You know you’re strong’.”
Still two months shy of 21, Adeleke has another year to go at Texas, and is on course to graduate in May 2024 – and taking extra courses too given she first started mid-year, in January 2021. The year or two out would allow her to focus entirely on Paris and beyond, while still training in Texas. Wilson, interestingly, has already declared her intentions to run professional in 2024, despite having another year to go at Arkansas.
Wilson was attempting a 400m-400m hurdles double, that perhaps overly ambitious, given she also faded in the later event, coming home in seventh.
Adeleke’s next big goal will be the World Championships in Budapest in late August, where her experience of NCAA level competition will unquestionably stand to her. If she can make that final anything is indeed possible, as her performance on Saturday night proved.
The women’s NCAA championships were first staged outdoors in 1982 and in the four decades since just three Irish women have won outdoor titles; Sonia O’Sullivan winning the 3,000m, running for Villanova, in 1990 and 1991, Valerie McGovern winning the 5,000m in 1990 and later Mary Cullen in 2006.
O’Sullivan’s daughter Sophie finished 12th in the 1,500m final, the fastest in qualifying, her future nonetheless bright as like Adeleke she ponders a career post college.
“I’m just all about balance,” Adeleke said of her current life in Texas. “I’m an athlete, I’m a student, I take my academics very seriously. I think it’s important to put a social life in there as well. So, everything is balanced, and I’m not too focused on one specific thing.”
Only for now, if she is to reach the pinnacle of the global stage, it may mean focusing entirely on one-lap racing.
