Never mind the medals: Ireland’s numbers at World Championships show they are competitive

Show me the medals. It doesn’t matter what the colour, time or — let’s be honest — even the event. Nothing has counted, or ever will, for more when it comes to the hard currency of championship success.

How many reminders of that have there been over the last nine days in Budapest? There are no medals for finishing fourth, no fanfare or anthems, no homecoming at the airport either.

Only for Ciara Mageean and Rhasidat Adeleke, there will always be that lasting sense of being the very best they could be in the here and now, at the very top of the world stage. Two Irish relay finalists, the mixed 4x400m and the women’s quartet, can feel that way too.

For Mageean — fourth in the 1,500m, improving her national record to 3:56.61 — and for Adeleke, fourth in the 400m, in her 39th race this season, any regret or immediate disappointment can be shelved by the prospect of what comes next. Namely, the Paris Olympics next summer with both athletes in the medal conversation around their events.

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They were also looking to join a super-elite Irish club. Only two Irish athletes had previously won medals on the track; Eamonn Coghlan (5,000m gold at the inaugural championships in Helsinki) then Sonia O’Sullivan twice (silver over 1,500m in 1993, gold over 5,000m in 1995).

Only racewalkers Gillian O’Sullivan (silver in the 2003) and Olive Loughnane and Rob Heffernan (gold in 2009 and 2013 respectively) have won medals for Ireland in the years since.

For Paul McNamara, Athletics Ireland’s high performance director, the lack of any Irish medals this time around, while naturally disappointing, wasn’t necessarily against his own pre-championship predictions.

“You go back to Sonia and Eamonn, they’re probably the two greatest names that we’ve ever had in the sport who medalled on the track,” he says. “We were quite realistic, and I think reality-based optimism is the underlying outlook on high-performance sport. We were talking about 10 top-24s as a good benchmark of depth, we were talking about two top-eights with an outside chance of medals.

“My predictions were two top-8s, four top-16s and a further four top-24s. We exceeded, that with two top-fours. Our own strategy does explicitly state we are targeting medals at a global level, right here, right now.

“We weren’t budgeting for one but thought there was an outside chance so two fourths at this level is significant progress.

“By the end of the championships, we’ll have 12 top-24s, we’re looking at lots of athletes at the business end of the championships … The likes of Sophie [O’Sullivan], who didn’t progress but smashed her lifetime best, Sarah [Healy] who didn’t make a final but smashed her lifetime best. I did say, medal or no medal, I’m pretty confident we’ll reflect on these championships … it’s been very positive.”

It’s often an unpredictable business too. Before Budapest, Canada had gone 28 years without any male athlete winning an individual gold medal in a running event; on Saturday night, Marco Arop won a maiden global gold medal in the 800m, shortly before Canada won gold and silver in the decathlon, thanks to 27-year-old Pierce LePage, and his 33-year-old team-mate Damian Warner, the Olympic champion, winning silver.

With Ethan Katzberg winning the men’s hammer, and Camryn Rogers the women’s event, plus Sarah Mitton’s silver in the women’s shot put, Canada ended up second on the medal table, behind perennial giants the USA.

There are other comforting factors: Adeleke’s 400m best of 49.20, clocked when winning the NCAA 400m title for the University of Texas back on June 10th, would have won her the silver medal here; in the 1,500m, Mageean faced arguably the greatest women ever to grace that event — now three-time champion and world record holder Faith Kipyegon from Kenya, who on Saturday became the first woman in world championship history to land a 1,500-5,000m double.

Those four Irish finalists, Sarah Lavin also breaking the 13-year-old Irish record belonging to Derval O’Rourke in the 100m hurdles semi-final also mark real success for McNamara.

“You’re now looking at, of 20 starts, we have 12 athletes at top-24 or better. In terms of the foundations to kick on from there, even the mindset within the team, the camp [that is a success] … Whatever benchmark we choose to look at, it is significant progress.”

At the closing press conference on Sunday evening, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, twice Olympic 1,500m champion (who incidentally never competed at the world championships) was asked about his own measures of success and highlights.

Hosts Hungary managed to win a single medal, Bence Halasz’s bronze in the men’s hammer, one of 34 of the 202 competing nations to win a medal.

“I’m choosing my words carefully, Hungary has had good performances here,” said Coe. “But the fans have not just looked at this about Hungarian athletics. They’ve absolutely got behind it … have not left the stadium whenever the Hungarian athletes have stopped competing, they celebrated the extraordinary nature of our sport.

“If you pinged me on one [highlight] ... you can take the man out of middle distance, you can never take middle distance out of the man. I have to say Josh Kerr, winning the 1,500m. Yeah, it’s a bit local. And I’m sure that won’t go down a huge leap in Norway. But I was really pleased for Josh Kerr, it was an interesting run, it was racer’s run.”

Show me the medals.