It’s possibly the longest-running medal drought experienced by Irish athletics in recent times, the hope being it could end this weekend at the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing.
The Irish team of six athletes includes two medal winners from the European Indoors in Apeldoorn only two weeks ago; Sarah Healy, who won gold in the 3,000m, and Kate O’Connor, who won bronze in the pentathlon.
It’s 19 years since Derval O’Rourke last won a medal for Ireland on this stage with her gold in the 60m hurdles in Moscow in March 2006, just two years on from an Irish men’s 4x400m relay bronze.
The first World Indoors back in 1987 remain Ireland’s most successful, when the team of four athletes won three medals – gold for Marcus O’Sullivan in the 1,500m, and gold and silver for Frank O’Mara and Paul Donovan in the 3,000m. In all, Ireland has won a total of 10 World Indoor medals, by six different athletes, plus that one relay bronze.
At the 1997 championships in Paris, I saw the opportunity to make one of my rare appearances on the World Indoor stage, narrowly missing out on the gold medal when Gabriela Szabo from Romania slipped through on the inside coming off the final bend of the 3,000m.
A bit of a rookie mistake on my part, and Szabo beat me by less than half a second, but I hadn’t run any indoor race in about seven years. It was also the year I was trying to make up for my failure at the Atlanta Olympics, and just two weeks after Paris I was back out chasing medals at the European Cross Country in Turin. A team bronze there was never going to satisfy me, yet looking back it wasn’t the worst few weeks of my career. It all just depends on the bar you set for yourself and what one deems acceptable.
So to this weekend in Nanjing, where the sense is it would be a disappointment if that Irish medal drought doesn’t end. Sarah Healy is now oozing confidence after her gold medal performance in Apeldoorn, but may need to dial into a faster pace to match the tone so often set by the Ethiopian athletes Freweyni Hailu and Birke Haylom.
Healy is ranked fourth on time. As we saw in Apeldoorn, times are so often just the entry standard. Once the gun goes off at a championship it can become a much more tactical affair, where things are more often dictated by the athletes that can hold their nerve and stay out of trouble. She just needs to repeat the same process, and she will have a great chance to be in the battle for a medal. There are no heats so it is just one hard effort that will decide the medals on Saturday morning Irish time.
By her own admission, Kate O’Connor is in the form of her life, up against European Indoor gold medallist Saga Vanninen of Finland, plus a few new contenders in Timara Chapman from the US, and Hungary’s Xenia Kriszan and Szabina Szucs. The biggest challenge for O’Connor may be the recovery from just 12 days ago. If she can rise again, she will most certainly be in the hunt all day Friday for a medal, and the final event, the 800m, may just decide the medals once more.
Andrew Coscoran is entered in both the 1,500m and 3,000m. It’s not an easy task to double up when the events overlap, something I have first-hand experience of from the World Indoors in Lisbon in 2001, attempting a 1,500m/3,000m double, and coming away without anything.
Sarah Lavin finished in fifth place in the 60m hurdles a year ago in Glasgow and she will be determined on at least matching this position if safely into the final on Sunday morning.
The women’s 1,500m is one of the deepest fields, and Friday’s heats will reduce the entries from 25 down to nine for the final on Sunday morning. This will be a first World Indoors for Sophie O’Sullivan, a surprise call-up after running into form outdoors in Australia, and the perfect opportunity to line up against some of the best athletes in the world.
It’s a small and young Irish team, and with some star athletes from across the world bypassing Nanjing, a perfect opportunity to make a mark on the world stage.
