The first thing Chris O’Donnell makes clear via a zoom call from Guangzhou is the shared priority of all the Irish athletes competing at this weekend’s World Athletics Relays. It is not winning medals or running super-fast split times. It is qualification for the World Championships in Tokyo in September.
By that O’Donnell means all three Irish relay teams who have made the long trip to China, boosted by the likes of Rhasidat Adeleke and Sharlene Mawdsley and all seeking the same result. O’Donnell will likely be part of the mixed 4x400m quartet, who won European gold last June, with Adeleke and Mawdsley also part of the women’s 4x400m that finished fourth at the Paris Olympics.
Getting to Tokyo will be the least of their ambitions, and O’Donnell believes the men’s 4x400m are ready to reach for similarly lofty heights. After a week of intense training in Hong Kong, the 14-strong Irish team arrived in Guangzhou on Thursday evening, O’Donnell thankfully recovered from a nagging hip injury “in the nick of time”.
They’ll get two chances to be among the 14 teams qualifying from each event. On Saturday, the top two teams in each of the four heats will advance to Sunday’s final, while also securing their Tokyo place.
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All other teams will compete on Sunday in the repechage round, where the top two in each of the three heats will also qualify for Tokyo. The remaining two places in each event will be awarded based on top ranking lists.
“I can’t say anything on team selections, but I will be running on one of the teams on Saturday,” says O’Donnell. “Nobody is going to be doubling up on the first day, we’ve spread our eggs across a few baskets.
“The one secret we don’t have is that our goal is to qualify the three teams, not to prioritise one event, or get medals. If it comes to a stage where one is qualified on day one, and we go into day two needing to prioritise another, that’s what we’ll do.
“The women’s team are in an incredibly strong position. The mixed is in a very strong position too. The men are finally here too, it’s been a long time coming. We are really focused on seeing what we can do.”
O’Donnell turns 27 later this month, his 400m best of 45.26 seconds run in 2022, and he has made no apologies for his decision to prioritise the relay in recent years, even if that has occasionally impacted on his individual aspirations.
“I’ve done that before, wouldn’t take that back. In the mixed relay, we were knocking on the door, making those finals. But the one thing we were missing was that medal. Then when you have that physical medal [from Rome], on the podium hearing Amhrán na bhFiann, you have that medal to show your grandchildren, or look back on or whatever.
“So for me, I’m in it for the medals. Having said that, I don’t know if prioritise is the word, I just do both. It’s never going to be a case of me leaving out a relay to focus on an event the next day. I’ve done it before, doubled up in World Championships a couple of times.
“If you want to use that word prioritise, that’s probably fair to say, but in order to get on the relay team, I also need to be a very good individual 400m athlete. So that also comes first, then I want to bring my best shape on to the relay.”
Earlier this year, Mawdsley, Sophie Becker and O’Donnell joined Adeleke on the top Sport Ireland grant amount of €40,000, more evidence perhaps of the greater priority on the relay teams. Again, O’Donnell believes it can only improve both his aspirations.
“It makes a huge difference. Especially as someone who has never been sponsored in my career. If I have to work, slog a 9 to 5 and then do this really hard training, to fit in a workload around, then I simply cannot train as hard. And not training as hard equals not as good results.”
O’Donnell is not sure if that nagging injury to his right hip was a souvenir from his soccer days with Benbulben FC in Sligo. But it wasn’t going to hold him back.
“I’ve been part of this team for long enough, I feel I should be here. We’re always going to look back on Rome, because that was our first gold. That’s the marker now, you know there’s no point in saying that we’re going to be happy going back to fifth and sixth.”
