Peaking for any major athletics championship has never been an exact science, although last year Cian McPhillips timed his run very close to perfection. Just 0.2 of a second close, to be exact, the time he missed out on a 800m bronze medal at the world championships in Tokyo.
It remains one of the single biggest breakthroughs in Irish athletics in years, McPhillips taking the national record down to 1:42.15 when finishing fourth, having started the season with the lifetime best of 1:45.92 he ran in 2023. It also took three Olympic medal winners to deny him and his time would have won him gold at every previous world championships.
Roll on 2026, and McPhillips reckons he’s in similar racing condition as he was this time last year. The difference, perhaps a small worry, is that Tokyo last year was mid-September while the European Championships in Birmingham are just days away. No chance of peaking too soon, he just wishes he had a few more weeks to play with.
After a promising start to the indoor season, a dental issue meant McPhillips didn’t race again. Then, in his haste to get back, he sustained a knee injury and didn’t resume full training until the start of May.
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“It has been a pretty frustrating year,” he explains. “I was struggling a lot earlier in the year, had to get surgery on my jaw to remove a cyst and get a few teeth out.
“They were pretty strict on three weeks of no exercise allowed, no raised blood pressure. That was tough to get over, being on a liquid diet for a little while. But I got over that and maybe tried to come back a little too quick for the world indoors. But it just wasn’t working, I hurt my knee then, and that actually took a few months to heal up.
“Thanks to the medical team at the Sports Institute it got sorted in the end. It just took a while. So very grateful to be back, it was a dark couple of months there for a while. I wasn’t actually sure if I’d have much of a season. It’s not been the cleanest of years.
“But I’ve worked really hard to kind of get back. I’m just not exactly where I’d like to be right now, but every week it’s getting better.”
At 24, McPhillips is still learning with every season, as is his long-time coach, Joe Ryan. In his first race back in Hengelo at the end of June, the Longford athlete clocked a satisfying 1:44.89, faster than he had ever run before 2025. He struggled a bit when clocking 1:45.33 in Budapest a few weeks later, before running 1:43.97 at the London Diamond League on July 18th, then cruising to his first national outdoor 800m title last Sunday week.
“It’s a fine balance, especially getting back from injury, you nearly have to gain some weight to make sure nothing else goes wrong. Then you’re trying to cram as much work in as possible before Birmingham, to make up for lost time, and still trying to be fresh for the races. I think the race in Budapest, I just got that balance a bit wrong, was quite tired going into it.”
In the meantime, Mark English, at 33, continues to turn the clock back on his career. He ran 1:42.97 in London – his first time to break 1:43 – and with that is still ranked the fastest in Europe. English missed the national championships due to an Achilles tendon strain, but with five European championship medals to his name he’s heading to Birmingham with only one thing on his mind.
There will be plenty of other contenders in the mix, the 800m heats set for Monday’s opening morning session, but what McPhillips also proved in Tokyo last year was his ability to progress rapidly through the rounds.
“It’s slowly starting to turn a corner,” he adds. “London was nice, to get back into the 1:43s, just about. Hopefully the rest of the season continues on that trajectory and I get back to the 1:42s soon.
“I mean I’m going to go for it [in Birmingham], regardless. I think potentially it is a little early for me, but I still hope to be quite competitive. Obviously with Mark running well we could actually get two Irish guys in the final at least.
“But I think I’ve done very well to get back to a similar point to where I was this time last year. The only difference is Birmingham is in early August, Tokyo was mid-September. So I would like to be in slightly better shape, earlier. I still think I can put on a good show, that will be the goal going in, I’ll definitely have a medal in mind. I’ll give it all I have, then see what happens. It’s all about tapering down now for the first round on Monday.”
He certainly intends on racing well beyond Birmingham and is currently qualified for the new World Athletics Ultimate Championship, a three-day event set for Budapest in September.
“There are plenty of races ahead, so hopefully come September it’ll be something similar to last year, I’ll be back in peak shape.”
Perhaps even a little sooner.
