Shortly before Kate O’Connor won the first senior multi-event medal for Ireland, just a year and a half ago, she spoke about her changing mindset when it came to the major championships. No longer there just to compete, or in any way overawed, she was starting to feel like she belonged, every bit as good as all the rest.
Six consecutive medals later, that mindset has changed again. Over the next two days in Birmingham, O’Connor is one of the athletes all the rest need to and want to beat. It brings a different sort of pressure and expectation. Something the 25-year-old from Dundalk continues to relish and rise to.
It’s her first appearance at an outdoor European Championships, just 15 days after she won heptathlon gold for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. That proved as much a battle against the elements as the competition and after topping five of the seven events, it was probably her most comfortable victory so far.
“I don’t think anyone could have beaten me,” she said afterwards, reflecting not just her soaring confidence, but her remarkably consistent ability to get the best out of herself when it matters.
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“I suppose I came in hoping I would do a huge score, because I feel I’ve done all the training to do that. But it made me realise this is actually a championship and it’s not about scoring big – it’s about winning medals. I had to kind of shift my focus away from scoring a new personal best to winning a gold medal and once I did that, [I] enjoyed all the performances.”
Her tally of 6,569 points was below her Irish record of 6,714, set when winning the silver medal at the World Championships in Tokyo last September, where she also set five personal bests. This time, O’Connor got stronger with each event, looking perfectly primed to deliver another masterful display of running, jumping and throwing.
She’ll be well familiar with her chief rivals. It will also be her first showdown this year with Annik Kalin, the 26-year-old from Switzerland, who O’Connor has been competing against since they were both teenagers. Kalin produced a national record of 6,819 points in June which puts her ahead of O’Connor’s Irish record.
Also in the mix in Birmingham will be Sofie Dokter, the Dutch athlete who won pentathlon gold at the World Indoors in March – when O’Connor won bronze – and has also scored 6,627 points this year. Britain’s Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the two-time world champion who missed the Commonwealth Games through injury, is always competitive, although she hasn’t finished a heptathlon since Tokyo where she won bronze behind O’Connor.
“I’ve never been in a competition where a medal’s been easy to win,” O’Connor said of her Birmingham aspirations. “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to go out and make it hard for everybody, just like they’re going to hope that they can go out and make it hard for me. It’s a little nerve-racking, but I’m just trying to enjoy the ride.”
Still, every multi-event competition starts out with the reminder anything can and often does go wrong. Hit a couple of hurdles in the first event, or fail to clear a decent height in the high jump in the second event, and that medal challenge is over.
But between O’Connor’s last three pentathlons (five events) and three heptathlons (seven events), indoors and outdoors, she’s now completed 36 events in all without any major mishap. If she can continue that sort of consistency for another seven events, she’ll be in the mix for another medal.
Kalin will be equally consistent, but O’Connor saved one of her best performances until last in Glasgow, when she ran a perfectly tactical 800m to win that event outright too, her 2:10.45 still not far off her lifetime best of 2:09.56. If the medal hunt does come down to the last event this time, the Irish woman appears to have plenty in reserve.
Andrew Coscoran and Cathal Doyle are also out in Friday’s heats of the 1,500m, with Coscoran eminently capable of making the final. At 30, his strongest asset remains his finishing speed, and with no Ingebrigtsens appearing on the start-line for the first time in 20 years – Jakob content with winning a fourth successive 5,000m – this title is also wide open.
It’s clear what both Irish runners need to do. The first six in each of the two heats will go through to Saturday’s final. Coscoran is drawn in the slightly more favourable second heat, while Doyle will have to contend with Isaac Nader, last year’s World champion, among others.
