It was late on Thursday evening by the time I’d cleaned up the last of the great many reels of voice recordings on my iPhone. After seven long days and nights at the European Athletics Championships, these things tend to eat heavily into your storage capacity, although it’s usually worth saving some of them into the archives.
Birmingham had provided us with the most successful, and memorable, European Championships in the history of Irish athletics. It had also given us the most hectic and exhausting European Championships, from an Irish perspective.
Given the record size of the Irish team, there was a lot of legging it down from the press seats to the mixed zone in between events, grabbing a quick word with whichever Irish athlete was walking through, before promptly legging it back up again.
This is the part you don’t get to watch inside the stadium or on TV. Incidentally, the TV viewership from Birmingham also broke records across the continent, winning a significant prime-time market share in countries including Britain, Germany, France and Italy. On BBC One, last weekend’s closing sessions climbed past 3.5 million viewers, achieving market shares exceeding 30 per cent. Still, Britain couldn’t quite top the medal table, could they?
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RTÉ’s live coverage peaked on the Thursday, with an audience of 450,000 during the evening session that included the gold medal run by Mark English in the 800m, followed 22 minutes later by the silver medal run by Rhasidat Adeleke in the 200m. There were 93,000 live streams on the RTÉ Player, while we must also acknowledge the large contingent of Irish supporters inside the Alexander Stadium.
After Kate O’Connor won her gold medal in the heptathlon last Saturday evening, she possibly broke another Irish record for taking the longest time to walk through the mixed zone. That’s allowable, though, as she had just completed the phenomenal achievement of winning a seventh successive championship medal. The Dundalk star was among the most in-demand athletes across the entire European TV and written press zones. She happily obliged them all.
Adeleke was also back in the mixed zone last Saturday evening. After her 200m medal presentation, she again opened herself up to more rounds of interviews in which nothing was off the record. If some of those watching on TV weren’t already aware of the adversities and setbacks she endured over the last year and a half, Adeleke was both eloquent and honest in recounting them.
At times, it felt as if this was a liberation of sorts for Adeleke. By her own admission, she had possibly lost her way by trying to navigate some of the newfound pressures and expectations, instead of confronting them head-on. More importantly, she had reminded herself why she loved athletics and what motivated her as a young teenager back at Tallaght AC.
That came with perhaps her most telling line of the week: “It was really important for me to prove to myself, not to anyone else, that I still have it. This championship showed me there’s just no limit. Once you’re in a good mindset, once you’re showing up every single day and you believe in yourself.”
Her words were worthy of saving into the archives.
Later, the line of questioning turned towards where Adeleke would go from here, and if there was any big decision to be made between sticking with the 200m or moving back up the 400m. Or indeed, if there was any similar decision to be made about her future training environment.
For the few weeks immediately prior to Birmingham, she’d been based in Dublin, guided in part by strength and conditioning coach Martina McCarthy and physio Ciara McCallion, at the Sport Ireland Institute. Adeleke was unreserved in her praise of both McCarthy and McCallion, but that doesn’t mean she needs to make any decision on moving away from the University of Texas at Austin, where she’s been coached by Edrick Floreal since 2021.
But there is a choice now, where Adeleke can perhaps spend some time between Texas and Dublin, depending on the time of year or her exact training requirements. McCarthy was close by Adeleke’s side throughout the week in Birmingham, and there’s a level of trust and confidence between the two that’s clearly serving the athlete well. It’s likely McCarthy has also helped reinstall some of that sense of belonging in Adeleke, which is why it’s no surprise she’s received similar praise from so many other Irish athletes, from Cian McPhillips to Sharlene Mawdsley.
A possible move closer to home was also one of the things Paul McNamara was hinting at this week, in the aftermath of the most successful championships in his 10 years as director of high performance with Athletics Ireland. “All that glitters is not gold,” he said of the glamorous training environments abroad. Better, world-class facilities are right here at home.
For Adeleke, there’s certainly no big decision to be made between the 200m or 400m. Not in the short term, anyway. “Running that fast is really good for my 400m anyway,” she said of her national record of 22.28 seconds, set in the 200m final. “Things have changed now with my performance here, but I’m taking things day by day.”
She’ll next race over the 100m at the Grand Prix Brescia in Italy on Sunday week, with the chance to improve her Irish record of 11.13 seconds, set when winning the National Championships in Santry in 2024. Britain’s Amy Hunt, who won four sprint gold medals in Birmingham, is also in the line-up, and the 100m might become another exciting choice for Adeleke after that race too.
She has also signed up to race the 200m at the all-female Athlos meetings in London on September 18th, then in New York on October 2nd, where substantial prize money will be on offer.
Before all that, Adeleke will turn 24 next Saturday, August 29th. Given how disappointing her season was proving to be up until a month ago, and all the negativity she endured over the previous year and a half, how exciting it is to see her leave all those doubts behind.
