Building blocks for a future of triumph

IN FOCUS IRISH WOMEN'S SPORTING SUCCESS:It's been a wonderful year for Irish women in international sport, writes MARY HANNIGAN, and the hope is that success will lead to more glory

FROM A running track in Barcelona to a squash court in Canberra, from a boxing ring in Barbados to a racetrack in Cheltenham, from a swimming pool in Budapest to football fields in Trinidad and Tobago, it’s been a wonderful year for our international sportswomen.

Katie Taylor’s third World Championship success last weekend was just the latest addition to a 2010 roll of honour that is unprecedented in terms of the array of sports in which Irish women have been excelling.

The medal count is no less impressive.

Is it all just a happy coincidence? Is it just a cycle of success that owes much more to good fortune than design? Derval O’Rourke, silver medallist in the 100m hurdles at the European Championships this summer, makes no direct link between the names on that roll of honour, but believes that every passing triumph is proving to be an inspiration.

“There’s definitely an element of success breeding success in all of this,” she says. “I know we’re all coming from very different disciplines with varying levels of support, so it’s hard to make a connection between us, but when these sportswomen set the standard, when they’re doing so well internationally, it almost becomes the norm.

“And the only level of success now that is enough is winning medals, and that’s the level where the top Irish women across the sports are at. It’s not just that we’re making finals, we’re actually winning medals. That’s unbelievable, and it’s so exciting.”

It’s the variety of sports where this success is being achieved that is, perhaps, the most impressive aspect of it all. Jessica Kürten, for example, continues to be one of the world’s leading showjumpers, as she demonstrated again at the very start of the year with two World Cup qualifying series victories. In March Katie Walsh travelled to Cheltenham expecting to be nothing more than a spectator, but then a couple of late opportunities came her way. Two rides, two winners and images never to be forgotten.

Walsh’s good friend Nina Carberry, meanwhile, is still racking up the winners, while in golf there are few more gifted amateurs than Danielle McVeigh. Back in April she won the Scottish Amateur Strokeplay Championship at Royal Troon, leaving her as the holder of the Scottish, British and Welsh strokeplay titles, all at the same time. She enhanced her already growing reputation when she beat the US Amateur champion Jennifer Song, who has since turned professional, in the Curtis Cup. And in the same sport, there’s the remarkable Maguire twins, Lisa and Leona.

Last year teenager Ciara Mageean gave a fair indication of her potential when she broke Sonia O’Sullivan’s 22-year-old national junior 800m record, before going on to win silver at the World Youth Championships and gold in the 1,500m at the European Youth Olympics.

This year she added another prestigious medal to her collection, a silver from the 1,500m at the World Junior Championships in Canada.

And they’re not even half the stories of promise and success. Two more. Last year Annalise Murphy won the under-21 title at the sailing World Championships in Japan and a top-20 finish, out of a 132-boat fleet, at the senior World Championships in July keeps her well on course, so to speak, for London 2012. Olive Loughnane, too, is targeting London, the 2009 Sportswoman of the Year hoping to add to her silver World Championships medal in the 20km walk.

Few, though, have remained at the very top of their sports for as long as Madeline Perry, the 33-year-old from Banbridge enjoying the most successful year of her professional squash career. This month she broke in to the top five of the world rankings for the first time, completing a longstanding ambition. “It was a big goal of mine for my whole career, so it was a real thrill to finally do it,” she said.

It was in August that Perry produced the form of her life when she won the Australian Open, one of her sport’s major tournaments, beating the world number two in the semi-finals with a performance she described as the best of her career. In the final, played on an all-glass court at Canberra’s Royal Theatre, she saved two match balls before becoming the first Irish woman to win the Australian title.

“Everything felt easy, the way I was moving, the way I was hitting, I was unbeatable that week,” she said, “it was definitely the highlight of my career. I just went through every round getting better and better – but I couldn’t quite believe it when I’d won it.”

At 33 she might have expected her career to be winding down, but instead she’s improving with every season.

“I know, it’s kind of weird,” she laughed. “I’ve put in a lot of physical work the past couple of years, I had been a bit slower to develop that way so it’s paid off. It’s a combination of things, so many years of experience and getting that bit physically stronger, it’s all coming together for me.”

Considerably less experienced is Gráinne Murphy, but the 17-year-old Wexford girl, who is based at Swim Ireland’s High Performance Centre at the University of Limerick, is already realising her potential.

Last year she won three gold medals and one bronze at the European Junior Championships and this summer she moved effortlessly enough in to the senior medal-winning ranks when she took European silver in the 1,500 metres freestyle.

“It’s been a great year for everyone,” she said, “it’s been really good for female sports. Derval, Katie, there are people doing so well in a wide variety of sports. The support we get from the Irish Sports Council has been very good, so hopefully we’ll have even more athletes coming through.

“We’re all in quite different sports but we have lots in common,” she said, recalling bumping in to O’Rourke earlier this year. “It was great talking to hear, hearing her stories, she’s a real inspiration.”

O’Rourke recalls the chat too: “It just struck me how much we all have in common even though our sports are very different. There are loads of similarities – the training is obviously different, but our lifestyles are so alike. We were talking, for example, about weights, I was curious about what she lifted, that kind of thing, how she recovers, how, like me, she has to have rest periods. It was just really interesting comparing our routines.

“Gráinne’s had an amazing year. I keep an eye on all the girls – I didn’t see Katie’s fights because I was on holidays but I was checking her results on my iPhone. Just fantastic. The same with Gráinne when she won her medal, my Mum rang me straight away to tell me. I just think when people are doing well more people start doing well, there’s definitely a knock-on effect, it almost creates a culture or atmosphere of success.”

“It’s just great for younger girls to see all this success,” says Perry, “they know they can get out there and succeed on a world scale, whether it’s squash, athletics, swimming, whatever. Over the past 10 years or so sportswomen have had so much more support through funding and coaching, so I think we’re seeing the rewards now.”

And the success of the Irish under-17 football team this year was, Noel King believes, a reward for the support he and his players received from the Football Association of Ireland once he identified their potential.

“I told the FAI three years ago that this was a special bunch of players, but the support structure needed to be there for them to realise that potential. So, we made particular provision for this group, the finance was there for trips to the Algarve, for example, where we played American teams three times. We beat them – and we’d never done that before. That was the real signal to us that we were achieving things we’d never achieved before. Then we went and beat England, which was another signal.”

The team only lost on penalties to Spain in the final of the European Championships this summer (having beaten defending champions Germany in the semi-finals), before reaching the last eight of the World Youth Cup.

“They were competing at a standard people didn’t really appreciate, but then when they saw them play and saw some of the goals, the technical skills that they were displaying, I think they were pleasantly surprised – a lot of people would never have witnessed women’s football before. It’s like with Katie Taylor, many people saw her box for the first time at the World Championships and got to appreciate just how good she is.”

King will now focus on his new role as manager of the Irish under-21 men’s team, but he is more than satisfied with the progress made since he first became involved in women’s football a decade ago. “It’s unrecognisable now in terms of the players’ ability and fitness levels, they have improved year upon year as a direct result of coaching, more kids playing, funding from the FAI – everyone bashes the FAI but they did fantastically for us anyway. I can’t complain.

“In my last chat with the girls I told them that this should be the start of something, not the end of it. Each one of them needs to look at their own game, their fitness regime, their ambition, and to follow it to its fullest. And the FAI needs to facilitate them as best they can. Some of them will go and play with the senior team, some of them might get scholarships, some of them might become coaches, but they certainly have a potential that deserves to be realised. I’d be hopeful that more will realise it than won’t.

“We still need more clubs for girls, that’s still a problem, but this success and exposure will, hopefully, lead to more people getting involved and will open up more opportunities for the girls. It was very fulfilling to be part of it all, to be in at the start of a new regime and to leave at what was undoubtedly the highpoint for Irish women’s football. It was a little bit of a fairytale.”

O’Rourke, too, is hopeful that the success of Irish sportswomen in recent times will prove to be an inspiration to the younger generation, especially to girls “because there’s such a big fall-off rate in their participation once they get to their late teens”.

“I visited a girls’ primary school a few days ago, the questions they asked were unbelievable, they were so excited and so in to it. It was lovely. I was asking them how many of them run and I told them they’d need to keep running because I’ll retire in a few years and I’ll need to be watching someone else on TV – I’ll need a replacement, I won’t be here forever.”

Sonia O’Sullivan was O’Rourke’s inspiration when she was growing up, now she finds herself filling the same role for the young girls she talks to in those classrooms. “I was so lucky to have Sonia to look up to when I was a kid, she was amazing. But we’ll all retire – we’re doing great now, but in 10 years’ time we’ll all be finished and we need more people to come through.

“And there are a lot of opportunities now for women in sport that kids aren’t aware of, so when we do well it lets them know about it. I told them my job is running, that’s what I do – I get to go to a track, run and jump over hurdles, it’s a fun job to have and I’m really lucky.

“And they were like ‘that’s your job?’ I said: ‘Yeah, that’s my job, that’s what I’ve grown up to do’. ‘Oh, that’s really cool,’ they said, it was so funny.”

And never, O’Rourke insists, has sporting success been so important to us.

“The effect on Cork, for example, of winning the All-Ireland is just unbelievable. And I think sport does that, it just lifts people, you can never undervalue it, it’s such a boost for everyone in these times. Loads of people wrote me letters and cards after Barcelona saying I had given them a great boost and that was unbelievably nice to hear. You just hope when they’re looking at funding they realise all this, but I’m sure they do.

“That we can give people a lift through what we do, and that we can encourage kids to get in to sport, is just lovely. The daughter of a friend of my Mum keeps making hurdles in the house and jumping over them – and she insists on them calling her Derval. She’s six, I think.

“I’ve never met her, but I’m calling down today. Stuff like that is just ridiculously cute. She keeps jumping over chairs. Hopefully in 15, 20 years times she’ll be doing it in the Olympics.

“And one of the most exciting things for me would be to be sitting down watching, say, the European Championships in 10 years’ time and see some Irish girl run quicker than my record, that would be unbelievably exciting. If us doing well – me, Gráinne, Katie and all the other Irish sportswomen – encourages kids to get involved in sports, inspires a few of them, then brilliant. It’s never just about the people who are here now – hopefully some of these kids will take over from us.”