'I just enjoy a battle. It's not that complicated'

Ian O'Riordantalks to Derval O'Rourke about her Barcelona success and how 'if you don't paddle your own canoe in Irish athletics you're going nowhere'

YOU MIGHT think by winning a silver medal here on Saturday night Derval O’Rourke answered all our prayers. Actually, she presented us with a big question. How come she’s able to peak so brilliantly at the major championships, when so many other Irish athletes can’t? Either she’s very good at getting her timing right, or else she’s just very lucky.

Sometimes it’s not about whether you believe in luck, but whether luck believes in you – and that’s definitely one reason why O’Rourke now has four championship medals, three of which were won in Irish records.

All this in such a hugely technical and explosive event that if you can’t nail it properly on the day, you simply won’t be there.

If O’Rourke was relying on luck she’d have won nothing.

What she does rely on is her extraordinary ability to funnel all her focus into the one-off championship occasions, plus a small but terrifically dedicated coaching team.

When we cornered her yesterday morning in the aptly named Princess Hotel she repeatedly referred to Team Cahill, which consists of husband and wife Seán and Terri Cahill – both former athletes of distinction – and her strength and conditioning coach Mark McCabe. That’s more or less it, and the sad part is there was precious little input from Athletics Ireland.

“Obviously I just don’t turn up here to run,” she explained. “I have a bit of fun the rest of the season, but championships are my everything. For the two days I’m running here everything is planned. Seán calls it the Master Plan. Everything, in such detail, we know what we’re doing. We’re almost like a team within a team. Seán was the only person in my corner out here. I’d have loved for Terri to be here too, but unfortunately she had a death in the family.

“And they’re all an absolute joy to work with. They all bring different things. Mark is the most rational man in the world, told me everything was better this year. Seán is like me, a little emotional. Just says run like hell! And Terri is somewhere in between, just calm. Tells me it’s there. I didn’t once question their training. This just justified all my faith.

“So coming here I really thought I was going to win. Ever since last March, when I missed out on the World Indoors. I was so unlucky, a tiny nick on my groin eight days beforehand. That was hard to take. But I said ‘keep the shape together, don’t go crazy eating loads of chocolate, no pity party, and make it all count in Barcelona’. And even in the call room, waiting for the final, I was joking with Seán – ‘Last Man Standing’ – and we broke up laughing. I couldn’t have done that two years ago.

“But my world stopped at 8.25 on Saturday night. I hadn’t thought one minute beyond that. I run for myself, and the fact that I’ve such great coaches, I want to do well for them too. I don’t feel any pressure from anybody else. And I just enjoy a battle. It’s not that complicated.”

The apparent suggestion is some Irish athletes may over-complicate things, perhaps think too much – then maybe haven’t got the mental strength to handle it. “No, I would never criticise our athletes, never say they’re not mentally strong enough. It’s not mental. I hear some people were critical of David Gillick for the way he ran, not running the relay, stuff like that.

“That’s wrong, in my opinion. None of us could have predicted the way Gillick’s final went. But we have a 44.7 second 400-metre runner. It’s so Irish to criticise him. He had to go to England to run 44.7. Because there was nothing in Ireland for him. As a country we should be disappointed in ourselves, not him. Because Gillick loves Ireland.

“My support system just revolves around the little team I have, and I’m very happy with that. I’m not necessarily happy with where high performance sport is, in athletics. But I have to disassociate from that, do my own thing. Because I think if you don’t paddle your own canoe in Irish athletics you’re going nowhere. That’s still a little bit sad. But your skin gets thicker, and I think my skin is as thick as it needs to be now. There are still things I’d like. An indoor facility, for one. That seems to be too big an ask. But it’s not a fairytale land, I know.

“But we seem to be in a situation where we pay high-performance consultant fees. We pay high-performance managers. But we don’t pay coaches. That’s strange to me. So I think it’s unfair to criticise athletes this week, because there are deeper problems. There was a bad court case in Irish athletics, which a lot of people don’t seem to have taken any notice of. A whole heap of money was spent, and maybe the association should have been more answerable for that.

“I just can’t think about it too much. I just find it hard that high-performance plans keep coming out, and are not followed through on. And I find it difficult hearing about 2016. I think that’s somewhat disrespectful to the current crop of athletes who are doing very well. Give us some support for 2012 and recognise that we’re lucky to have the athletes that we have right now.”

O’Rourke is well supported, financially, her €40,000 grant the highest available, but truth is she limits any additional earnings by avoiding the big-money meetings in order to focus entirely on the championships. In fact, while talking to her in the mixed zone on Saturday night, she was approached by a representative of the Diamond League meeting in Brussels, wanting to know if she’d be available. She had no idea when it was even on – and besides she has commitments right now in the form of a 15,000-word thesis as part of her Masters degree at the Smurfit Business School.

“I’ve had seven months to do it, and I’m down to 14 days. I suppose I just like the pressure. It’s about the traits of successful entrepreneurs and elite athletes, the high achievers and risk takers, the similarities they show. So I like taking some risks but I think I’d be devastated if I ran 12.6 in say a big meeting Lausanne, and ran 12.9 here. The whole point of every season, the way I see it, is the championships.”

The whole point of next season, we know, will be the World Championships in Daegu, and after that the London Olympics in 2012. In reality it will probably require a 12.5 clocking to medal in either of those. We know O’Rourke can probably start better than she did here, but where else can she improve?

“Funny, I’ve just had breakfast with Seán, and he said ‘I know we shouldn’t be talking about training already, but I think we need to improve your speed through the hurdles . . .’ I am nearly there. But I can bring more speed to the hurdles. In the gym too. But in women’s hurdles, honestly, there’s about 16 athletes that can win. It’s really dynamic. But I’m not going to suddenly start thinking all about London, because I could rip up my hamstring in 2012. I’m just going to run on, to next year’s World Championships, then the Olympics. But I’d love to finish my career with the full set. That would be unbelievable.”