Ryan justifies that dreaded B-standard mark

ATHLETICS:Deirdre Ryan has been going about her business in a meticulous and determined manner and it all paid off in Daegu

I’M UNDER strict instructions not to make any suggestion whatsoever about even the slightest possibility that the Olympic Council of Ireland will for one second consider anything less than A-standard qualifying marks for London next summer. The order has come straight from the top, believe me, and let’s just leave it at that.

Pity, because if that was the case for the World Championships in Daegu last week then we’d have missed out on one of the best ever field event performances by an Irish athlete. Although the sometimes obsessive fascination with A-standards can be a dangerous thing anyway, taking away from the true nature of competition – and no one knows this better than Deirdre Ryan.

“The fact is I only went to Daegu on a B-standard,” she told me this week, after eventually tracking Ryan down to her apartment just outside Cologne, in Germany, where for the past three years she’s been meticulously and determinedly pursuing her quest to become one of the best high jumpers in the world. After improving her Irish record to 1.95 metres in Daegu, making the final, then finishing joint sixth, Ryan has effectively completed that quest. Not that she’s even nearly done jumping yet.

“I hope that sends some message, about what can be done, because it’s a fact as well that I only did the B-standard, of 1.93, once, before Daegu. And I actually struggled that night, took 16 jumps and just nailed each height at the last attempt. So Daegu really was an exceptional performance, far above anything else I’d had this year. I also came very close to 1.97. It wasn’t until I saw it afterwards that I realised just how close it was. I just clipped it. It would have been unbelievable to get that.

“That’s the funny thing with the high jump. You’re always that tiny bit disappointed, when you know you shouldn’t be. I would have signed my name for a place in the final, and a national record, and I got all that, and more.”

By more, Ryan doesn’t need to explain that she means the A-standard for London: her 1.95 hit the A-standard bang on, and with that came the enormous relief of not having to chase the mark into 2012. Only 17 jumpers in all hit 1.95 last year, because like most A-standards for London it’s extremely difficult. But if Ryan can relax now about London it’s at least partly because at age 29 she’s endured a long hard road to get there.

When she was growing up in the south Dublin suburbs, across the road from the sporting playground that is Marley Park, all Ryan wanted to do was compete in the Olympics. Or rather run in the Olympics, just like Sonia O’Sullivan. She pleaded with her parents to let her join an athletics club, and while at first they reckoned she was too young, they soon relented, and Ryan enlisted with the happy gang at Dundrum-South Dublin.

At age 12 and 13 she spent three or four evenings a week running the back fields of Marley, and at weekends raced cross-country. The only problem was Ryan wasn’t any good, usually tailing home somewhere next to last. Not that it wasn’t still fun.

During the winter the club would also stage indoor training at the old Dundrum Family Recreation Centre, and one evening set up some gymnastic mats and a make-shift high jump. Ryan thought that looked like really good fun, and quickly found herself clearing heights the other girls couldn’t get near. Lucy Moore, the club field events coach, was called over to watch. At age 14, Ryan was instantly and permanently converted to the high jump.

She was tall for her age but not exceptionally so, and instead, Moore’s smart coaching brought about early progress: at age 15 Ryan jumped 1.77 metres, and then in 2001, aged 19, she set an Irish junior record of 1.85 – just over six feet in old money.

She was cleaning up in school and club competitions and in 2002 qualified for the European Indoors, in Vienna. There was some talk even then of making the Athens Olympics, in 2004, but when she missed the 2003 season with a stress fracture in her leg that effectively ended those hopes.

In the meantime Ryan got herself a scholarship at UCD, and graduated fluent in German, French, and Italian. Injury again deprived her of the 2005 season, yet she returned for a brilliant summer in 2006 – breaking or equalling the Irish senior record on four different occasions, taking it to 1.92 when winning the British AAA title. She also jumped 1.92 at the European Championships in Gothenburg, finishing 13th in the final.

She’d found her event alright, hungry now to be the best she possibly could. It wasn’t so much the physical challenge but the mental one. The high jump, like most field events, is more technical than physical.

“You can be in the best physical shape of your life,” she says, “but little things can hold you back. I always thought there was something symbolic about jumping the bar as well, pushing your limits. You see the bar, see the height, and know you’ve never cleared it. That’s the challenge, right there, in front of you. It’s about staying calm, and trying to do the same things you did at the lower height. Plus, there’s great camaraderie in the event as well. All the girls get on well, so it’s good fun.”

Perfect for Ryan, who probably couldn’t do competitive sport without some element of fun. But after 2006, and with the Beijing Olympics looming, she realised too she needed a few more professional layers. She linked up for a while with Tia Hellebaut, in Belgium, who’d won the gold medal in Gothenburg, but she was often away at training camps, doing her own thing.

Then in 2007 Ryan was competing at a small meeting Leverkusen, just outside Cologne, and was straight away sold on the facilities. So, determined to make Beijing, she left her job at the former UniCredito Italiano Bank in the IFSC and in early 2008 moved full-time to Leverkusen, to train under the renewed German high jump coach Gerd Osenberg. “Yeah, that was the dream. To give Beijing my very best shot. I started that summer quite well, then got sick, and really struggled after that to make the qualification.

“But I had found a good base, somewhere I could also work part-time. Because my funding was always up in the air. Then I lost all funding last year and I was a bit surprised about that, but you just have to get on with it, find some work, keep the head down.

“I just kept thinking if I gave it everything I could, then I’d have no regrets.”

This year didn’t exactly start off on a high point, when Ryan tore ligaments in first her left, and then her right ankle. Her old friend Martina McCarthy at DCU tailored a specific rehab programme, and Ryan used the time to alter and improve various aspects of her jumping. “It was almost like hitting a reset button. It really was a combination of things that come together for me in Daegu, but just pure determination, more than anything. I still feel I could and should have jumped 1.95 a few years ago, but injuries or maybe some wrong decisions held me back.”

Thankfully, not just for Ryan but for the good of all the sport, somebody somewhere made the right decision to send her to Daegu on a B-standard.