RUGBY CAREER JUST DIDN’T AD UP FOR REECE
REECE ADEMOLA was told that he could dominate as a rugby player.
Standing at 6’9” and with his athletic ability, the young Corkman could have made a hell of a second row.
Fortunately for Irish athletics, however, he gave the oval ball game a wide berth.
Now the long jumper is one of Irish track and field’s great prospects and is eyeing up Paris 2024.
He laughed: “I was told if I did play rugby I was going to dominate in the sport, but I couldn’t hurt this pretty face!
“I was told to go do other sports and I did, to be fair. I played a bit of GAA, a bit of basketball. But none of it really stuck like athletics.
“It was just more diverse, I suppose.”
Ademola (inset) is primed for take-off. For starters, Ciaran Mcdonagh’s longstanding 8m national record is in his sights.
He heads to the national senior indoor championships in Abbotstown tomorrow having improved his own Irish U23 long jump record at the World Indoor Tour Gold meeting in Ostrava a fortnight ago.
Ademola jumped 7.93 metres – adding seven centimetres to the record he set in Denmark the previous week – and finished third in a stacked field behind winner Miltiadis Tentoglou, the world and Olympic champion.
“I didn’t expect it,” said Ademola, who was born in Cork to parents from Latvia and Nigeria.
“Facing off with Tentoglou, and the other decorated long jumpers who were out there... being able to set them out of their comfort zone, definitely sent myself into like ‘oh, I can go against these boys here’.”
Ademola underlined his credentials as a potential next big thing in Irish athletics in 2021 when he finished fifth in the World U20s championships in 2021.
But last summer he hit a massive speed bump at the European team championships, when he failed to register a jump. It was a similar story in the European U23s.
He got to work with his coach, Liz Egan, and started going abroad to see how the best long jumpers do their work.
“I’m feeling very positive about the rest of the season,” he said.
“If I get a good wind to my back and get more strengthening sessions in, I could get over the 8 metre mark.”
As for Olympic qualification, Ademola has moved up the rankings in the qualifying rota but is not sure where he stands.
“It’s about progressing after every competition, that’s my main job really,” he said.
“All good things will come in time but it’s the place every athlete wants to be.”