MAGEEAN BACK WITH DOUBLE
CIARA MAGEEAN has known the highs and lows of international athletics.
Winning a silver at World Juniors as a teenager was followed up with her 1500m bronze at the European seniors two years ago.
She was expected to carry the flag for Irish women’s middle-distance running for many years to come but had a really tough year in 2017.
The nadir was trailing home 13th in her heat at last year’s World Championships.
But the Co Down runner has been brave enough to make changes.
She switched coaches and moved to England this year and yesterday showed that she’s back in promising form ahead of the upcoming European Championships. In one afternoon she won the 800m and 1500m at the Irish National Championships, a classy double last achieved by Sonia O’Sullivan back in 2000.
There really is no better barometer of class or form than that.
THE strategy is simple, and the way Derval O’Rourke describes it, the mystery is how many make it so complicated. “It’s about day-to-day consistency,” she says. “Can you get an athlete to turn up six days a week, 11 months of the year and structure the training so they’re ready for a championship? That’s the magic recipe.”
After a string of underage medals by Irish athletes, O’Rourke is one of many pondering the same question: how to turn it into senior success?
“You don’t f**k them up,” she says. “If the talent is there and they’re not injured, you just support that. You can never get it 100 per cent right, but the number one goal is not to be injured.”
She’s paraphrasing the dictum passed down by Seán and Terrie Cahill, who coached O’Rourke to a world indoor title, four European medals and a fourth-place finish at the World Championships.
Though retired since 2014, O’Rourke has kept a rabid interest in the sport, and she was commentating with the IAAF at the World U-20 Championships when Ireland won two silver medals through the women’s 4x100m and Sommer Lecky in the high jump.
When she thinks back to how she performed at that event 18 years ago – exiting in the 100m hurdles semi-final – her appraisal is blunt: “I was average to bad.”
But she had plenty to work on. “When I went to world juniors I couldn’t bench press a bar, I had no strength whatsoever so I had so much scope to improve. People love medals, but I look at some of the people who made semi-finals, because that’s the athlete I was. It’s often the kids no one thought about that are most exciting.”
After finishing school O’Rourke enrolled at UCD and, when she looks back, that decision remains the great what-if of her career.
CRUCIAL
“I wish I went to America because in that college period, I was in a country that had no real coaching set-up and the next three years were a real struggle. Those college years are crucial and it’s almost impossible in Ireland unless it’s changed massively.”
In 2005, she began being advised by the Cahills, and six months later she won the world indoor title in Moscow. In 2008, she moved to Bath for a year to work with British coach Malcolm Arnold, a decision that backfired.
“It was a complete disaster, it didn’t work, I got injured and it gave me real perspective. I found the grass was not greener so I came back and ran all my fastest times at home.”
Back then, Irish athletes had nothing like the support services available today, so O’Rourke sourced her own coaches, doctor, strength and conditioning experts and agent – all outside the system. Things are more integrated today with the Sport Ireland Institute, though the problem remains the lack of professional coaches.
“What I find confusing is we put athletes on funding, pay for them to see a sports doctor, physio and a strength and conditioning person, for blood tests, but the person who guides their entire careers – the coach – is treated like a second-class citizen. Maybe it has changed, but they certainly weren’t given the respect when I was competing.”
In 2014, following Achilles surgery, O’Rourke (right) called time on her career at 33, her profile not fitting the performance funnel programme of high performance director Kevin Ankrom.
“I felt as if I wasn’t really valued to stay in the sport. In a different system I would have gone away, had my baby and come back for 2016 but I felt that was never an option. When you’re managing your whole system yourself, you eventually run out of energy and I was done fighting, asking for funding, asking for time to justify myself. But I haven’t ever regretted it.”
These days her career is thriving away from the track, O’Rourke running her own health and fitness company and preparing to launch a digital business in September.
“I saw a lot of athletes walking away and thought: ‘Does anyone ever call them again? Does anyone ask them if they’re busy?’ I knew the phone wouldn’t ring so I set up a huge amount before I retired.”
When she looks at the next generation, her hope is they find a smoother path than her.
“If I had a teenager come to me now my gut would be to consider all their options in America. I think we’ve advanced but not far enough. “We need to teach the young talent about getting themselves in a really good environment to train well. They’re often in a club in a cocooned mindset, which is fine as a teenager but that’s not the reality when they’re older.”
If she has one area she urges them to prioritise, it’s what she credits for her success. “Surround yourself with good people and really, really good coaching – that’s key. Being a coach of a talented teenager is very different to coaching a successful senior so they need to identify who is the best to transition them.
“It’s very, very unusual that a coach brings someone from eight years old up to an Olympic medal.
“Without a doubt the talent is there. Their attitudes are amazing and that’s the thing I’m most impressed with.”
Inthat department, few Irish athletes rivalled O’Rourke, who time and again rose to a new level at championships, even if she so often came up against dopers.
In 2010, she was beaten to European gold by Turkey’s Nevin Yanit who later tested positive, and in 2009 she was edged out of a world medal by Jamaica’s Delloreen EnnisLondon, who a year earlier was implicated in an investigation by ‘Sports Illustrated’ which revealed she had received a shipment of human growth hormone. No anti-doping sanction was given.
O’Rourke’s message to the next generation on doping?
LONGEVITY
“You don’t know whether people are going to do that so why worry about a problem that may never happen? Yeah, I’ve been in situations that were a bit s**t but the vast majority of my career, the people who beat me were just better. To go into a mindset that everyone is taking drugs and that’s why you’re not doing well – that’s not taking responsibility.”
Longevity was her other strength, O’Rourke running her PB of 12.65 to win her second European outdoor silver medal at the age of 29.
“Athletes should prepare themselves that there are way, way more tough days than good days,” she says.
“To medal as a senior is taking an underage status and multiplying it by 10. It’s really, really difficult so it has to be about the long game.”