Mageean out to improve and ‘proud to be clean’
CIARA MAGEEAN is a breath of fresh air. In an era when sportspeople are growing increasingly tightly wound, when every word in interviews is calculated and controlled, the affable Portaferry native is an open book. Nothing is off-limits. Sitting in an office boardroom last Thursday, across the road from her alma mater of UCD, Mageean went from her father Chris’ eminent status within Down hurling to the heel injury that threatened her career and the Alberto Salazar controversy which cast a dark shadow over the world championships, where she finished 10th in the 1,500m final. And much more besides.
Growing up on the Ards Peninsula, Mageean’s first passion was hurling. She is too young to remember the exploits of Chris ‘the Hunter’ on a very good Down team in the early to mid-1990s, but Mageean was playing senior camogie for Portaferry at 14.
By that stage, her running talent was becoming apparent. She was winning titles for her secondary school, although there was no athletics club in Portaferry to harness her potential. Persistence by the City of Lisburn, a good 50minute drive from her hometown, paid off when they had a young Mageean wearing their vest.
‘When I was in UCD, I had to transfer clubs because I was on a scholarship, but I have transferred back to City of Lisburn now, I told them I would go back and I am a girl of my word. I like representing the club, and a club in the north, because the clubs down south are so strong.’
As a junior, Mageean won a world silver medal and European gold. Her trajectory looked to be moving in only one direction. However, at 19, a heel problem threatened her entire career.
‘After the juniors, everyone thought I was on this trajectory to be a world-beater. And then I got a bad injury, a bone spur in the back of my heel which was causing a lot of pain. I eventually had to go down the surgical route.
‘I didn’t race for three years, almost four. That was really hard. I missed my whole Under 23 career. I didn’t wear an Irish vest for four years and looking back now, that was a big deal.
‘People say to me how did you keep your head during all of that. But it didn’t occur to me not (to). I was told with the surgery there was a 20 per cent chance that it wouldn’t work. And that scared me, worried me. There were a few tears when I thought there was a 20 per cent chance that I would never be able to race at the top level again,’ she remembers.
‘But once the surgery was over, I put my head down and did the rehab. Maybe, it was my stubbornness but there was never any question of me quitting because I am a runner and that’s all I know. For me, the harder times are when you have a poor performance that you can’t explain. They are much more difficult to handle, mentally, because with an injury, it is tangible, and you know what has happened.’
And the way that she has battled back from a career-threatening injury has given Mageean a sense of perspective in the past couple of weeks, as she reflected on her performance in Doha. She was excellent at the world championships, running a personal best in a major final. However, she was still nine seconds slower than the champion, Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan, who’s association with Salazar raised suspicions.
‘You don’t know what is going on in anybody’s life but your own. I know I am a clean athlete and I can take pride in that,’ Mageean says diplomatically when asked about Hassan.
‘But it is hard. I came off that track in Doha, happy, knowing that I had given all that I could. But a time of 3:51 is something I don’t know I will ever witness again in my lifetime. Not that I witnessed it because it happened ahead of me,’ she says with a smile. ‘If the race was won in 3:55 or 3:56, that would be within the realm I could make up. But I wasn’t going to make up nine seconds.
‘My dream was of winning medals, standing on a podium, and hearing Amhrán na bhFiann echoing around the stadium. That is what I run for, that’s what I want from this sport. And it was disheartening and crushing to think I can’t achieve that.
‘But I’ve reflected a little bit over the last couple of weeks and I’ve realised I have come such a long way myself. If I leave this sport, having never won a major medal on the senior stage for Ireland but if I make the progression I want, go out there and race with pride for my country and lay everything bare on the track, then I can walk away with my head held high,’ the 26-year-old proclaims.
‘As much as it does dishearten me that not everybody in the sport is as honest as me, there is nothing I can do about that. You just have to shut those demons in your head off. I know that I will race for Ireland as a clean athlete and a proud one.’
Mageean is annoyed by the perception that doping is widespread in the sport.
‘You hear it said that we are all at it. That’s crushing because that taints all of us. I go bust my gut every day in an Irish vest to do it honestly. And to be told that is very disappointing, especially when other sports don’t get tarnished the way athletics does.
‘But I am happy to see that they are investigating certain coaches and hopefully, they will continue to clean up the sport,’ Mageean says, as she sets out on the road to Tokyo, which she hopes will end with being the first Irishwoman in an Olympic 1,500m final
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‘YOU HEAR IT SAID THAT WE’RE ALL AT IT... THAT’S CRUSHING’