Ireland enjoying a NEW SCHOOL OF TALENT

The success of young athletes in international competitions is leading to justifiable optimism for the immediate future of the sport

‘I THINK WE’VE GOT THE RAW TALENT HERE, WE JUST NEED THE RIGHT SYSTEMS’

THERE are more taxing ways to start a Leaving Cert year. One morning last week, Sarah Healy was buying a ticket for the Dart on her way to school. ‘The guy who was selling me my ticket said “Well done”. That was such a nice start to my day,’ she smiles. ‘It’s been really cool, and totally unexpected.’

At 17 years of age, Healy was one of the stories of the Irish sporting summer. She has been recognised as a prodigious middle-distance talent in Irish schools’ competition for some time, but her gifts went global in July. She won two gold medals at the European Under 18 Championships in Gyor, Hungary, over 1500m and 3000m.

They were the pinnacles in an extraordinary season. Earlier in the summer, she broke the Irish youth and Under 20 record over 800m. In February, she broke the national 3000m indoor record in the same grade.

In June, Healy broke the Irish senior girls’ 1500m record, held by one Ciara Mageean. In the same month, she also ran the second-fastest time over 1500m ever managed by a European U18 girl, at a meet in Germany.

From Blackrock in south Dublin, Healy is a splendid talent over distances where Irish excellence was pioneered by Sonia O’Sullivan.

Rhasidat Adeleke is blazing down a much less familiar path. Irish sprinters have struggled to make an impression at European or world championships, but Adeleke is part of a generation of young Irish female competitors challenging that tradition.

In Gyor in July, she won Ireland’s third gold, to go with Sarah Healy’s two, when winning the 200m. This came a year after Gina Akpe-Moses became the first Irish athlete to win a European sprint title when winning the 100m at the European Under 20s in Italy.

At the European Youth Olympics in Hungary last year, an Under 17 competition, Patience Jumbo-Gula won bronze over the same distance. And she was also part of an Irish 4x100m team, along with AkpeMoses, Molly Scott and Ciara Neville, that won silver in the World U20s, also this past summer.

Adeleke was a part of that team but missed out through injury having run in the semi-final of the event in Tampere, Finland.

And there’s more: Phil Healy broke the national records over 100m and 200m in six weeks this summer, becoming the first Irish woman to run under 23 seconds in setting a new mark over 200m.

Irish athletics has rarely known a time of such concentrated achievement.

That it is largely centred in women’s running (with acknowledgment of Thomas Barr’s European bronze) is especially significant in an age when the drop-off rates for adolescent girls in sport generally remain alarming. One Irish study last year claimed, for instance, that one in two girls have stopped playing any sport by the age of 13.

The success enjoyed by track and field athletes running in Irish colours should serve as an inspiration generally, but it also promises more robust challenges in international competitions in the years ahead –with the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo providing the most high-profile context.

At a preview of last month’s European Championships, one attendee referred to this generation as Irish athletics’ ‘Class of 92’.

That comparison to the explosion of youthful talent that inspired Alex Ferguson’s reign of glory at Manchester United can be put down to giddiness, but the promise is obvious.

Healy and Adeleke were in Irishtown Stadium in Dublin this week to help launch Dublin Sportsfest 2018, a commendable initiative that is designed as a celebration of sport running from September 23 to September 30.

The pair were enjoying a morning out of the classroom, and both were by times bashful and unabashedly excited about how their lives have altered since the summer. Adeleke only turned 16 and has been running with Tallaght Athletics Club since she was 12. ‘I would compete at track and field championships in Santry when I was in primary school and I would usually win every year,’ she smiles. ‘Finally when I was in sixth class my sister in school referred me to a club. It wasn’t that I just wanted to win all the time: I enjoyed athletics. I just kept training and I got better, and the club have been such a huge help.’

Her coach at Tallaght is Johnny Fox, with Healy running in the colours of Blackrock AC where she is coached by Eoghan Marnell.

Interest from universities offering scholarships will be inevitable, with Healy facing that decision before fifth-year student Adeleke has to consider it.

‘I’m still trying to figure that one out. I’m very indecisive,’ says Healy with a chuckle. ‘But I’m planning at the moment, I think I’d like to stay here (in Ireland), but I still have to make that decision.

‘There are so many options, but I think I’d like to stay here.’

The American varsity route was traditionally the one taken by talented Irish athletes, and there remain voices within the sport in this country who would argue for the merits of a long-established if ruthlessly-competitive system.

But it makes sense, too, for young talents thriving under Irish coaching to try and make the most of their gifts in a more familiar environment.

That could make nurturing their talent for longer-term success more possible, too. The US system is more urgent, the priority always the next meet and the well-being of the college track team.

This current Irish bloom is partly a consequence of happenstance; a number of notably talented runners have come along together. But making the most of it is the trick now, and then introducing systems that encourage more to follow.

‘I think we have the raw talent here in Ireland; we have the pool of talent,’ says Hamish Adams, the CEO of Athletics Ireland.

‘It’s a matter of getting systems around the talent to ensure they are well supported and stick at

it.’ Adams has been in his role since May, having headed Rowing Ireland for five years before that. That was not the only high-achieving, high-performance environment he has worked within; he helped oversee the development of the Munster rugby academy. A native of New Zealand, he also worked as a development officer within that country’s rugby union. His understanding of the Munster phenomenon, and how it spread through the province, informs some of his ambitions for athletics in Ireland. Establishing stars within their communities explained a great deal of Munster’s appeal. Why not the same in Irish athletics? ‘The athletes are known in their communities and that creates a great expectation, that they want to deliver again and again. A good example from my own background is Munster rugby,’ says Adams. ‘Munster rugby is part of the community. There is a weight of expectation and the guys want to go out and do it for the people.

‘These girls have had a taste of that, they’ve felt that their achievements are valued.’

Talk is already of Adeleke and Healy as potential Olympians in Tokyo, when they will be 18 and 19 respectively. The two years between then and now will contain a staggering number of challenges, with the step-up to senior competition only one of them.

Neither athlete mentions the Olympics as a specific target, and maintaining their current standards will find them and their peers on the world stage soon enough.

‘I deal with pressure really well,’ says Rhasidat Adeleke. ‘Pressure will come, but it’s not really pressure. It’s trying to compete like I usually do; don’t under-compete. Once I don’t do that, it’s grand.’

Healy is a talented hockey player, too, and is determined to keep the two sports going for as long as she can. She understands the balance that sport provides, particularly in a year of academic importance like the one she is starting now.

‘I think it just helps everything else that you’re trying to do. I don’t think I could just go to school, come home, do my homework and not do anything else. I think it’s very important, and socially as well,’ she explains.

‘There has been increased investments and resources around coaching and sports science to support these young athletes,’ remarks Adams. ‘We’re on a journey; there’s still a long way to go, but we are seeing the fruits of the investment.’

Never has Ireland athletics held such promise. Sport can be treacherous and cruel and dash the highest expectations. But it can inspire people to remarkable deeds, too.