Scrutiny is fair but unfounded slurs are not
NOTHING nice can be allowed to linger. Good things get tarnished. Great feats are slurred by social media sneaks. We live in cheap, mean, nasty days. There is no reason to suppose that Ciara Mageean is anything other than an outstanding middle-distance runner, gifted from a young age and expected to thrive on the world stage, and now, at the age of 30, starting to consistently fulfil a potential that has flickered sporadically for years.
But there are those who will use decades of toxic revelations in athletics to smear.
They’re only asking questions, you understand.
But of course they’re not. They don’t ask questions at all, but rather raise doubts and cast aspersions.
They are using all of the suspicion and disillusionment caused by the poison of doping to taint an athlete whose current form is not a sensational deviation from the norm.
Mageean’s talent was recognised from a young age, and by her late teens she was starring in international meets.
She was a silver medallist in the 800m at the World Under 18 Championships in 2009. A year later, she came second in the 1500m at the World Under 20s. Also in 2010, at her first senior championships, she finished tenth over the distance at the Commonwealth Games.
In 2011, she won silver at the European Junior Games.
To anyone paying attention, an uncommon talent was detectable form the outset of her career. And
she was a middle-distance athlete, competing over distances that shaped the legend of Sonia O’Sullivan, which drew inevitable comparisons.
That Mageean broke some of the junior records held by O’Sullivan inflated expectations further.
And then the traps that lurk just one pace ahead of every athletic career threatened to consume her.
After that brilliant junior career, she did not run in an Irish vest for six years.
Injury came in an assortment of forms, but an ankle problem took a long, painful toll.
Recovering from the mental effects of that long absence took two years, she once reckoned.
Less serious injuries can still have a profound effect on an athlete’s career, with cruel timing an ever-present danger. Mageean tore her calf in the lead-up to last year’s Olympics, eventually finishing 11th in her semi-final.
In Rio in 2016, she fought valiantly to make the final, but getting to that Games was the culmination of a mammoth effort to return from her long time out injured.
But when fit, and when able to train consistently, her talent has shone.
There are reams of data attesting to her ongoing improvements past her mid-20s.
She set new personal bests for the outdoor mile in July 2019, and the 5,000m that November. The following July, she set a new best for the 800m, and in August 2020, she broke the Irish record for the 1,000m.
There is a similar standard of progression indoor: setting a new Irish record for the mile in January 2019, and doing the same over 1,500m in January 2020, before racing to a new personal best over the 3,000m this June.
Her silver in Munich last month followed a bronze in the same race in 2016. She was edged into fourth in 2018.
She reached the final of that event in the worlds in Doha in 2019.
On it goes. Ciara Mageean is a proven, elite-level athlete over many years and races, outdoors and in.
Splintering Sonia O’Sullivan’s 1500m record in Brussels last week was a stunning athletic feat, but it was also as powerful symbolically, with one of the prestige marks set by Ireland’s greatest, overtaken by the woman who has come closest to matching her standards internationally.
Following up that effort with another glittering Diamond League run in Zurich on Thursday last backed it up.
On both occasions, she out-ran Laura Muir, the European champion and one of the leading 1500m runners in the world.
Four days ago, she was only edged out of first place by arguably the finest 1500m runner in history, Faith Kipyegon, the Olympic champion in 2016 and 2021.
Mageean is competing on a rarefied plane, but, crucially, her progress to that point is traceable and credible.
Scrutiny of athletic excellence is not only now inevitable, but also vital.
But scrutinise it in a fair and honest way, not through pathetic digs on Twitter.
And where an athlete’s record stands up to rigorous analysis, then their achievements should be recognised.
That’s not cheerleading, it’s justice.
Ciara Mageean is 30 now, and the room for great days is getting squeezed.
No matter what comes next, her reputation is sealed – and it has been hard-earned.