They might come from very different sporting worlds, but Ciara Mageean and Siobhan McCrohan have plenty in common, not least both of them having to overcome spells when they were blighted by injury to enjoy seasons to remember.
Mageean’s 2022 was, of course, special too, among the highlights those silver medals at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games. But the start to her 2023 was a struggle after she suffered a tendon injury.
Thereafter? Where do you start? In May, she regained the Irish 800m record she had lost to Louise Shanahan. In July, she smashed Sonia O’Sullivan’s mile record to finish second at the Diamond League meeting in Monaco - her time making her the fifth fastest miler in athletics history. In August, she broke the Irish 1500m record when she finished, agonisingly, fourth in an epic World Championships final. Last month she lowered that mark again in Brussels.
As Ian O’Riordan wrote of her “quite startling 4:14.58″ in that mile, Mageean had produced “the run of her life” in what was “unquestionably the greatest women’s mile ever, each of the 13 women who finished running either a world record, a national record, or a personal record”. Not just any world record either, Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon knocking the best part of five seconds off the previous mark.
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And having run another Irish record in that World Championship final, Mageean, as she put it herself, could have done no more. “To stand here, being a bit disappointed with fourth in the World, in previous years I would have taken off your hand for that,” she said.
Come Brussels, she was in record-breaking form yet again, this time becoming the first Irishwoman to break 3:56 in the 1500m. That made it an outstanding 2023 for the Down woman, McCrohan having one she won’t forget in a hurry either after winning gold in the lightweight sculls final at the World Rowing Championships in Serbia.
That the 36-year-old from Claregalway achieved the feat after a seven-year absence from rowing internationally made it all the more remarkable, not to mention having to battle a shoulder problem in that time.
She only resumed “proper training” last winter but just missed out on a medal at the European Championships in May when she finished fourth, but there was no stopping her in Serbia. This despite the final taking place in gruelling conditions, with strong winds and the temperatures hitting 30 degrees.
McCrohan, who parked her job as an aeronautical engineer last winter to concentrate on her rowing, was a convincing winner, finishing a boat-length clear of Mexico’s Kenia Lechuga. “A good comeback,” she said of her gold after that seven year break. Not half.
Previous Monthly Winners (the awards run from December 2022 to November 2023, inclusive): December: Eilish and Roisin Flanagan (Athletics); January: Rhasidat Adeleke (Athletics); February: Orla Prendergast (Cricket); March: Rachael Blackmore (Horse racing); April: Thammy Nguyan (Weightlifting); May: Lucy Mulhall (Rugby); June: Leona Maguire (Golf); July: Katie McCabe (Soccer); August: Katie-George Dunlevy (Cycling) and Hannah Tyrrell (Gaelic football).
