For about 90 minutes last Saturday afternoon Rhasidat Adeleke was walking around the Sports Arena in Lubbock, Texas, still processing the fact she’d just run the fastest women’s 400 metres ever witnessed in the history of American indoor athletics.
Her 50.33 seconds, to win the Big 12 Conference in the colours of the University of Texas, improved her own Irish record of 50.45, set earlier in the month – and was also the 13th fastest of all-time, behind several former eastern bloc athletes of dubious reputation.
Then word come through that Talitha Diggs, also aged 20, ran 50.15 to win the SEC Conference at Arkansas, the New Jersey native representing the University of Florida thus assuming the new American mark, and moving to joint-eighth on that all-time list.
That’s how fast and competitive things truly are on the American collegiate scene. There is no hanging around in any sense, and Adeleke is revelling in it all: because rarely has any athlete gone about smashing Irish records with such pace and consistency, and it seems no one is more surprised than herself. Especially since she’s still only getting started.
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It may be a long way from Tallaght to Texas, further still to the sprawling campus of the University of Texas at Austin, but Adeleke is speaking from there via Zoom on Wednesday afternoon as if it’s her perfectly comfortable home-from-home, ample evidence to suggest the move was chosen wisely.
“Every race I ran, there’s always been something wrong, and I always feel there’s a little more there,” she says. “So I definitely do feel there’s a big jump to come.”
Just over midway through her junior year, Adeleke opened her indoor season with a new Irish indoor 200m record of 22.52 seconds; in her first 400m race, she ran 50.45, faster than her own outdoor mark of 50.53, then last Saturday improved it again that 50.33.
It’s the sort of competition that continues to bring out the best in her: she’ll race Diggs at the NCAA Indoor Championships in Albuquerque on Saturday week (the reason why she’s not racing this weekend’s European Indoors) and given it’s her first proper season of 400m training there is clearly more to come.
Asked about that recent progress, she points to the encouragement of her coach at Texas, Edrick “Flo” Floreal, who always reckoned her potential was in the longer sprint event. Since October she’s moved to the 400m training group, “a lot of long reps, 600s, 500s, 400s”, and that strength is only beginning to show.
Last summer, finishing fifth in the European Championship final, running that 50.53 out of lane one, she was admittedly only beginning too: “I’m still kind of in that position. My coach will tell me to get out, in the 400m that’s the first lap indoors, and I’d be scared to get, because I’m scared to die. He’s like ‘no, you’re strong enough, if you get out, you’ll be able to hold the momentum’, and I didn’t realise that until my recent races.
“So things like that I’m trying to understand, what the speed of the first lap is supposed to feel like, all those minor things, so I’m still not a guru at the event, I am kind of learning. I have so much more to give, I don’t feel like I was at max capacity.”
What didn’t surprise her was that 50.15 clocked by Diggs, already the NCAA champion indoors and out, with a World Championship gold medal with the USA 4x400m relay team in Oregon last July.
“I knew that because of the competition at the SEC championships, and Arkansas is a really good track for the 400m, so I definitely expected some big performances, even the guys were all running a second faster than their PB’s. But I have another chance to go for it in two weeks.
“I haven’t raced her yet, so I’m waiting for that competitive race, I’m looking for my own big drop. But things move very quick, everyone progresses a lot, it’s always exciting.”
Here’s where her competitive instincts also show. Before the start of the season, Adeleke sat down with her team-mates in a goal-making session, and wrote down 50.8 seconds as her target: surpassing that, by the margin she has, is surprising too.
“I hadn’t remembered what I put down for my goal and I saw it on the sheet, it was 50.8, and even when I wrote that down it was a far-fetched dream for me. Then to see that I’ve achieved it in my opener and then again at Big 12 championships, it was just such a surprise, I was just so grateful to look back at it.
“He told me that when he saw me put down 50.8, he was like, ‘you’re going to smash that’ and I didn’t see at the time but he really knows what he’s talking about and he kind of writes the programme for us to achieve these times. So when he tells us something, it might seem far-fetched but you have to believe it because he definitely knows what he’s talking about.
There is the option of turning professional come the summer, although supported by a grant of €25,000 from Sport Ireland, the likelihood is she will see out her college career, where she is studying corporate communications. She’s hesitant to talk or think too much about this summer’s World Championships, or next year’s Paris Olympics, except to know they’re not long down the tracks.
“I have those things in the back of my mind, to have those discussions, and I’ll know where it’s going to be at in the next couple of months but I’m definitely trying to live in the moment. I’ve had about three and a half, four months of (400m) training so by the time of the outdoor season, I’m really excited to see what all the extra training I’m going to do will have me at.”
In the big question of adjusting to life in Austin she gives immediate credit to her mother Ade, her hero from her early sprinting days: “She calls me every five minutes, so it feels like she’s still here anyway. She worked so hard for everything and made sure I had the opportunities to achieve all that I achieved. She’d switch her work times so I could go to training, she’d go to every international competition that I’d be at ...
“That’s definitely someone who inspired me because I want to be able to kind of repay her for all that, show her that I’m going to work hard to make all the sacrifices you do worthwhile.”
Rhasidat Adeleke was speaking after being named the newest sporting ambassador of Allianz Insurance, global and local partners of the Olympic and Paralympic Movement, who will support her journey to Paris 2024.
