There’s just over a week to go to the 19th edition of the World Athletics Championships, which first started back in 1983 in Helsinki (when Eamonn Coghlan won gold in the men’s 5,000m!), so it’s probably a good time to take a look ahead to the event in Budapest and at just how difficult it is to actually win a medal and also to realise that medals are not the only measure of success.
This year’s championships take place in the newly built National Athletics Stadium, a spectacular circular arena — with a capacity of 35,000 — located on the eastern bank of the Danube River from August 19th to 27th and, in truth, it has been a long wait for athletes to reach the pinnacle of the season.
There’s no doubt that managing that time over the past few months will prove important come the actual championships. We’ll finally see which athletes have been able to find the right balance between training, racing and, indeed, just waiting for the championships to begin.
It should be acknowledged that for many just making the team is a success and it can be a huge challenge to lift again and deliver another career-defining moment on the global stage
Most athletes will have competed in their national championships and notched up fast times on the Diamond League circuit and at international meets over the summer but, I know, this all counts for nothing when the real deal comes around and the World Championships get under way on the morning of Saturday week.
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At this stage, there’s not much more work to be done, just fine-tuning and getting that balance right in the days leading up to the championships. It’s between doing enough, but not too much, so that you can turn up fresh and ready to deliver the best race of the year!
It should be acknowledged that for many just making the team is a success and it can be a huge challenge to lift again and deliver another career-defining moment on the global stage.
For some, it will be their first World Championship. For the seasoned campaigner, they will be using all their experience to manage their efforts through the qualifying rounds believing they have a right to be in the final while others will be racing each round like it is a final. It’s a mix of young and experienced athletes, all searching for that special performance that lifts them to another level and to get the boost needed to reach the next developmental stage and where they can be content with their efforts.
Ireland has had representatives at every World Championships since its inception 30 years ago and this year will see the largest ever team — 24 athletes — and, I also believe, with greater numbers there’s also the expectation and hope of more opportunities for success.
It’s a tough environment, though. Ireland have won six medals in the history of the world championships — four gold, two silver — and the last of any hue came all of 10 years ago when Robert Heffernan took gold in the 50km Walk. That was a career-defining moment for Rob having finished fourth (later upgraded to bronze) at the London Olympics a year earlier.
Eamonn Coghlan set the standard in 1983 at the very first World Championships, confidently using his shorter 1,500m speed to take gold over 5,000m. We thought that would have paved the way for further success but it would be another 10 years before I managed silver in the 1,500m in Stuttgart in 1993.
That silver medal was just a silver lining in the backdrop of the questionable Chinese athletes’ performances at those championships. They came from nowhere in the women’s 10,000m, 3,000m and 1,500m; a Chinese takeaway, which was just preparation for the Asian Games two months later when they obliterated the middle distance world records, all under a cloud of suspicion that was never fully investigated.
I at least managed to get my hands on a gold medal in the 1995 World Championships in the 5,000m.
There seems to be a sequence in the decades as far as Irish medal-winning feats have gone, from 1983 to 1993 and to 2003, when Gillian O’Sullivan claimed a silver medal on the streets of Paris over 20km of race walking. In fact, half — three of six — of Ireland’s world championship medals have come from race walking.
And, if we follow that pattern, then just maybe there is a chance for Ireland to deliver one more medal on the world stage this year.
The two stand-out chances seem obvious: Ciara Mageean and Rhasidat Adeleke.
Mageean and Adeleke have been in record-breaking form already this year: Mageean over 800m way back in May and the mile just three weeks ago; while Adeleke seems to set a new record nearly every time she sets a foot on the track.
As I’ve noted before, though, times and records are what it looks like on paper. Everything changes when athletes have to go through the qualifying rounds and each race determines if you get the chance to come back again and only then do you get to work out how to deliver the best possible result and get to the final.
For some members of Team Ireland, success will not be so obvious. If an athlete sets a realistic target, then anything above and beyond that is to be genuinely applauded as a step in the right direction.
The World Athletics Championships is a truly global affair and the most competitive sporting stage with more than 2,000 athletes from some 200 countries competing and vying for success and chasing medals and their dreams. Some of those success stories will not be so clear to the casual onlooker.
For some, it will be enough to progress to the next round while for others it may be to set a personal best and elevate themselves to another level
As a country, we need to be proud of our athletes and measure the success as a whole, relative to where we stand entering that competition arena.
For some, it will be enough to progress to the next round while for others it may be to set a personal best and elevate themselves to another level. This year’s marks contribute towards Olympic qualification for Paris 2024 so there are always consolation prizes to work towards.
As Sarah Lavin told me recently, it’s more than just about winning and losing. Now, there is also the added incentive to improve your rankings and maintain a level of success taking into account the bigger picture. It’s about always trying to improve your score and surpass your lowest result in the average of five taken to determine an athlete’s ranking in their event.
Of the two dozen athletes — including two relay teams competing for Ireland — we can expect a maximum of eight athletes to progress to the next round with a potential for five finalists. That’s just how difficult it is to even line up in the medal race and, if that were to happen, that would be more success than Ireland has ever had in any one year at the world championships.
These are the numbers that we need to be looking at to have a realistic view of what success would mean for the Irish team in Budapest. We invest in our athletes and have seen world-class results throughout the regular season, now we need to expect our athletes to deliver on the world stage. Irish athletes are at a level where they should feel like they belong. We need to be able to understand the true measure of their results and this may or may not deliver medals but there is no reason we can’t be fighting for one or two medals in Budapest .
