One of the last things Oisín Joyce said to me before heading for Lima in Peru last week was that he wasn’t looking beyond making the final. Turns out this was no false modesty or soft ambition, just some reflection of his already astute belief in his own ability to throw the javelin.
The belief that if Joyce could make that final at the World Under-20 Championships then he may not be better than all the rest but he’s just as good, some reflection too of the shifting psyche in the new generation of Irish athletes.
So it proved on a chilly damp Thursday night in the Peruvian capital when, after making the javelin final as the ninth best of the 12 qualifiers, Joyce threw 73.89m with his first attempt, extending his own Irish under-20 record by 17cm – and for a while was the best of all the rest.
Joyce was overtaken in the second round by Xiaobo Wang from China, who has already thrown over 80m. And until the last round the 19-year-old from Ballinrobe in Co Mayo was still in the silver medal position. His last throw was 71.32m, and Joyce could do nothing more except wait. Then up stepped Slovenia’s Tom Tersek, who has also thrown over 80m, his last effort of 76.81m overtaking the lot for outright gold, still leaving Joyce in a podium position.
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In the now 38-year history of the World Under-20 Championships no Irish thrower had made the podium, Joyce joining the elite company of only four previous medal winners, all silver; Antoine Burke in the high jump in 1994, Ciara Mageean in the 1,500m in 2010, Sommer Lecky in the high jump in 2018, and the women’s 4x100m relay team of Molly Scott, Ciara Neville, Gina Akpe-Moses, Patience Jumbo-Gula and Rhasidat Adeleke, also in 2018.
Just 24 hours before Joyce’s historic throw Elizabeth Ndudi overcame a back injury to finish sixth in the long jump, just short of the bronze medal despite being unable to train for several days beforehand. Ndudi’s best of 6.18m was well off her Irish senior record of 6.68m, set back in April while competing for her US college in Illinois, a distance that would have won her gold in Lima.
Last summer Ndudi became the first Irish athlete to win a gold medal in a field event in the 53-year history of the European Under-20 Championships, the then 18-year-old taking the long jump title in Jerusalem, and with that properly igniting a timely and welcome renaissance in Irish athletics field events.
After failing to qualify for a single field athlete event for the Tokyo Olympics, two made it to Paris, 20-year-old Nicola Tuthill in the hammer and Eric Favors in the shot. Kate O’Connor, still only 23, also became Ireland’s first women’s multievent qualifier in Olympic history, finishing a highly creditable 14th in the heptathlon.
In July Thomas Williams also made some Irish athletics field event history at the European Under-18 Athletics Championships in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia. Just 16, the Cavan athlete won gold in the hammer with a best of 73.95m – a first gold in a field event, and only third in history after Adeleke’s 200m triumph in 2018 and Sarah Healy’s 800m-1,500m double at the same event.
Williams’s win followed the bronze medal won in Slovakia by Cian Crampton in the men’s discus, the 17-year-old from Edenderry, Co Offaly, improving the Irish under-18 record of 60.55m.
Joyce’s success in Lima is also a timely reminder that for all the talk of the need for better facilities and specialised coaches nothing beats a bit of old-school ingenuity and ambition. His progress in the javelin is entirely home-grown, Joyce first taking up the event at age nine, purely for fun, when joining Lake District AC, the small juvenile club in Ballinrobe, founded just over 10 years ago.
He credits his father Pádraic and mother Pauline as part of his backroom coaching team although both had no athletics backgrounds whatsoever.
In the beginning they would train on the rugby pitch in Ballinrobe, before the club built its own 200m track adjacent to it, finished during the pandemic, and that’s been the throwing base of Joyce and his young club mates ever since.
For the full throwing and running sessions he still needs to travel to the full-size track in Claremorris or Dangan in Galway, although he’s never used that as any excuse or obstacle in pursuing his event.
Back in June Joyce first improved the Irish under-20 record to 73.72m to win the Mannheim International meeting in Germany in June, and by then he had already built a reputation as one of the most promising throwers in the country. Last summer, when still 18, he won his first Irish senior javelin title, and went on to finish sixth in the European Under-20 Championships, and after that decided it was probably time to pack in the Gaelic football.
One of the mysteries of Irish athletes in recent years was this enduring dearth in field event success. Joyce also considers himself a student of the javelin in every sense, and also fits in comfortably with the new generation of Irish athletes keen to make a name outside the traditional running events.
He has met up a few times in recent summers with Terry McHugh, who still holds the Irish senior record with his 82.75m, set back in 2000, and won 21 consecutive Irish javelin titles from 1984 to 2004.
“That’s another bit away yet,” Joyce said of McHugh’s record, “he’s set a high standard.”
That is no false modesty or soft ambition just the belief he can surely some day break that record.
