Sarah Healy
Age: 24
Club: UCD Athletics Club
The first time Sarah Healy heard Amhrán na bhFiann play out after her victory on the track, the assumption was she wouldn’t be waiting too long to hear it again. And she wasn’t, as two days after winning the 3,000m at the European Under-18 Championships in Gyor, Hungary in July 2018, Healy also won the 1,500m.
Ireland’s three medal winners from the European Indoor Championships: who they are and their journey to the medal podium
Three medals for Ireland as Sarah Healy, Kate O’Connor and Mark English shine at European Indoor Championships
Ireland’s Mark English qualifies for 800m final at European Indoor Championships
Sarah Lavin finishes fourth in 60m hurdles final at European Indoor Championships
Then came a series of near misses after running from the front – second in the 1,500m at the under-20 championships in 2019, second again at the under-23 championships in 2023, narrowly beaten by Sophie O’Sullivan – before some seven years later, Healy did get to hear Amhrán na bhFiann again after she won the 3,000m at the European Indoor Championships on Sunday.
It was a historic win for Irish athletics, Healy the first Irish woman to win gold at these championships which have been running since 1970, but it was deeply satisfying in a personal sense, given some of the setbacks she has endured.
Healy choose to stay home rather than pursue a US scholarship, studying law at UCD while also adjusting to competing in the senior grade. Equally committed to her academics, graduating in 2023 with honours, she was by her own admission often prone to losing concentration in her races.
In May 2022, she ran a world-class time of 4:02.86 for 1,500m at the at the World Athletics Continental Tour gold meeting in Ostrava, taking three seconds off Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish under-23 record of 4:05.81 set 31 years previously in Monaco. But at the 2022 European Cross-Country Championships she suffered a bone stress fracture in her foot, requiring a lengthy lay-off.
Still, Healy never lost her focus on where she wanted to go. After being carefully nurtured by her coach Eoghan Marnell at Blackrock AC, they realised the need to go beyond the big fish in the small pond scenario, and Healy moved to the husband-and-wife coaching team of Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows, based in Wigan, whose group included Keely Hodgkinson, who won gold in the 800m at the Paris Olympics.
There’s a newfound confidence and consistency about Healy’s running since, and nowhere was that more evident than in Apeldoorn on Sunday, where she held her nerve to hit the front for the first time inside the last 50m, right when it matters most.
Mark English
Age: 31
Club: Finn Valley AC
They sometimes say your sport chooses you, not the other way around, and things might have been different had Mark English not been spotted winning the egg and spoon race at his school sports day in Letterkenny.
For a while after English continued to focus on Gaelic football, playing with Letterkenny Gaels, encouraged by Colm McFadden – former All Star, current Donegal selector and one of English’s teachers at St Eunan’s College.
English however soon realised his true potential was in athletics, particularly the 800m which requires that delicate combination of speed and endurance. Still he stayed close to Donegal football, standing in Hill 16 when they won the All-Ireland in 2012.
That was the same year English lowered his 800m best to 1:45.77, the fastest under-20 time in Europe in 2012, just .17 shy of the Olympic A-standard for the London Olympics. Athletics Ireland choose not to nominate him on the B-standard, and at the time that hurt.
Despite several enticing offers to take up a US scholarship, including at Villanova, English choose to stay at home, opting for UCD. Originally enrolling in physiotherapy, he later transferred to medicine, studying alongside Jack McCaffrey, where the talk was who might be the fastest in that class (Note: there would only be one winner).
He won his first Irish senior title indoors in 2011, aged 17, and now, 14 years later and a qualified doctor, English has repeatedly broken the Irish 800m record indoors and out, and is still running stronger, faster, and more determined than ever. His bronze medal in the 800m on Sunday was his fifth European medal in all, making him the most decorated male athlete in the history of Irish athletics.
Kate O’Connor
Age: 24
Club: Dundalk St Gerards AC
It was at the time seen as one small step for Irish athletics, and one giant leap for Kate O’Connor, who in winning the heptathlon silver medal at the European Athletics Under-20 Championships in Boras, Sweden back in 2019, first wrote her own little piece of history.
No Irish woman had ever won a championship medal at any level in the heptathlon, the seven-event disciple demanding all-round talent and athleticism, and O’Connor had already made sure of it going into the final event, the 800m.
The then 18-year-old from Dundalk St Gerard’s Athletics Club, coached by her father Michael, was racing to determine which colour, and in the end was rewarded with silver, her total of 6,093 points also smashing the existing Irish senior record, the first time any Irish woman had surpassed 6,000 points.
O’Connor later won silver at the Commonwealth Games in 2022, representing Northern Ireland, and last summer in Paris became Ireland’s first representative in the Olympic heptathlon, finishing 14th.
Still, Sunday’s bronze in the pentathlon – the indoor, five-event version of the women’s heptathlon – was another giant leap, given O’Connor jumped from fourth to third in the last event winning the 800m outright in 2:11.42. It was the first medal won by any Irish athlete in a senior multi-event.
Her 800m time at was enough to bring the 24-year-old’s total to 4781 points, improving again on her previous Irish indoor record of 4683 set last month.
Her father still oversees much of her training along with Tom Reynolds, and she’s currently dividing her time between Dundalk and Belfast, where she’s completing a Masters in Communications and Public Relations at Ulster University.
The outdoor season and her return to the heptathlon now promises even more.
