The problem with labels is that they tend to stick. That isn’t always a bad thing, although for any young Irish athlete, being labelled as “the next Sonia” is a lot to be stuck with.
For Ciara Mageean it was slightly unfair and yet largely unavoidable, and not entirely unwelcomed either. Not since Sonia O'Sullivan's own breakthrough achievements did any young distance runner leave so many indelible marks on the Irish junior rankings, and in many instances, Mageean took those marks to fresh heights.
Indeed not long after Mageean first broke on to the scene she was so good, so talented and already so quick that such comparisons were inevitable. In 2008, aged just 15, she won her first Irish senior title over 1,500 metres at the Odyssey Indoor Arena in Belfast, knocking two seconds off the Irish junior record (even with four more years in that category). O’Sullivan didn’t win her first senior title until age 17, still considered impossibly young at the time.
A year later, aged 16, Mageean showed up at the Irish Schools Championships in Tullamore, and forced further comparisons: she won the 800m in a sensational 2:05.38, eclipsing the Irish junior record which had stood for 22 years to, yes, Sonia O’Sullivan.
As if adding an exclamation mark to that run, she came out less than two hours later and also won the 1,500m by 10 seconds in 4:34.25.
Her potential
By the end of that season, Mageean had underlined her potential by winning 1,500m gold at the European Youth Olympics in Finland, leading from gun to tape, clocking another Irish junior record of 4:15.46. She also bettered the championship record held by a certain Gabriela Szabo, from Romania, one of O’Sullivan’s oldest rivals.
There were other comparisons in the way Mageean went about her training, the sense of belief she had in herself.
Growing up in Portaferry, at the tip of the Ards Peninsula, was certainly remote, and meant she’d begin her school days with an 8.15 ferry trip across Strangford Lough to catch the bus to Assumption Grammar, Ballynahinch.
Although it was her PE teacher who first spotted her talent on the camogie field, there wasn’t much of an athletics scene in Ballynahinch, so on Tuesday evenings she didn’t get home at all and instead headed to Belfast, to train under coach Eamonn Christie at Beechmount Harriers. Most other evenings she trained alone on the Portaferry hurling pitch, displayed the same sort of inner ambition to succeed as the young O’Sullivan.
Her family were always supportive, her father, former Down hurler Chris “The Hunter” Mageean, particularly proud she continued to play camogie throughout her school years (she was named on the 2010 Ulster Schools’ All Star camogie team).
There were some tough lessons along the way too. In October 2008 she travelled to Pune, India for her first major international event, the Commonwealth Youth Games.
Mageean was fancied to medal in the 800m but ended up fifth, the entire field fairly stunned by the South African winner named Caster Semenya. Still, and despite suffering from a dose of “Delhi Belly”, Mageean came out two days later and won bronze in the 1,500m.
Junior career
By the end of her junior career, in 2010, Mageean was unquestionably world class, offering perfect proof at the World Junior Championships in Moncton, Canada, winning silver in the 1,500m.
Of the 24 distance running medals won at those World Juniors, 23 went to African nations – Mageean being the only exception. Again she lowered her own Irish junior record to a brilliant 4:09.51.
It’s a rare thing for any junior athlete to make a smooth transition to the senior ranks, although for Mageean, things got rough, slowly, then surely.
She turned down countless offers of a US scholarship – Villanova Providence, Harvard – and decided, after a year out, to attend UCD and study physiotherapy. She chased in vain to secure a qualifying standard for the 2012 London Olympics, and by the following year had dropped off the scene completely, a bone spur in her heel necessitating surgery, then a long and lonely lay-off.
All of which explains why at age 24, exactly three years since that surgery, five years since she last raced for Ireland, Mageean’s bronze medal won over 1,500m at the European Championships in Amsterdam was so justifiably celebrated.
It seems fitting too that she joins O’Sullivan and Derval O’Rourke as the Irish women medal winners on the European stage, because that’s something that can never be unstuck.
