ATHLETICS:Ireland have won just 10 medals in the European Championships. With the investment now involved, a medal or two is vital in Barcelona, writes IAN O'RIORDAN
AFTER SO many years being sent to the major athletics championships – including those on false accreditation – my strategy has now changed. It used to be about playing UP our medal chances. Sonia O’Sullivan always took care of that. Now it’s about playing them DOWN. You try explaining to the Sports Editor why we’ve won nothing, when he’s just blown the remainder of his budget on my fancy hotel. Believe me, he won’t even listen.
No, it’s better to say we will win nothing, then see what happens. Like when Olive Loughnane surprised us all to win a silver medal at the World Championships in Berlin this time last year. In fact medals are always more special when they’re not expected, so it’s a win-win strategy, really. The only danger is if you confidently predict no medals you risk not being sent at all.
However, before being sent to Barcelona this weekend, I feel the need to make an exception, and thus confidently predict we will win a medal. Or rather, we better win a medal. I’ve heard some people suggest we can win between three and five medals, although that’s being way over-confident. I suggest we can win between one and three, and truth is I’d settle for just the one. But we do need to win a medal of some colour.
That’s not overlooking the fact that in the 19 previous editions of the European Championships, which started in Turin back in 1934, Ireland has only ever won 10 medals, half of which have actually been won by Sonia O’Sullivan (gold in 1994, two gold in 1998, and two silver in 2002); the others being Ronnie Delany (1958), Frank Murphy (1969) and Eamonn Coghlan (1978) – all over 1,500 metres; Mark Carroll (1998) – over 5,000 metres; and Derval O’Rourke (2006) – over the 100 metre hurdles. That averages one medal for every two championships. Even at European level, nothing is easily won.
Yet there’s no denying the massive investment in athletics over the last decade. The least amount of return for that should be one or two medals at a European Championships.
The need for an Irish medal in Barcelona is based on three things: 1) we have athletes capable of it; 2) the sport deserves a lift after a difficult period off the track; and 3) if we can’t win a medal at the European Championships, what hope have we got in the London Olympics, now less than two years away?
So to the hard part; predicting who can win a medal when the action gets under way in Barcelona on Tuesday. David Gillick is actually the only Irish athlete ranked in a medal position. Second fastest in Europe over 400 metres this year, behind the much improved Jonathan Borlee from Belgium, Gillick surely represents our best chance. But there are several others breathing down his neck, including his British training partner, Martyn Rooney. Gillick can be a little fragile in championship races, and we got a reminder of that as recently as the World Indoors in Doha in March, but if he runs any way true to form then there’s a medal for the taking, bronze at worst.
Derval O’Rourke was ranked outside the top 10 sprint hurdlers going into the last European Championships, in Gothenburg four years ago, yet delivered one of the most sensational performances in Irish athletics history, dead-heating for the silver medal with Germany’s Kirsten Bolm, in a national record of 12.72 seconds.
Last year she was ranked outside the top 20 going into the World Championships in Berlin, yet surpassed even her Gothenburg performance to finish fourth, improving her national record to 12.67.
O’Rourke is once again ranked outside the top 10 going to Barcelona (she’s 11th, to be exact) – although one of those ahead of her, defending champion Susanna Kallur of Sweden, has withdrawn through injury. If she can repeat her extraordinary championship heights, and that’s always a big ask, there’s a medal for the taking there too.
Paul Hession, ranked fifth-fastest over the 200 metres, clearly won’t be far off a medal. Yet the four men ahead of him – including 20-year-old Christophe Lemaitre of France, who recently became the first white man to run the 100 metres in under 10 seconds – don’t look like slowing down, and Hession will need to break his Irish record of 20.30 to get the reward he so craves, and deserves.
I’ve given up predicting medals for Alistair Cragg, but that doesn’t mean he’s still not capable of it. If he somehow gets everything right in the 5,000 metres then he won’t be far off either.
That leaves Olive Loughnane, who on this thin paper at least, looks the most reliable medal prospect, based on her record, and attitude.
She’s ranked eighth in Europe, but with five Russians ahead of her (only three can compete) and when I spoke with Loughnane last week it was almost frightening how determined she was to repeat her medal performance of Berlin.
“Anyone who beats me will have deserved it,” she said, “because I am going to give it everything. I’m in good shape, and having won the silver in the World Championships, I feel more experienced. That’s the big thing. It’s going to be my ninth major championships in a row, bar the year I was out on maternity. It’s the confidence of sitting back, and doing your own thing. While at the same time not sitting back too much. I’ll still need to attack. There will be come a point where I will push.
“Then it’s like ‘come with me if you’re hard enough’. I’ve put everything into these championships, because I believe winning medals is what it’s all about. I could fall on my face. But I’m still going to say that. It’s not going to be from want of will or effort if things don’t go my way. I’m there to die. To kill, or be killed.”
On that note, we’ll say we should definitely win at least one medal, then see what happens.
