Just looked this up. She came last in final.
Fay came 9th in men’s 5000m
I didn’t know Sarah Lavin’s partner was Craig Breen, the rally driver who died tragically in a recent crash.
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Thats a tough read. The absolutely shocking tragedy of a person dying before their time and those left behind. I’ll never understand rallying, but each to their own I guess.
She was always a very sound girl.
I didn’t know either until she posted an absolute heartbreaking video on Instagram after he died.
National record for Coscoran
https://twitter.com/PGriffinFC/status/1670156420082180103?t=v8EAdw0N0UwOKDJcsnhrbA&s=19
Nick Griggs with a new u20 record back in 9th
That’s heart breaking. Rallying is not my thing. But I’d know a few who are into it and apparently your man was the nicest fella you’d ever meet. Tragic.
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Lining up for the start of the 400m final at the NCAA Track and Field Championships last Saturday night, Rhasidat Adeleke was surrounded by all the reasons she shouldn’t win. In lane five was Talitha Diggs, the defending champion. Then, behind Adeleke, Britton Wilson was in lane six, slapping her arms and legs and preparing herself for the crescendo of her collegiate life.
In the space of half an hour, Wilson was seeking to become the first athlete in the history of these NCAA Championships to win both the 400m and 400m hurdles finals. The figures said Wilson could do it. She had run the fastest 400m in American collegiate history a few weeks before, that time of 49.13 seconds doubling up as the fourth fastest 400m by any American female athlete in history. She also recorded the fastest time in the semi-finals, half a second ahead of Adeleke.
But other numbers said Adeleke could pip her. There was the hometown noise from the stands in Austin pulling her along. There was also the sharply descending trajectory of her times as a 400m runner. A year ago she set an Irish record in her second 400m race outdoors in 50.70. When the gun went last Saturday she clocked 49.20 to set a new championship record and skate home almost half a second ahead of Wilson. She looked down a camera lens seconds after crossing the line. “I’m not losing on my track, baby,” she said.
Adeleke won gold for Ireland in the women’s 200m at the European Athletics U20 Championships in 2021
MARKO MUMM/SPORTSFILE
She sat on the track afterwards, wrecked. A television reporter joined her. There was little Adeleke could or needed to say. What about the psychological battle of facing these more celebrated opponents? Every race was simply her against everyone, she said, not anyone in particular.
Tactics? She was still only learning this gig. Was it true her coach keeps a note written by Adeleke insisting she would never run 400m? She laughed. The distance that once appeared too hard for a born sprinter to master now shapes her future.
The whole scene reached back through the rich history of Irish athletes in American collegiate athletics to another time and place. Before the 1975 NCAA finals in Provo, Utah, Eamonn Coghlan’s graph was rising even more steeply than Adeleke’s. He had set a new European mile record a few weeks before in Jamaica. He was 22, a couple of years older than the 20-year-old Adeleke, but also in his junior college year like her. Winning also didn’t require any more of him than just keeping everything simple.
“It was my usual run,” he says. “Sit and kick. When I went over the finish line, I was absolutely dying. Jim Lampley came over to interview me, it was live on Wide World of Sports, and he asked me about running at altitude (Provo sits 4,000 feet above sea level). I said, ‘What altitude?’ Jumbo Elliott [Coghlan’s coach] never told me about it. ‘I didn’t want you thinking too much,’ he told me.”
It also turned out Coghlan had recorded the fastest mile ever seen at altitude. While the scale of winning an NCAA title doesn’t always register back home, when it came to Coghlan in 1975 and Adeleke now, everyone got the message.
“[Winning an NCAA title] is confirmation that I’m here,” Coghlan says. “I’m on the world stage now. But some athletes win NCAAs and do nothing. Others go on and do an awful lot. I always like to look at an athlete’s win/loss record. Take Rhasidat’s win/loss record. I was the same. Marcus and Sonia O’Sullivan, Frank O’Mara, they were all on the same trajectory.”
The list of Irish NCAA winners spans the entire spectrum of expectation and outcome. Three of them — Coghlan, Ronnie Delany and O’Sullivan — earned permanent residency in any conversation about the greatest Irish athletes of all.
The rest all reached major championships. Some earned medals, some fell away. In 2006, Mary Cullen became the last Irish athlete to win an NCAA title at 5,000m in her final race for Providence College, Rhode Island, racing away a mile from home and then decimating the field. Cullen capitalised on her momentum and went directly from college to full-time running, beginning a career she had never imagined for herself.
Coghlan, left, pictured with Pelé in 1979, was one of Ireland’s major athletics stars
INDEPENDENT NEWS AND MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES
“When I first went to America I didn’t realise I could be a professional runner,” Cullen says. “It was only in my sophomore year that the coach, Ray Treacy, said I could be good at this. I probably put a bit too much pressure on myself. It was a massive jump. I probably didn’t understand the scale of what was going on.”
For Coghlan, the temptations to ditch school and cash in were endless. At the 1976 NCAA Championships, he raced wearing an Adidas and Puma shoe on either foot before settling on one brand. “The Puma guy came through with a leather jacket,” he says.
Around the same time a new breakaway group seeking to entice the best young athletes had Coghlan in its crosswires. “I was offered a $10,000 to turn pro and it was torn up by Dave Wottle [The 800m gold medallist at the 1972 Olympics]. He told me not to turn pro.”
With that question ramping up in the last year, Adeleke has resisted falling either way on the issue. Going pro would oblige her to take more of the reins on her own life at the track and beyond. At Texas, every last detail is already looked after. While turning professional could potentially open up all sorts of financial honeypots, the NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) rule offers Adeleke the option to stay in college and benefit financially through product endorsements and other commercial activities while remaining at a high-performance college environment.
Her coach at Texas, Edrick Floréal, has also promised to guide her to the Olympics, whatever she decides.
“It gives [Adeleke] a dilemma,” Coghlan says. “She’ll probably have guys circling her, feeding her all sorts of information. She’ll have to make up her own mind. I wouldn’t tell her what to do, but she’s in the perfect environment to stay and develop and run for another title.”
In Coghlan’s case, he stayed at Villanova and won two more indoor and outdoor NCAA titles. After college, Cullen won bronze at 3,000m in the 2007 European Indoor Championships and dipped under Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish 3,000m indoor record in 2009, setting a new target that still remains unbroken. But injuries kept knocking her back. Every time she got hurt, Cullen pushed hard to recover fast. Too hard. The cumulative effect of the injuries and expectations was devastating.
“I didn’t want to let my sponsor down,” she says. “I was able to get fit quite quickly but I didn’t have the work done previously. That’s probably why the injuries started coming thick and fast. I had a great heart and lungs but I was like a Lada car. Always breaking down. I could get really fit in six weeks but then probably push too hard.
“Looking back, when I was hurt I used to take the injuries hard. I did have reactive depression and definitely struggled with the hard times.”
Being nurtured in high-performance environment lessens the chances of Adeleke having the same issues, but injuries will come and challenges will arise. Maybe sooner, maybe later.
“She’s only 20,” Coghlan says. “She has a lot of developing to do in terms of her physique and strength and conditioning. She’s really peaking from now until she’s 28. I’d say to be patient. She has the talent to medal at major championships. Just don’t let the other stuff get in the way.”
Keeping it that simple has served her well so far.
Irish outdoor winners at the NCAAs: What happened next…
Ronnie Delany (1956-58) Four-times NCAA champion over the mile and 800m, won Olympic gold at 1500m at the 1956 Olympics and bronze at the 1958 European championships, and enjoyed a stellar indoor career
John Lawlor (1959-60) Two-times winner in the hammer with record -breaking throws, came fourth at the 1960 Olympics and competed again at the 1964 Olympics
Eamonn Coghlan (1975-76) Three-times winner over the mile (indoor and outdoor) and 1500m champion, won gold at the 1983 world championships (5,000m) and the 1979 European Indoor championships (1500m), silver at the 1978 European championships and fourth twice at the 1976 and 1980 Olympics
Frank O’Mara (1983) 1500m winner for the University of Arkansas. Competed at three Olympics and won world indoor 3,000m golds in 1987 and 1991
Valerie McGovern-Young (1989-90) Double 5,000m winner outdoors, and 5,000m indoor champion in 1990. Competed at European and World Championships in 1990 and 1991.
Sonia O’Sullivan (1990-91) Double winner at 3,000m, competed at four Olympics, winning silver in 2000 (5,000m), world gold in 1995 (5,000m) and three European championship golds across three different distances (3/5/10,000m)
Sean Dollman (1992) 10,000m champion for Western Kentucky University, represented Ireland at 1992 and 1996 Olympics
Alistair Cragg (2003-04) Winner at 5,000 and 10,000m in successive years, competed at three Olympic Games and European indoor gold medalist at 3,000m (2005)
Mary Cullen (2006) Blitzed the field to win the 5,000m title. Ran at the 2007 world championships and won bronze over 3,000m at the European Indoors in 2009
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Enniscorthys Michael Bowler got picked to represent Ireland at the European Team Games in Poland in the Pole Vault. He was travelling out yesterday and Ryanair wouldn’t let him take the poles onto the plane (poles, not Poles). Seems like some clusterfuck of a situation with him currently in Krakow training for an event to represent the country without the primary piece of equipment he needs.
Limericks Sharlene Mawdsley blitzes the field to win the 400m in the European League
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I missed a load of events this morning. Turns out we’re 2nd in the table after 12 events behind Austria with 25 events to go.
Ah mate, cmon.
Ah why couldn’t you let someone else bite first?!
Call her by her proper name, the lovely Sharlene 
Limericks finest, the lovely Sharlene
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So is this some sort of team event and we are in D3?
2 wins for Limerick.
The Sporting Capital.
must head in and take a look.
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