The farmhouse on the hill in Cornafean where Catherina McKiernan grew up is mostly quiet now. It was here she was brought home two days after being born, the youngest of seven children, and didn’t leave again until she was able to walk down the hill by herself.
This was the way all the McKiernan children were raised, and the 90-acre farm, about 10 miles outside Cavan town, quickly became their open playground. There was a great freedom about the place and a discipline too, and one dared not skip the order for their Saturday evening bath.
There was some brief conflict in school, in early 1988, after she’d won the Ulster Schools Cross Country in Belfast — running away with it, as we say in this business. Only that didn’t go down well at Loreto Cavan, where McKiernan was doing her Leaving Cert, and was also captain of the school camogie team.
She was threatened with suspension from all sporting activity if she didn’t give camogie priority, already snubbed by some of her classmates. “No way,” she said to herself, and when her father, John, also got wind of this, the school relented. Two weeks later McKiernan went on to win the All-Ireland title — again, running away with it.
It was from this utterly humble yet determined background that McKiernan went on to achieve a long series of firsts in Irish athletics: the first Irish woman to medal at the World Cross Country Championships, winning the first of four silvers in succession in Boston in 1992, that also being the first senior global athletics medal won by any Irish woman, ahead of Sonia O’Sullivan (who finished in seventh place that same day).
McKiernan won the inaugural European Cross Country in 1994; she was also the first woman to win the Berlin Marathon in 1997; the first Irish woman to win the London Marathon in 1998; her 2:22:23 from her victory in the Amsterdam Marathon in 1998 is also still first on the Irish all-time list. Imagine if she was wearing Vaporflys.
Despite the occasional disappointment or injury setback, she’s never lost that sheer love of running, and while her achievements on the World Cross Country stage weren’t always fully appreciated, they’ll always be precious to some.
From those beginnings in Cornafean, McKiernan’s success also remained entirely homegrown, beyond occasional spells of warm-weather or altitude training
— Catherina McKiernan
McKiernan got a gentle reminder of that herself last weekend when back home in Cavan to visit her mother Kathleen, who is just shy of her 91st birthday.
“She doesn’t remember much about what happened yesterday, last week or last year, so we tend to talk about the old times like that. She was saying that she could never watch any of my races, and I asked her why. She used to go out the back with the rosary beads and pray for me. It was because she was very, very competitive and I think that’s where I got that competitive streak.
“She envied my father to a certain extent because he could sit in and watch them when she couldn’t.”
McKiernan was speaking ahead of Saturday’s 45th staging of the World Cross Country in Belgrade, and the reminder of those four successive silver medals also revealed an utterly enduring modesty beyond the reach of most athletes.
“To be honest, I suppose it’s not something I think about too much. If I’m having a bad day, it’s not the four silver medals in the World Cross Country, that’s not my go-to place.
“It’s very, very different times now but in saying that the World Cross Country was very competitive back then because there wasn’t so many indoor or road races and therefore more people took part in the World Cross Country, athletes who ran 800m up to marathon. It was very competitive, and they were very, very tough races.”
Her first silver, in Boston in March 1992, was unquestionably the closest. Trust me because I was there, meeting McKiernan for the first time on the marble steps outside the side lobby of the Copley Plaza Hotel in downtown Boston. Even at age 22 some people reckoned she might do something special. I was two years younger and a college sophomore in Rhode Island, and just off the Bonanza Bus from Providence with a $20 bill and a folded-up copy of the Dharma Bums in my pocket.
Coming into the last stretch of the final lap, she’d stunned the entire field, east Africans and all, briefly breaking clear, only to be passed in the sprint to the finish line by Lynn Jennings, the two-time defending champion, who grew up not far away in west Massachusetts.
“There wasn’t a bother on me after that race at all. I was a little bit naive, didn’t really expect I suppose to be up as far as that. I remember with Joe Doonan, my coach, we went over and stayed with John Treacy a few days previous, and Joe had to leave early because his mother got sick. And the last thing he said to me as he was going out the door was, ‘you can win a medal’.
“That gave great encouragement. The race felt easy, it was tough conditions, and certainly the ones after that weren’t as easy. But that was the one I possibly should have just went on ahead. Hindsight is a great thing, but because she had a better kick than me, as most athletes did, I should have gone on ahead and just ran my own race. But I didn’t have the confidence to do that.”
Her fourth silver, in Durham in 1995, was close too, McKiernan this time denied by Derartu Tulu, Ethiopia’s twice Olympic 10,000m champion, who went on to win again in 1997 and 2000,
That McKiernan’s career flourished in near complete synchronicity with O’Sullivan always suited her just fine too. Born just two days apart, they later shared the international stage on several occasions, including the 1997 World Cross Country, when the Irish team won bronze medals, only McKiernan was far happier away from any spotlight.
From those beginnings in Cornafean, McKiernan’s success also remained entirely homegrown, beyond occasional spells of warm-weather or altitude training. And 32 years after her breakthrough run in Boston, she’s also still preaching the same simple approach to running.
“What I’d say to the athletes going out to Belgrade, whatever your ability is at this moment in time, throw themselves over the line, and then you can’t be disappointed. And they accept that it is going to be painful. It’s like everything in life, if you accept it, that’s half the battle.”
