Sportswoman of the Month: Rhasidat Adeleke

The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman Award for January: Rhasidat Adeleke (Athletics).

It’s a fair old measure of how brilliantly Rhasidat Adeleke has started 2023 that she was the prime contender for both our January and February awards, even if February was only four days old when she demonstrated yet again what a rare talent she is.

At January’s Martin Luther King Invitational in Albuquerque she resumed what has become a record-smashing habit, knocking a chunk off her own Irish indoor 200 metres record which she had set on the same track 11 months before.

At 22.52, it was the fastest time in the world so far this year, early as it is, and put her 25th on the all-time 200m indoors world list. She won’t be 21 until August, so you’d suspect she’ll shave a few seconds off that mark yet.

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It was the Tallaght sprinter’s first individual race since the European Championships in Munich last August, when she ran another Irish record to finish fifth in the 400m final, her training since then setting her up for a spectacular start to the year.

A fortnight after that 200m record, she was at it again on the same track in Albuquerque, but this time at the University of New Mexico Collegiate Classic, leaving Karen Shinkins’ 21-year-old Irish indoor 400m record in smithereens.

Adeleke took over a second off that mark, lowering the record from 51.58 to 50.45, the fastest time in the world this year, the third fastest in the history of the event in college athletics in the United States, a time only bettered by Olympic gold and silver medalists Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Femke Bol in the last four years, and one that would have won 15 of the last 18 world indoor finals.

In other words: speedy. And she’s only warming up.

Next up are the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) championships in March for the University of Texas student, but beyond that August’s World Championships in Budapest will, no doubt, be heavily marked on her calendar.

We all had a notion that Adeleke had promise, ever since she won gold in the 200m at the under-18 European Championships in 2018, and she underlined that potential with her performances last year. 2023 is only a month and a bit old, and already she’s realising that promise in some style.

Previous Monthly Winner (the awards run from December 2022 to November 2023, inclusive):

December: Eilish and Roisin Flanagan (Athletics). The combined efforts of the Tyrone twins, who finished in 11th and 12th place, helped Ireland to a bronze medal at the European Cross Country Championships in Italy, despite being without Fionnuala McCormack and Ciara Mageean.