What Rhasidat Adeleke did in winning the American NCAA collegiate 400m title on Saturday night – while running a championship and Irish record of 49.20 seconds to boot – was a complete and utter masterclass in one-lap racing.
There are many elements to running the perfect 400 metres, and rarely if ever has an Irish athlete combined them all in one standout race.
Beforehand, everyone said it would surely take another Irish record to win the event, and so it proved – Adeleke once again going where no Irish athlete has gone before, the first to win an NCAA sprint title.
[ Rhasidat Adeleke: How good can she truly be?Opens in new window ]
The Dublin sprinter, still two months shy of 21, ran down the pre-race favourite Britton Wilson in the homestretch, her winning time of 49.20 seconds taking another chunk off her Irish record – the 49.54 she ran last month – making this the seventh Irish record she’s broken this year.
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Competing on her now home track at the University of Texas in Austin, Adeleke’s time would have won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, and is the 20th-fastest time ever run by a woman, and the fastest by any European woman in 11 years.
This, however, was all about the winning, that perfect execution, with Adeleke’s victory helping Texas to take the overall team prize while taking down Wilson, the 22-year-old American runner from the University of Arkansas who had beaten Adeleke to the NCAA Indoor 400m title in March.
“In the final, anything can happen,” Adeleke said of her win. “I don’t feel like anyone goes into the race as favourites. There’s rankings, but at the end of the day, rankings don’t mean anything until you run the race.”
Wilson was running in the favourable lane six, Adeleke in the lane outside her, which typically would have represented a disadvantage to the Irish woman. Instead she kept Wilson exactly where she wanted her, inches down as they entered the last 100m, before Adeleke kicked for home, winning in 49.20 to Wilson’s 49.64.
[ Rhasidat Adeleke cruises into 400m final at NCAA Track and Field ChampionshipsOpens in new window ]
“With me, I usually like to pace off someone, and when I was in lane seven, I was like ‘Oh God’, but I just had to trust myself, my strength, and go out there and do the very best I could,” she said.
“I just went out, trusted myself, I’m not even sure what [time] I went through 200m. I just felt like I was in a good position, and coming into the home straight, I just went for the kick, which is something I’ve been doing well all season.
“I just focused on myself, anyone could win. It was coming up the home straight, I could feel Brit [Wilson] on my inside, I said ‘I’ve still got more in me, just keep running, just keep running’…”
An hour earlier, Adeleke was part of the winning Texas 4x100m relay team, and Texas would surely have won the 4x400m relay too, if they had not been disqualified in the semi-finals on Thursday for impediment.
[ Rhasidat Adeleke breaks Irish 400 metre record again at NCAA West RegionalsOpens in new window ]
In the end it didn’t matter – Adeleke was unquestionably the headline act of the Texas winning team, her winning time now putting her in real contention for a medal at the World Championships in Budapest this coming August.
Then there’s the not small matter of the Paris Olympics next summer, where, title favourites and times aside, the victory invariably goes to those who understand the art of racing the perfect 400 metres. Adeleke, while still learning perhaps, is now superbly well-schooled. Her utterly exciting future is now.
