Before the European Indoor Games grew into a proper championship event and podium places became harder to find, Irish athletes enjoyed a rare and special medal winning streak. Three golds and two bronzes, all won within four years.
Beginning in 1966, Noel Carrol won his first of three successive gold medals in the 800m, the smooth-running machine from Annagassan adding another bronze in 1969. Maeve Kyle also won a 400m bronze in 1966, a decade after first blazing the trail for Irish women’s athletics at the Melbourne Olympics. Different times maybe, classy athletes nonetheless.
Then in 1970 it expanded into the European Indoor Championships, later becoming a biennial event, during which time the Irish medal success became a lot more sporadic before drying up completely. Marcus O’Sullivan, for instance, won 1,500m silver in 1985, and it took another 15 years before we saw the next medal, Mark Carroll winning 3,000m gold in swashbuckling style, and James Nolan the 1,500m silver.
So to Apeldoorn next weekend, where at the Omnisport arena in the centre of the Netherlands a team of 19 Irish athletes will look to restore that medal-winning streak of old, and not without considerable hope and expectation. Although there have been bigger Irish teams at this event over the years, none have boasted more medal prospects, between individuals and the relays.
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After coming home empty-handed in 2021 and 2023, the team this time includes four Irish athletes ranked in top three positions among the final entries, based on European indoor performances this season. Sarah Healy is ranked second in the 3,000m, Kate O’Connor second in the pentathlon, with Andrew Coscoran ranked third in the 3,000m, and likewise Mark English in the 800m.
Four years after making his senior debut, Cian McPhillips has made a welcome return to form and is ranked fourth in the 800m, and Ireland’s two relay interests – the mixed 4x400m and women’s 4x400m – will both contest the straight six-team finals. No Rhasidat Adeleke this time, but there’s still ample baton experience in Sharlene Mawdsley, Phil Healy and Lauren Cadden.
Sarah Lavin is ranked ninth in the 60m hurdles, and you know what they say about making the final in that event, and Cathal Doyle is fast adjusting to the banked tracks in his first professional season as a 1,500m runner. His greatest asset is his fearlessness.
What also sets this Irish team apart from recent years is the fact so many are training abroad, under foreign coaches. Which is by no means a bad thing. At least not when considering the stage of their careers, where they have come from, and more importantly where they want to go.
Mawdsley spoke recently about her need to shake things up after the Paris Olympics: “I’d always said I’d love to train in a professional group, because in Ireland I was very much training on my own. It was never a chore, but I knew after 2024 I would struggle a little with the motivation.”
With that she’s moved away from Tipperary’s two-time Olympian Gary Ryan and linked up with London-based Tony Lester, whose group includes the Nielsen twins, Lina (who won Olympic bronze in the 400m hurdles in Paris) and Laviai (who won bronze in the 4x400m and mixed relay).
English has changed his set-up too, now training under Australian coach Justin Rinaldi at the Fast 8 Track Club. A four-time European medal winner in the 800m, twice indoors and twice outdoors, English is certainly seeing the benefits of that switch, last month improving his Irish indoor record by almost a second when running 1:45.15. Also part of Rinaldi’s group, incidentally, is Josh Hoey, who last weekend improved the US record to 1:43.24, the second fastest indoor time ever.
Coscoran and Doyle have also moved on since Paris, Coscoran joining the New Balance Manchester group under coach Helen Clitheroe (where Ciara Mageean was also successfully based before opting to move home this year). At 28, Coscoran last month improved the Irish indoor record to 7:30.75, and appears well capable of making the podium in Apeldoorn – although he will have Jakob Ingebrigtsen to contend with. The Norwegian hasn’t raced the distance this season but looks certain of a third successive 1,500m/3,000m double.
Doyle is now coached by Jon Bigg, husband of Sally Gunnell and former training partner of Steve Ovett, whose training group is based in Brighton. Conor Kelly, only 17 and part of the mixed 4x400m relay, is coached by Paul Miller at the Hercules Wimbledon club in London. And Jodie McCann, who races the 3,000m next weekend, is working with Dutch coach Tomasz Lewandowski, along with her father Clark.
Of all these, however, none have benefitted more from moving abroad than Healy, who has just turned 24 and heads to Apeldoorn in the form of her young life. Healy has now broken a record of some sort every time she’s raced this season, twice improving her own indoor 3,000m mark, plus the 1,500m mark, before twice improving the 1,500m championship record at last weekend’s National Indoor Championships.
Healy won everything possible “all the way up”, as they say, including double gold at the European Under-18 Championships in 2018, all while carefully nurtured by her coach Eoghan Marnell at Blackrock AC. Then when entering the final year of her law degree in UCD, they realised the need to think outside the big-fish-in-a-small-pond scenario, and Healy moved to the husband-and-wife coaching team of Trevor Painter and Jenny Meadows, based in Wigan. Their group includes Keely Hodgkinson, who won the Olympic 800m gold in Paris.
After joining their training camps in France and South Africa, Healy relocated full-time to Wigan in May 2023, and the move has proved transformative. There’s a confidence and consistency about her running now, which Healy attributes to being in such a competitive training group.
This is no slight on the standard of Irish coaching. There’s nothing wrong with Irish athletes needing or wanting to look beyond the horizon to discover a more competitive step up, and it can sometimes lesson the pressure when it comes to winning medals.
