IN PROFESSIONAL SPORT, it seems everything comes at a price.
Ciara Mageean rounded out the best year of her career with a Belfast Parkrun with her boyfriend, setting a new world record of 15 minutes and 13 seconds for the 5km event.
In return, she tweaked a hamstring and had to barter away her indoor season. Based in Manchester, Mageean was tempted to compete at Glasgow’s world championships, and had her eyes on the Irish 3,000m record.
But given it is an Olympic year, Mageean took the conservative option and sat out the indoor season entirely. She will begin her competitive season in May, and the European Championships will be used for preparatory purposes only. The focus is Paris, Paris, Paris.
“I’m back training now, the only thing I’m feeling is that I’m not as fit as I’d like to be, so that’s a good place”, she says.
Mageaan is entitled to feel she is owed something by the Olympic Games, the most miserly competition of them all.
She missed out on selection for the London Games in 2012, and after reaching a semi-final in Rio four years later, she suffered a calf injury on the eve of the Tokyo Games in 2021. Mageean will be 32 next week, so Paris feels like her final opportunity.
The hamstring injury hasn’t worried her, given she was injured at the start of 2023 and ended it with two national records and recognition as Irish athlete of the year. It was the best 12 months of her career since the previous year, but 2024 will have to be better again if she is going to realise her dream of an Olympic medal.
The reality is she has found the form of her life at a time the women’s 1500m is utterly stacked, led by Faith Kipyegon, whom Mageean acknowledges as one of the greatest middle distance runners of all time. Mageean ran the race of her life in the 1500m final in Budapest last year, but her fastest-ever time of 3:56.61 was good enough for ‘only ‘ fourth place, 0.61 behind Sifan Hassan in third place.
“I came off that track having come fourth and I was so disappointed because I was close to a medal”, she says. “But I can’t walk away from a World Championships having come fourth and ran the fastest I’ve ever done and say I’m super disappointed in that.
“I can say I wish it had been another position forward and on a different day with a different field it might have been.
“I’m competing among the greatest 1500m field of all time, is that not a joy? All you can say is ‘look, isn’t that a fantastic place to be.’
“So yeah, I was disappointed, it took me a wee bit of time but I re-evaluated and realised that was the performance of my life.”
Now all she has to do is find another of them. Mageean clocked a new personal best a couple of weeks after Budapest, running 3:55.87.
This matters more as a means than an end: if she can break 3.55, why not 3.54? Or 3.53?
Us mere mortals have the luxury of measuring time in longer strides. 0.61 seconds mean nothing to most of us. But Mageean is dwelling in this world of absurdly diminished returns, giving her life to eke out a difference hardly evident to our eyes.
To do it, there is no secret code, no eureka discoveries. Mageean has to do what she has done over the last couple of years and hope it’s enough to medal. No guts, no glory…but no guarantees either.
“It’s such a fine line of teetering on that tightrope of peak physical performance and just the slightest thing that tips you over”, she says. “So for me it’s about trying to find that consistency, so from here on in it’s about staying fit and healthy and consistent.
“If I do everything that I did last year and get back in 3.55 shape, that’s phenomenal, like. I just want to run faster. I don’t know if I will run faster, we’ll see. Fingers crossed I will.
“There’s no special thing that I’m going to start hitting any session specifically. I’ve done everything right in the past and I’m going to try to keep replicating that.”
She has also learned the value of the that hoary old phrase, “control the controllables.” But when you’re running against Hassan, Kipyegon, Diribe Welteji, and Laura Muir, it is a necessary creed. While she hasn’t blocked all of her main 1500m rivals on social media, she has muted many of them.
“I don’t necessarily need to see if they’re spanking a really good session because it doesn’t serve any purpose for me to be thinking about it”, says Mageean. “There are certain things you won’t miss, like spectacular times being dropped, but there are girls who entered the indoor [season] with a 3:55 indoors and they didn’t run it at the world championships. So people could be running well and they might not produce it on the day.”
Another necessary belief is in the randomness of competition, and the Olympics are the least reliable of them all. Mageean has virtues of tenacity and bravery that aren’t put on any clock, and they might stand to her in Paris.
“The Olympic Games often throw up the most random of races”, she said. “I would love a tactical race because there are people out there who can go and run 3:49. I’m not able to do that so I would prefer if it was a little bit more tactical and it came up to a fast race because I would love a good old sprint finish. I’ve just said in my head that last year I ran 3:55 and now it’s like going out to play a game of golf, you’re trying to improve on yourself.
“I fancy myself as a championship performer. I have done it before and I quite like going out there on the big stage. I feel like my Irish vest is a special weapon for me, its’s like a super power.”
You’d best believe that.
“The only reason I gave up camogie and stuck with the athletics is because I could run for Ireland”, says Mageean.
“Seeing the tricolour raised and hearing Amhrán na bhFiann ring around the stadium is everything I do it for. It gets so much harder as you get older, getting to senior level at athletics. I genuinely believe when I step onto the track I am running for Ireland, and it feels like this is the reason I run.
“I don’t run to be a professional athlete. I am fortunate it is my job right now, but if I was doing it for free I would still be out there running for Ireland, because I just love it. To represent your nation at the highest level is just such an honour.
“For me the vest has always had that special power, and it always will, which makes it hard when I’m donating some vests away. There are certain vests I feel are special and I need to keep for a wall at home. They are hard-earned and hard-fought for, and the medals are extremely tough to get.
“When I come home to Portaferry, and the sheer joy – no matter how I perform – that it brings my hometown, and I come to clubs around Ireland, the joy it brings to everyone…it just lifts you. It’s a special thing.”
So perhaps there isn’t a price on everything.
