LAST UPDATE | 24 Aug 2022
SO MUCH TIME has elapsed between Mark English’s first European Championships bronze medal in 2014 and his second outdoor 800m podium finish last Sunday, that he struggles to compare or contrast them.
The Letterkenny man recalls reading his own words from Zurich eight years ago in which he described the final as being a blur, whereas Munich’s decider was a far more lucid experience.
The commonality about which English is certain is that his overriding emotion after crossing the line on both occasions was one of relief, firstly, and one of joy shortly afterwards.
“Going into the race”, English says of Sunday’s final, “if you’d asked me the question whether I’d be happy with bronze, I’d probably have said ‘no’ because I did feel like there was a chance I could get the win.
“But when I came up to the 800-metre mark in the race, I was absolutely delighted to get the bronze because I knew there was nothing more I could have done in the race to get the gold. It was just relief to get the bronze at that point.”
English, 29, arrived home to Donegal last night, a hero once more — a hero always, at this point. And as always, he was taken by the extent to which his success had brought smiles to faces across his hometown.
Just what the doctor ordered.
“It was brilliant,” English says. “There was a little gathering outside our home house — the residents of the local neighbourhood. That was really cool, to see everyone there. And I believe Finn Valley Athletic Club are doing something for me today as well, so… It’s really nice to actually see what it means to the community.
“A lot of people have actually commented just on how I ran the race; I think that meant a lot to people as well.”
With the blessing of superiors at Galway University Hospital, English was able to take a break before the World Championships from his two-year medical scheme which “definitely helped with my speed; I think you need a lot of rest to be able to produce your best speed.
“Whatever training I needed to get done”, he adds, “I was able to get done. There were no excuses.”
There could have been a few if English was the type to reach for them. Before Christmas, he was living in Mayo, doing most of his training on his own at Claremorris AC; he would head over to Ireland’s middle-distance coach Feidhlim Kelly in Dublin, then, on weekends. There was a similar itinerary when he moved to Galway earlier this year, while a further move to Roscommon — about a 90-minute drive from the capital — facilitated more regular training with Kelly in the lead-up to the Worlds and Europeans.
“It hasn’t been the most ideal in terms of being able to get to and from places but I’ve managed it,” English says.
The bronze by Mark English is the first major championship medal for coach @FeidhlimKelly of @dublintrackclub - who lives, breathes and will die by this sport like few others.
— Cathal Dennehy (@Cathal_Dennehy) August 21, 2022
No one has done more to raise standards in recent years.
Here's his current status
📸@Gerard_OD_ pic.twitter.com/OdjXv5lqN1
As part of his career in medicine, the UCD Med grad is currently halfway through a two-year medical scheme which he has until 2025 to complete.
With the Worlds in Budapest part of a packed schedule next year, and an Olympic summer to follow the year after, English might be forgiven for pushing the second year of his scheme right to the wire but as things stand, he intends to return to work in October.
“It’s hard to know,” he says. “I probably performed the best this year, out of all my years, when I was working. I just need to see what suits me best.
“It’s not even so much the work; it’s just that the night shifts are very tiring and they’re just not conducive to being able to perform at a high level in athletics.
“The World Championships are a completely different level — and I think I realised that this year. You can’t get away without having anything done at a World Championship level. I know going into next year that I’m just going to have to be at 100% to even be in with a shout of making a final. So, it’s exciting but it’s also going to be extremely tough.”
English’s second European outdoor bronze last weekend was exactly that: exciting for the Irish viewer and extremely tough for the Donegal man for whom they roared from the stands or at their TV sets.
There was something of a dichotomy between what we saw and what English himself felt. To those of us watching in, a medal felt a dead cert as soon as English put daylight between him and Belgium’s Elliot Crestan just past the top bend; his third-placed finish was a sensation. English, meanwhile, was in fact “goosed” down the stretch, but his bronze medal came as no surprise given both his continental standing and how meticulously he had mapped out his run.
“I felt that the two favourites were probably Jake Wightman (Britain) and Mariano Garcia (Spain), and that I was probably the third favourite,” English says. “That’s how I felt myself, objectively, if I was looking at it from an outsider’s perspective. I finished third[best] European at the World Championships in Oregon and I knew that if I ran my best race on the day, I’d be in with a shout.
“I knew I didn’t want to make the first decision in terms of getting into position; and then for the others to make their decisions, then, coming up to the 400-metre mark and I’d be left mid-pack, kind of boxed in.
“So, I predicted that Mariano Garcia would go to the front like he did in the semi-final — because it worked for him there and it was a competitive semi-final that he won. So, I felt that if I was able to slot in behind him and get a free ride on the rail the whole way around, that would probably be the best opportunity for me. And if I had anything left over the last hundred metres, then, I could give it a shot — but he was just too strong on the day.
“They were the tactics: I wanted to be in the top three or four after the first 400 metres, to be in the top two at 600 metres, and I think I was there or thereabouts.
“I was quite tired even over the last 200 metres. I could see Eliott Crestan on my outside and I didn’t know how much he had left. It was only when I watched back the replay afterwards and I saw him make a sprint 500 metres into the race that I realised he had absolutely emptied his tank at that point. But I was just trying to push them as wide as I could and make them run the long arc around the bend, and that I’d have the shortest time possible.
“There was a lot of planning that actually went into the race and how I was going to run it,” English explains, before proceeding to break it down into more scientific detail.
Like, I looked at all the splits from the semi-final and the heats — there were 100-metre segments, or splits, on the European Athletics website. I was able to just see the times that I was running. In the semi-final, I ran 11.6 for the 100- to 200-metre segment and that was much quicker than anyone else had ran in that race. I think [Tony] van Diepen (Netherlands) ran an 11.78 but he’s got a 45-second 400-metre PB, so he always has that speed. Most other people like Jake Wightman ran a 12.1 or 12.2 for that segment. So, I knew that if I could just tone back my speed over the first 200 metres, I’d be able to leave myself something in reserve for that last 200 metres — because what you do in the first 200 metres of an 800-metre race takes away from your last 200 metres.
“I know it’s a cliché”, English laughs, “but it was about executing the plan I had in my head as well. And thankfully it worked out as I expected it to.”
As for his plans in the immediate term, English is not quite yet wrapped for the season. Letterkenny’s track star intends to return at a race in Italy in six days’ time, on 30 August, and compete once more after that in a meet which has yet to be confirmed.
