FIVE PBs, ONE Olympics, 23 flights, many Covid tests and a few tears.
That’s how Sarah Healy summed up her track season in a recent social media post.
“It was definitely crazy,” she smiles. “When I look back, it was amazing. I did not expect anything like that to happen.
“I had a terrible year last year. I told my Mum at the start of the summer I just wanted to have some kind of positive experience because it felt like it was so long since I had a race I was happy with.”
The Olympics were certainly not in the script; Healy tearing the pre-written scroll to shreds and surpassing her own expectations by qualifying for her debut Games in Tokyo.
The 20-year-old has made no secret of her disappointment in how it all panned out on the world’s biggest stage, but her 2021 season was about much more than that. The bigger picture is just as important.
Her summer of racing in the build-up was a challenging and stressful one, isolated away from friends in an athletics bubble. “It was worth it,” Healy, who previously enjoyed a glittering, medal-laden underage career, nods.
“Looking back, I’m prouder of the summer as a whole than one race. I learned a lot as well.”
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Like so many of the post-event interviews from Tokyo, Healy’s was a raw one.
Searingly candid immediately after her elimination from the 1500m heats, the Monkstown star expressed her disappointment and assessed the entire situation with David Gillick for RTÉ:
Elimination for Olympic debutant @sarah_healy_ after an 11th-place finish in the 1500m heats #tokyo2020 #RTESport #athletics
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 2, 2021
📺 Watch – https://t.co/ZfldwHUA2l
📱 Report - https://t.co/3rR5EHQHOW pic.twitter.com/h9OpeCYxy6
Two months on, the sentiment remains the same for the UCD Law student.
“It’s funny, so many people said to me, ‘Oh my gosh, you were so honest,’ but I don’t know, I guess I didn’t think too much before I spoke. I have reflected on it a lot.
“I was obviously so thrilled to be there, but I was disappointed with it, so it is hard to separate the two. I’m still disappointed with it, but I am proud of myself for getting there.
“In terms of the occasion getting the best of me, looking back, that is still what I think. It took a lot to get there; a lot of racing, a lot of travelling. I had travelled a lot on my own throughout the summer, but it was hard as my coach wasn’t there with me. I was getting nervous all day before the race, in the two days leading up to the race, which would be rare for me. Normally I only get nervous right before.
“I think I was probably a little drained, but also, the competition was so tough, it was always going to be hard to perform. I feel I didn’t perform to the best I could have on the day.”
That was something she said in the immediate aftermath, her despondency making it difficult to appreciate the achievement itself in becoming an Olympian. Her phone was bombarded with messages to say the least, and that was something everyone else recognised.
Called in for drug testing straight after the race, she text her coach, Eoghan Marnell, and her mother, before shutting the rest of the world out. “I wasn’t really in the mood to reply for three or four days,” she frowns.
But as the saying goes, time is a healer, and what Healy had done slowly but surely started to sink in. While Sonia O’Sullivan waxed lyrical about her publicly on TV, the Irish athletics legend also reached out personally — and not for the first time.
It was perhaps fitting that Healy would go on to break O’Sullivan’s Irish U23 3,000m record later that month, a 31-year-old time.
“She is such a huge role model and she has been so nice to me throughout the last few years of my career,” she beams.
“She reached out to me when I was younger after I won a race, and she has always been there and offered herself as someone that I could go to as support. I think everyone in Irish athletics looks up to her and what she did. She text me after the race and has been such a huge support. She made me aware that I could turn to her and ask her for anything I need. That’s so nice.
“It was cool to break her record, but I just don’t think it is comparable at all. It just makes you think, ‘Oh my God, she was running that and I’m running it now’. Athletics is completely different now. I don’t think anyone will come close to what she was doing back then without all the extra help we have with shoes and all that.”
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Ups and downs. Highs and lows. Good days and bad ones.
That’s sport. And life, too.
It’s how you manage them all.
Healy has had her eyes opened to that, particularly after this summer.
In truth, many athletes have; left to deal with the post-Olympic blues and the comedown.
“A lot of people speak about that, but I brushed it off as I was going back to college,” Healy nods.
“But after the Olympics I was like, ‘Okay, I can understand why people get so down after it.’ I was disappointed off the back of it, but I was very sure I wanted to keep on racing. That helped me.
“It was probably easier for me because I hadn’t been thinking about it for that long, but if you based your whole career around it, I think it would be so difficult. It’s just one of those things.”
Self-admittedly, she’s never really been Olympic-focused. It’s not something she’s dreamt about for years on end, certainly without a one-track mind. But Paris 2024, along with much more, is on her radar.
“Who knows what will happen in the next few years? It’s the focus now and it’s only three years away. But there’s so much to do between then and now, it’s more about what is happening next year.”
Getting back to intense training after a long track season, Healy has one eye on returning to her roots at the 2021 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Dublin in December. After all, cross country was where she first found success, and her preference in her younger years.
She’ll take it as it comes, though, hoping to race indoors in early 2022 with World and European Championships also on the horizon next summer.
“But my main aim is just to train uninjured and stay healthy as I haven’t managed that for some time,” Healy concludes.
And rightly so. Everything else generally falls into place from there.
Olympian Sarah Healy was speaking at the launch of the 2021 SPAR European Cross Country Championships. The 2021 SPAR European Cross Country Championships will take place at the Sport Ireland Campus on Sunday, 12th December 2021. For more information on the Championship please visit www.fingal-dublin2021.ie.
Bernard Jackman, Murray Kinsella and Gavan Casey chat all things Connacht, Munster, Leinster and Ulster — and welcome back the AIL — on The42 Rugby Weekly
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