SARAH LAVIN ISN’T disappointed to have finished fifth in the world in a 60m hurdles final.
She’s not frustrated. Certainly not upset. But not quite satisfied either. Perhaps there is no word to capture the feeling that comes after a world indoor championships where you’ve run your personal best time twice, and finished .01 second off it in the final.
7.90 was the time that appeared on screen when Lavin won her heat in Glasgow on Sunday morning. She ran that again in the semi-final to progress as an automatic qualifier from the semi-finals. When the clock struck a third time, it was 7.91 as Lavin surged over the line to finish fifth in the world. Three consistently strong runs puts her right on point for the lead-in to the Olympics in Paris.
It’s just that lingering sense of knowing that this isn’t the fullness of your effort. There’s more that you just didn’t get to show this time.
“I really needed to get into the 80s and I was really capable of doing that at the weekend but I didn’t and I think that’s probably where the mixed feelings comes,” Lavin explained this week as she tries to sum up how she feels.
Her trademark enthusiasm is still apparent though. She smiles even when she’s critiquing her performances.
“I kind of knew it was going to take something really big. I needed to find that .1 of a second throughout the season and my body just wasn’t up for it this weekend, but it was a really successful indoors to finish fifth in the world.
“If I had run 7.82/7.83, where I kind of think my capabilities lay, I’d still be fifth. It was just a really, really high standard.”
The margins are both infinitesimally small and large at the same time in sprinting.
It’s all decimal points, one hundredths of a second and one-one hundredths of a second. The tiniest flakes of time. Of her top 10 runs ever over 60m, Lavin makes it a difference of five hundredths of a second between one and 10. That’s all over a time range of 7.90 to 7.95.
A long distance athlete can fall in the middle of a race, get back and up and still make the lost ground to win. The terrain is less forgiving in the short dash game. Every step is purposefully taken. All it takes is the brush of a spike off the crown of a hurdle to derail a race entirely. And there’s certainly no way back if you fall.
“I hit the fourth hurdle in the semi-final and that probably cost me getting into the 80s,” Lavin says when recalling the moments where a new PB was lost.
“It’s just those tiny, tiny, little margins, it just left an appetite yet again. I have to say at this point I’m very hungry to get a medal.”
Lavin has combed through all of it with her long-term coach Noelle Morrissey and has pondered the whys of what was left behind. And yet, she’s just as aware of the scale of her improvement. She ran 8.07 when she came seventh in the final of the same event at the 2022 World Indoor Championships. Now she’s dealing in sevens rather than eights, with Derval O’Rourke’s 7.84 for the Irish record in the 60m hurdles just waiting to be grabbed.
All important lessons to take into the 2024 outdoor season, but Lavin wants to break out of school soon.
“At 29, how many more lessons do you have to learn?” she says.
Lavin did manage to break one of O’Rourke’s longstanding national records last year. She clocked 12.62 seconds in the semi-finals of the 100m hurdles at the World Championships in Budapest. That was a new personal best too.
But right now, the Limerick native is in the middle of a well-earned break for a week to decompress before looking towards the start of the outdoor season. The drive to improve is always happening for her, and Lavin knows that her start is an area that needs more work.
“We’ve worked really, really hard on my first four steps,” she begins.
“You want to get eight steps into the first hurdle. My first four I’ve really nailed indoors and I’d say I need to be able to carry that speed now in between hurdle one and two, they’re still getting that little bit away early on and while I tend to come back at the back end of the 100m hurdles race, I can’t let anyone get too far ahead.
“I think it’s going to take 12.49 to make that Olympic final which is massive.”
The subject of the Olympics is hard for Lavin to avoid. Almost every day someone mentions it to her in some capacity. But Lavin stresses that it’s not happening today, tomorrow or any time soon. The fact that it will be in a European city should draw a big Irish crowd, and the same is hoped for the European Championships in Rome in June.
That’s what it was like at the World Indoors in Glasgow. Lavin could hear hear the chants of her name from the stands last weekend as she dropped into the blocks, such was the swell of support.
It didn’t unnerve her. Nothing could distract her. All she could think of in that moment was the job at hand in the lane before her. But knowing there were Irish fans cheering her on was pleasing for Lavin, particularly the younger ones with dreams of their own to represent Ireland in athletics one day.
“It makes you smile, anything that makes you happy is only a positive impact.
“I think it translated onto the TV but it was even louder in the stadium. I could not get over it. Shamrocks on kids’ faces, flags, all the funny hats you see around World Cup time. They are literally draped in flags. It was really special and lovely to see because no athlete there didn’t start as a 7, 8, 9, 10 year old with a dream.
“They are telling me they are All-Ireland champions U9 or U13. We all start there. It was very special.”
There’s warm weather training ahead for Lavin in Tenerife at the end of March to build up some tolerance for the hot French climate that awaits her come July. Her coach Noelle is travelling too, someone who Lavin is grateful to have in her corner.
“She had to employ someone at the weekend to work for her in Easons, Nenagh. She owns that, she has to run that. I’m really lucky to have her but those two weeks are a huge sacrifice for her. I’m getting to live out my dream but she’s making these sacrifices for me so I’m incredibly lucky to have her, on and off the track.
“She goes above and beyond the normal calls of duty for a coach, I don’t take her for granted for a second.”
After Tenerife, it’s a quick return trip to Ireland for a week before heading abroad for another two-week camp. There’ll be a few races booked in before the Europeans and perhaps a few more runs after to complete the build-up to Paris. She’s already got a seat on the plane having ran the qualifying time eight times last year, but there’s still lots to do to stay healthy and fit until then.
Apart from that, her focus is putting those lessons to good use to hit the times she knows she’s capable of.
Sarah Lavin was speaking as an ambassador for the Olympic Federation of Ireland Dare to Believe programme’s ‘Road to Paris’ schools’ challenge, which is supported by PTSB.
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