IT STARTED WITH coming last in races. And then second-last. And then. And then. And then, creeping up the field to where she is now.
One of the major players in Irish 400m running. European Championships. World Championships. A first Olympics in 2021 with a national record to boot, and another Games rapidly approaching. A long but worthwhile wait.
When Sophie Becker was a child growing up in New Ross, she was put into every sport that was on hand for her. She kicked ball, pucked ball and swung tennis rackets. She had buckets of pace but the co-ordination for those activities just wasn’t in her wires.
“I’d hop the ball, take three steps as fast as I could, but then I’d have to solo,” she recalls. Speed can’t save you on a pitch if the skills aren’t sticking.
Becker soon realised that the singular act of running was what she liked. And once she chucked the props and concentrated on the straight-line strides, she found a home in athletics.
“I was a late bloomer to the sport,” she tells The 42.
“I wasn’t one of these kids that grew up with a dream of getting to the Olympics. I was just enjoying the sport.
“I did community games but apart from that, it wasn’t until I was 15 that I really started training three days a week and started doing Leinsters and All-Irelands.
“I remember seeing all the other people my age going off to European Juniors, World Juniors and I was so far away from that stage. But it spurred me on and I knew I wanted to do that one day. It was just about a waiting game and I enjoyed that waiting game.”
To be a strong 400m runner is to know how to wait. Not quite the quick dash of a 100m or 200m, but also not quite the lung-squeezing slog of 800m and 1,500m distances. This is the midway point. Starting from the blocks before all lanes blend into one crowd of straining faces and spikes pounding for one fiery lap. Running hard and smart in equal measures.
That’s before adding the complications of a relay, where Becker has soared at international events in recent years. The relay is a tricky discipline. Carrying a baton and transferring it inside the strict lines of a handover zone means landmines are everywhere. Gold medals have been wiped out over the slightest slip in the 4x100m relay races. Attempting it over 400m is even harder.
It requires more waiting. More patience. And the reward for Becker’s willingness to hold out is that she was part of the first mixed relay team to represent Ireland in an Olympic final, setting a new national record of 3:12.18 to book their place in that final. Last Sunday, she ran the opening leg for the 4x400m women’s team who finished eighth in the final at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest. And that’s without 400m heavyweights like Rhasidat Adeleke, who was originally included in that team but was forced to withdraw on medical advice. Cork’s Phil Healy was also a notable absentee.
“There’s no medal but how many countries in the world can say that they have had a top-eight finish multiple times at a global champs between the mixed relay and the women’s relay,” says Becker proudly.
“They’ve all been top eight throughout the last couple of years. I was part of the mixed relay in 2021 for Tokyo and I think, credit to the coach Drew Harrison, he was the one who saw the opportunity with the mixed relay.
“At the time, we probably weren’t strong enough to have a women’s and men’s relay so we have the mixed, and it’s just spurred everyone on so much. We saw we could be in an Olympic final, and since then, we’ve done it again and again, getting to global finals.
“No-one’s slot on the team is safe; you have to keep working for it. A few years ago, you might have gotten onto the women’s relay team with a 54 or a 53. Now you need to run at least a 52. It keeps you working, you can’t become complacent because there’s someone there to take your spot which is great. If one person runs faster, you’re like, ‘If they’ve done it, I can do it.’”
Earlier this year, Becker’s fellow 400m specialist Rhasidat Adeleke announced her decision to become a professional athlete and dedicate herself fully to the track grind. Becker, however, has a different life. By day, she’s an employee of Pfizer in Newbridge. And her running career fits in along side that.
It’s the unanswerable riddle for athletes: give yourself fully to sport at the expense of it potentially consuming you, or have a separate professional career that will always put a ceiling over your where you can go in your sport. Becker knows the cost of her choice.
“I feel like I want it all,” says Becker. “I work three days a week in Pfizer in Newbridge. I just never had it in my head that I was going to be a full-time athlete. I’ve been working since I left college in 2021 and it’s what works for me. I know it doesn’t work for everybody but I’m just somebody who constantly needs to be busy. I like building my professional career; I’m aware that I’m not going to be an athlete forever so whenever that time comes for me to hang up my spikes, I want to have a good CV behind me for me to delve into.
“I think it’s good to have a distraction and that it’s not just athletics. I just don’t like the idea of my whole life to be all about athletics. I was injured during the winter and if I didn’t have my job to get up to three days a week, I would just be sitting there thinking about how I can’t run. It’s really important just to not be athletics obsessed.
“People who are doing athletics full-time professionally definitely have one up on me. But, for me, it’s not the working part that’s hard, it’s probably the recovering part that I struggle with because some days I’m home from training at 10pm and I still need to eat dinner, make my lunch, shower and get up for work at 6am.
“That’s the part I struggle with. I’m not stupid: sleep is what you need to recover and there are athletes getting 12 hours sleep every night. That’s where you have to balance it up. If I went full-time [with athletics], my life might just crumble because I need to be busy doing something.”
It’s not Becker’s name who comes up before major international events. Ciara Mageean, Adeleke and Thomas Barr are typically the headline acts for Irish fans. Mageean and Adeleke both narrowly missed out on a medal at the Worlds, while Barr’s fourth-place finish at the Rio Olympics in 2016 is still a fresh image for those who watched that race.
But medals aren’t the only measure of an athlete’s progress. There are other ways to shine. Becker never goes to an athletics meet without firm goals in her mind, and it doesn’t have to include the promise of a podium place at the end of it all in order for her to feel like she has succeeded.
“I go into every championships wanting to perform my best. For some people it’s a medal, for others it’s running a PB. I just want to do whatever my body’s max is. Some days, that might be running a PB, other days it might be getting to a semi-final or a global final. I don’t go into a champs thinking, ‘I’m not going to medal, what’s the point of me going here?’ It’s still a world championships and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Who’s to say you won’t run a PB and all of a sudden be into a world semi-final?
“I have other goals.”
Becker almost missed out on making her Olympic debut in Tokyo after coming down with a serious wisdom tooth infection ahead of the National Championships where spots on the Olympic team are on offer. The worst possibly timing for such unquenchable pain. The infection made eating and sleeping difficult, and training impossible. Becker was advised by a doctor not to compete as a result, but her form from earlier in the season assured her a place on the plane to Japan.
And her exploits out there made her a hero at home in New Ross. Becker’s face lit up the town, and local parents approached her when she eventually came home, introducing her to the children that she had inspired. And she did it all without any medal around her neck.
“We have Tadhg Furlong as well [in New Ross] and anytime he goes off to play, they have banners hanging up and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ And then for me to come back from Tokyo to see banners, posters, all the shops had Irish flags. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it now.
“My old school had stuff outside and obviously my parents sent me pictures throughout, but to come home and drive through the town and see people celebrating me was amazing. Parents were coming up to me with their little boys and girls saying they want to go to the Olympics is the nicest part of the whole thing.”
This is the end of the season for Becker, going out on a brilliant high with that 4x400m final at the World Championships. The added travel disruptions caused by air traffic control failure which delayed her return to Ireland certainly added to the fatigue, but there’s a month of rest to look forward to in September.
And by the time she returns to training in October, the Paris Olympics next year will be in her sights. She has a goal for that too. After reaching a relay final at the last Olympics, getting to a final in the individual 400m is a big target for her.
More waiting for what will hopefully be another worthwhile reward.
“I’ve been to the Olympics as a relay and my goal next year is to get there individually, and the relay as well. It would be nice to add to my athletics CV that I was at the Olympics as an individual athlete.
“There’s the European Champs next year as well and it’s on before the Olympics so it should be a good marker for where we’re at.”
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