Rhasidat Adeleke is the first Irish woman to qualify for an Olympic sprint final, and is bidding to become just the seventh Irish athlete to medal in athletics at an Olympic Games
In 100 years of Olympic competition, just half a dozen Irish athletes have medalled in athletics.
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Indeed remove Pat O’Callaghan’s incredible back-to-back hammer throw success in the 1928 and 1932 Games, and Team Ireland’s track success is whittled down to five medals, though Rob Heffernan would have to wait four years after the event for his.
A fourth-place finisher in the men’s 50km walk at the London Games, the Corkman was upgraded to bronze when Russian doper Sergey Kirdyapkin was stripped of gold.
Historically there has been little room for Irish athletes at the top table, but Rhasidat Adeleke will take her place in the women’s 400m final on Friday night (8pm Nigerian time) filled more with expectation than hope.
The giddy pre-Olympic predictions have been dampened down somewhat after what was, by her own admission, a semi-final where she failed to match lofty standards.
The Tallaght woman suggested the false start for Lieke Klaver upset her rhythm, with her form and composure under serious attack coming off the home bend.
Salwa Eid Naser, the 2019 world champion who missed the 2022 Worlds and Tokyo Games after she was hit with a two-year ban, looked firmly in control.
Naser, Tokyo 400m silver medallist Marileidy Paulino, and Poland’s reigning European champion Natalia Kaczmarek will start as favourites ahead of Adeleke as they are the only three in Friday’s field who have dipped below 49 seconds.
Yet the Irish sprinter knows ironing out the kinks and delivering on the biggest stage of them all will offer an opportunity to take her place in exalted Irish company.
Adeleke chases Salma Eid Naser in her 400m semi-final
Having played a wide range of sports during her primary school days at St. Mark’s National School in Tallaght, she was encouraged to join the local athletics club.
An 11-year-old Rhasidat Adeleke was welcomed into Tallaght AC, and within three years was winning national competitions. It was inevitable her star would soar further afield.
At 15, she medalled in the European Under-18 Championships in the 200m (gold) and in the World U20 Championships in the 4x100m relay (silver).
A year later she blew away the competition to land a European sprint 100/200m double at youth and junior level.
Another 100/200 sprint double at the European U20 Championships in Estonia paved the way for a scholarship to the University of Texas.
The trajectory has only gone in one direction since.
Adeleke, who turns 22 later in the month, has a monopoly of the sprint national records, and is the first Irish sprinter to win a NCAA title after her exploits in Texas last year.
She has helped propel Irish relay teams into serious contenders – and medal winners – and her first individual championship medal came earlier this summer in Rome when Kaczmarek took European gold ahead of her Irish rival.
Kaczmarek edges out Adeleke for gold at this summer’s European Championships
All of which has fed into the sky-high expectations around the six foot running sensation. When sprint legend Michael Johnson states publicly on more than one occasion his admiration for both her ability and what she can achieve, there is no escaping medal talk.
Speaking shortly after Adeleke’s European silver, Sonia O’Sullivan, our last athlete to grab global attention for her exploits on the track, was keen to ensure realism didn’t give way to public hysteria.
“If you look at the rankings at the moment (June) Rhasidat is in there at number four of the athletes running and so she is right in there,” she said.
“She will definitely be expecting to be in the final, but I really don’t think that we should be looking at medals until she is in that final and we see who she has got to race then and how she lines up with that.”
Raking over the coals of Adeleke’s laboured semi-final performance on the RTÉ couch, Derval O’Rourke suggested that as the sixth-ranked athlete going into the Even a cursory glance at who isn’t there is instructive.
Jamaican Nickisha Pryce set a new national record (48.57) and the seventh-fastest time ever in the history of the discipline just a week out from the Games, yet couldn’t make it past the semi-final stage.
Lane four will offer Adeleke a clear view of the main hitters outside her in Naser, Paulino and Kaczmarek.
Irish fans have witnessed at close quarters the growing rivalry with Kaczmarek, the rangy Polish runner who has been lapping up podium finishes both individually and as part of a relay team since the Tokyo Games, where she took gold in the mixed 4×400 and silver in the women’s 4×400.
It should be noted that Price’s world-leading time last month was the same race in which Kaczmarek lowered her own national record to 48.90.
Paulino – flag bearer for the Domincan Republic at the Games, has exuded class in her two outings, backed by an impressive track record including two silver medals in Tokyo 2020 and a gold medal at the 2023 World Championships in Budapest.
The number one ranked athlete in the event, she has voiced her desire to shatter Marita Koch’s long-standing world record of 47.60, set in 1985. There is work to do to achieve that, but Olympic gold is well within her compass.
Bahrain’s Naser is now making headlines on the track again after an almost two-year absence.
The 26-year-old missed out on Tokyo after the highest court in sports, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), overturned a ruling that had cleared her on a technicality for doping tests she missed.
“I only missed three drug tests, which is normal. It can happen to anybody,” she said at the time.
Naser is certainly competing like an athlete making up for lost time, posting a season’s best 49.08 in cruising into the final as the fastest qualifier.
While Adeleke, unlike the aforementioned trio, is yet to break 49 seconds, there is every chance that won’t be required to medal.
Since 2000, the only runner to have dipped under 49 seconds in the women’s 400m final has been Shaunae Miller-Uibo in her golden performance in Tokyo (48.36).
Injury has put paid to her hopes of chasing a hat-trick of 400m Olympic titles in Paris, yet Adeleke will know anything around her June PB form of 49.07 – faster than any of the semi-final winners – will have her in the podium shake-up.
Anything lower, and Adeleke will surely join Tisdall, O’Callaghan, Delaney, Treacy, O’Sullivan and Heffernan among the band of Irish Olympic immortals.race, anything above that would be a “massive bonus.”
