The Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman Award for September: Aoife O’Rourke (Boxing) and Orla Comerford (Athletics)
Every so often down the years, our panel of judges have felt a bit on the unpatriotic side. While the nation would be cheering on our sportswomen as they were amassing shiny medals, records and the like in especially successful months, the judges were yelping “enough already”.
It wasn’t, need it be said, because they weren’t savouring the triumphs, it was because they knew it would make their deliberations for that month’s award hellishly hard. Impossible, even.
September was one such month. The only small relief was that Kate O’Connor was already on our roll of honour for the year after becoming the first Irish athlete in history to medal in a senior multi-event when she took pentathlon bronze at the European Indoor Championships. And then she only went and followed it up with silver at the World Indoor Championships less than a fortnight later.
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So, O’Connor’s spectacular silver at the World Championships in Tokyo in September will be added to her list of 2025 achievements when it comes to choosing our overall winner, our sportswomen only eligible for one monthly award per year lest they do enough to win all 12.
The judges, then, thought September would be a doddle after Aoife O’Rourke won gold at the World Boxing Championships. The Roscommon woman already had an impressive medal collection before she set off for Liverpool, but her unanimous victory over Turkey’s Busra Isildar in the final of the 75kg division earned her the biggest prize of her career. That win saw her emulate her sister Lisa’s 2022 success when she won world gold in the 70kg division.
Now, as she told Johnny Watterson, her ultimate dream is for both herself and Lisa to make it to LA 2028. “If that does happen, that the two of us are representing Ireland there, it would be an incredible story,” she said. “To go to an Olympics with a sibling would be amazing, really, truly special.”
September sorted, then? Not on your Nelly. And just to give you the gist of how tricky it became, we couldn’t even find a space on that roll of honour for Róisín Ní Riain who helped herself to five – five! – medals at the World Para Swimming Championships, three silver and two bronze. Nor for the outstanding Greta Streimikyte, who won gold in the T13 1500m at the World Para Athletics Championships.
That’s because Orla Comerford, as our Gordon Manning put it when he spoke with her last week, “confirmed her stature as one of the sport’s top female sprinters” when she won World Para T13 100m and 200m gold at the same championships in New Delhi.
“She dominated both races, leading from gun to line, taking off down the track with an authoritative there’s-a-new-sheriff-in-town air whistling off her slipstream,” he wrote.
Not only that, the Raheny Shamrock sheriff “smoked former world champions in both races”, and is inching ever closer to the world record mark in the 100m – it stands at 11.76, she ran a lifetime best of 11.87 in India. Just the 0.11 to go.
September was, then, a nightmare. Well, for our judges. For our sportswomen? A dream.
Previous monthly winners – December: Ellen Walshe (Swimming); January: Hazel Finn (Basketball); February: Lara Gillespie (Cycling); March: Kate O’Connor and Sarah Healy (Athletics); April: Aoife Wafer (Rugby); May: Katie McCabe (Soccer); June: Fiona Murtagh (Rowing); July: Katie Taylor (Boxing); August: Katie George Dunlevy and Linda Kelly (Cycling).
