This is a sort of transition time in the athletics year, the end of the spring marathon season running into what they call the relay carnival season in the US. And still too soon to get properly excited about the summer track season.
Irish athletes have fared well on both the marathon and relay front down through the years, although it appears things are changing. While Irish success in the relay is now soaring, our marathon running standards are going in the opposition direction.
Watching some of the Boston Marathon last Monday, and looking ahead to the London Marathon this Sunday, the Irish competitive interest has dropped off significantly. The same goes for all the other big marathons worldwide.
Like any sporting event, success can be cyclical. Looking at Boston, Neil Cusack was the last Irish winner back in 1974, before John Treacy finished third in 1988, and third again in 1989. Treacy may be best remembered for his silver medal in the 1984 Olympic marathon in LA, but these were also two great runs in Boston. Jerry Kiernan also finished ninth in LA, and like Treacy also won the Dublin Marathon, with Dick Hooper also winning Dublin three times.
In the early 2000s, there was a clear drop-off in Irish marathon standards, and the Dublin Marathon organisers set up the Marathon Mission, in 2009, to help improve overall standards and try to get Irish runners back on the podium in Dublin.
There was something of a turnaround, including Stephen Scullion breaking Treacy’s long-standing Irish marathon record going back to 1984. Scullion ran 2:09:49 in 2020, and in the 2024 Dublin marathon last October, Hiko Tonosa took another few seconds off that, running 2:09:42 to finish third overall.
On the women’s side, Fionnuala McCormack is now the only Irish athlete making any mark on the global marathon scene, consistently producing qualifying marks for the World and Olympics, her best time of 2:23:46 run only last December, a few months after her 40th birthday.
McCormack is still more than a minute off the Irish record of 2:22:23 run by Catherina McKiernan when winning the Amsterdam marathon back in 1998. McKiernan also won the London Marathon earlier that year and the Berlin Marathon in 1997.
Even though these times remain some of the best ever run by Irish athletes, in the bigger picture Irish marathon running is currently in a bit of a time warp. The world of marathon running has moved on so much that the current best times by Irish athlete don’t get them inside the top 200 times worldwide for men, or the top 100 for women.
There is no quick or easy way to address this drop off, and sometimes the level of expectation placed on these athletes is much greater than the reality, especially when it comes to the marathon at a big championship such as the Olympics. At the same time, there’s no point getting excited if Irish runners are doing well in places like Dublin, but are still well off the pace when it comes the big city marathons.
Meanwhile, the relay carnival season reaches its peak in the US this weekend with the Penn Relays at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, which has been staged annually since 1895. It brings together the best college and high school teams from across the US, with some elite interest too, and lots of Irish athletes have won fame here over the years, Ronnie Delany winning several relay titles with Villanova in the 1950s.
About 100,000 will be in attendance over the three days, with lots of Irish interest from colleges like Villanova, Providence and the University of Washington.
On the international scene, the World Relay Championships continue to grow in stature, and again there will be big Irish interest when that two-day event is staged in Guangzhou in China early next month (May 10th-11th).
Ireland will be sending 14 athletes across three relays, the women’s 4x400m, the men’s 4x400m, and the mixed 4x400m, with the main aim being qualification for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September. The top 14 teams in each relay will qualify.
Rhasidat Adeleke has once again committed to this event, her inclusion obviously critical to the Irish chances. She already got her outdoor season started with a 50-second 400m split at the Texas Relays last month, then a fourth-place finish over 200m in Florida last week.
Last year was unquestionably a record year for Irish relay running, both the mixed and women’s 4x400m qualifying for the Paris Olympics at the 2024 World Relays, before winning gold in European Championships in Rome in the mixed event, and silver in the women’s 4x400m.
The women’s team then narrowly missed an Olympic bronze medal in Paris, finishing in fourth, just a fraction of a second away from making history.
It all starts again for the Irish quartets in Guangzhou, with different expectations this year. Thomas Barr, a key member of the mixed relay last year, has retired. His performances were always exceptional in how he was able to lift his relay times above anything he was able to run in the individual 400m.
It was interesting to see three relay members get the full podium funding of €40,000 in the Sport Ireland grants announced earlier this year, in Chris O’Donnell, Sharlene Mawdsley and Sophie Becker. Adeleke also gets podium funding, but that’s based on her individual success.
It seems that O’Donnell, Mawdsley and Becker will be expected to shelve any individual championship aspirations for the greater success of the relay teams. As it stands, Ireland needs to focus on relay success if it is to back up the success of a year ago, the only exception being Adeleke, who will most likely put her individual 400m first when it comes to Tokyo.
For any professional athlete, the rewards of any individual medal will always outweigh any relay success, especially when it comes to shoe contracts and other endorsements.
Still, relays are so often seen as the exciting climax of any big championships, the tension mounting as teams try to avoid any errors passing the baton, and athletes who normally run in lanes coming together in lane one, fighting for positions.
But it will require more Irish athletes stepping up to that level, starting with the gap left in the mixed 4x400m given the absence of Barr. It all makes for exciting times this summer, and Irish eyes soon turning to Guangzhou.
