After running three lifetime bests in her five Diamond League races, including a wonderfully rare 1,500 metres victory in Rome, it’s no wonder Sarah Healy’s confidence is soaring. The metamorphosis of mindset which occurred during the indoor season is also perfectly evident.
In four of those five races, Healy finished in the top three, reflecting her new approach to competition since winning the European Indoor 3,000m title in March. Focus on the tactics and performance first and the fast times will follow.
“Definitely, I just realised I need to take the pressure off, not think about the outcome so much,” said Healy, who is currently finishing up a midseason training spell in Monte Gordo in Portugal. “If I just focus on what I can control and the same process I go through all the time, instead of the end results, then my performances are a lot better and they improve.
“And also, I suppose, enjoying where I’m at. I feel like I’m at a really nice phase of my career, where I’m still improving a lot, but also realising that there is no real pressure on me.”
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Next up for the 24-year-old will be this weekend’s National Track and Field Championships in Santry, where she’ll drop down to 800m, the event she won last year. Healy’s consistency so far this season also augurs well for the World Championships in Tokyo in September, where her heightened tactical astuteness will surely come into play.
After improving her 3,000m best to 8:27.02 at the Diamond League in Rabat, Healy won the 1,500m in Rome in 3:59.17, then improved her lifetime best to 3:57.15 when finishing second in Paris. She was close to that again when running 3:57.20 to finish seventh in Eugene (the race where Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon improved her world record to 3:48.68) before Healy came out again in London to finish third in the mile in another lifetime best of 4:16.26.
“I think it’s definitely been the biggest improvement from last year, or any other year,” Healy says of this consistency. “It’s hard to say exactly what it is. I guess, just getting physically stronger and better means that my average day is better now.
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“The only time this season that I’ve really thought about trying to run a fast time going into a race was Prefontaine (in Eugene) and it was probably the race I felt like I raced the worst in and was least happy with the result. When I look back after, I thought the only difference was that my approach was far more time-focused, and it just didn’t really put me in as good a mental state.”
Her coaches, the husband-and-wife team of Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter, continue to have a big say in Healy’s progress this season. There have also been other subtle changes.
“It’s not one thing,” she added. “I’m getting older and I’ve been doing this for a while now. You just realise what works for you. I know I’m the fittest I’ve ever been and feel confident, but also know I’ve got more in me this season. I want to race more and I’ve still got a lot to do this season, so it’s kind of the perfect place to be.”
Healy won her first senior title over 1,500m in 2019, aged 18, the year after winning a double gold at the European Under-18 Championships. Her 1,500m best of 3:57.15 is now second only to Ciara Mageean’s Irish record of 3:55.87, set in 2023. Like everyone in Irish athletics, Healy is still absorbing the shock of Mageean’s cancer diagnosis last month, for which she is continuing to get treatment.
“It was such sad news to hear,” she said. “It’s really shocking when someone so young and so healthy faces something like that. But we know that she’s such a fighter and I think she said herself, she’ll take that fight into what she’s facing now. But we all were just thinking of her and are behind her. And I guess it really puts a lot of things in perspective.”
After the National Championships, Healy will race the Silesia Diamond League in Poland on August 16th. Then it’s on to the Diamond League final in Zurich on August 27th – she currently tops the 1,500m standings – before heading off to Tokyo, where the World Championships begin on September 13th.
Her victory at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, when Healy kicked from third to first inside the last 20m, was indeed rare. It was only the third Irish victory on the Diamond League circuit since it was introduced in 2010. Rhasidat Adeleke also won the 400m in Monaco last year, Ciara Mageean won the 1,500m in Brussels in 2022, and while Mark English won the 800m in Birmingham in 2019, that race wasn’t part of the Diamond League programme.
“It’s such an amazing stadium to compete in and it was really cool to win,” Healy says of her Rome victory. “And I just tried to soak it in because obviously I realised that winning Diamond Leagues is extremely rare. And even just winning races as a professional athlete is rare.”
