Did you ever see the like? Four green-clad blurs galloping around a track in Rome and giving us 3:09.92 of pure, unadulterated joy, those last 10-ish seconds, after Sharlene Mawdsley hit the accelerator, magical. “Just hold your nerve,” Greg Allen implored her. “She is holding her nerve,” he noted. And with that: Golden Wonders.
Whether the rest of us held our nerve is doubtful. “My heart was in my mouth,” as our host Paul O’Flynn said of the baton exchanges. Even when we had no skin in the relay game down the years, watching those handoffs, and the regular enough accompanying calamities, could be stressful enough. Now? Well, a nation holds its breath because that’s our bunch out there.
Happily, Chris O’Donnell, Rhasidat Adeleke, Thomas Barr and Mawdsley were considerably more composed than the bulk of us watching it all on the RTÉ Player. Yes, yes, it was a pity it wasn’t on the actual telly box, but if you wanted to tune in, you could. Unless you’re in a black spot where broadband has still to darken the door, in which case Adeleke is still handing the baton over to Barr. But that’s a whole other head-wrecking matter.
Any how, the quartet represented Sligo, Dublin, Waterford and Tipperary, the RTÉ panel mirroring that nice geographical spread: Douglas, Turner’s Cross and Cobh represented by Derval O’Rourke, Rob Heffernan and Sonia O’Sullivan. Everywhere Paul looked, there was a Rebel.
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In light of how the team had performed at last month’s World Relays in the Bahamas, the Corkonians were hopeful of a medal, a confidence that was echoed over at the stadium where Greg reckoned they had “a great chance”, and David Gillick did too. “The sum of their parts is greater than the four of them,” he said, “I think they can rise to the occasion”.
And off we went. No dropped batons, but the Allen man dropped the mic. Mercifully, not literally.
“Chris O’Donnell ... nice steady opening ... Rhasidat Adeleke gets the baton at the same time as Lieke Klaver and this could be very, very interesting ... Lieke Klaver is not able to live with the wonderful long-legged stride of Rhasidat Adeleke ... and the baton is handed to Thomas Barr ... on paper, he shouldn’t really live with some of these 400m runners but he is all heart, he is all championship-competitor ...”
“ ... Sharlene Mawdsley ... Belgium leading ... the gold medal is on for Ireland by the way ... can Sharlene Mawdsley get the better of Charlie Carvell ... I think she can ... she has a tremendous finish, she is strength, she is elegance ... just hold your nerve! She is holding her nerve! This is WONDERFUL from Sharlene Mawdsley ... GOLD MEDAL FOR IRELAND!!!”
How good was that? If the team had produced a masterclass, the commentator had too. In the space of 3:09.92 he called the race, forecast how it would end, and told us more about the runners than their parents or partners most probably know about them. All that was missing was what Lieke Klaver had for breakfast. Those of us who know as much about relay racing as we do about quantum physics felt qualified to write a thesis on the art by the end.
“It’s not just a gold medal for Ireland, it’s a glittering, glittering gold medal because all four Irish athletes elevated themselves to a brand new level ... it’s not just any gold, it’s precious gold. This was sheer excellence,” he continued.
The Corkonians were nigh on flattened from the emotion of it all. “For me, that is one of the greatest performances in Irish athletics history,” said Derval, Paul reminding us that Sonia was the only Irish athlete to have helped herself to European gold until this night. “We’ve got four more now,” she smiled. “It’s like buses,” said Paul, “you wait for a gold medal and four come along at once”.
Back in the stadium, David didn’t quite know how to open his chat with the team. “It’s hard to start this whole conversation,” he said, nigh on lost for words. But he got there, Mawdsley admitting “I didn’t think we’d win”, as evidenced by that photo for the ages of her expression as she crossed the line.
“It was almost like Italia 90 all over again,” he said. In time we’ll forgive the team for looking at him blankly, none of them actually born when Toto Schillaci banjaxed our dreams in that very Stadio Olimpico stadium. Italy finished in second place this time around. Revenge, at last.
We’re modest folk, we don’t like to gloat, but Toto? Your relay team took a helluva beating. Well, by 0.77 seconds. Glorious.
