Regrets, yes there were a few, but how could there not be when, in her first Olympic final, Rhasidat Adeleke was just run out of a 400m bronze medal after a heroic effort.
It was right where the Olympic rings are painted on the track, halfway down the homestretch, when the medal started to slip away. At the time Adeleke was still holding third, her head tilting back as if trying to get a better view of the finish line.
But it just wouldn’t come soon enough, the medal soon disappearing, despite the last of her graceful and powerful strides doing their best to take her to the podium.
In the moment after Natalia Kaczmarek from Poland had edged ahead of her, to cross the line in third, Adeleke stared up at the giant screen inside the Stade de France. A moment of heartfelt disappointment, perhaps, but also of realisation that the medals on the night had simply slipped out of her grasp.
Yet in the immediate aftermath, Adeleke spoke about wanting more, not denying the superiority on the night of the three older and more experienced women ahead of her, just knowing the chance to stand on that Olympic podium, even at age 21, had been within reach.
“Honestly, the whole thing is kind of like a blur,” she said of that last chase for the line, finishing in 49.28 seconds, Kaczmarek just .30 ahead of her to win bronze.
“Maybe I panicked a little bit, started to strain. So I was just staring at the screen for a minute, ‘oh my God, no way I came fourth again’. I’m like, ‘can someone just give me the medal?’”
She had also finished fourth in the World Championship final last summer: “I knew there was so much more there than what I did today. This is just part of the game, you know. You win some, you lose some. I didn’t achieve my dreams today, but in the future I just hope that there are more podiums up there and I’ll be able to perform at my best when it’s most important.
“It’s my first Olympics, I’m grateful to be healthy, and I’m hungrier than ever. It just wasn’t meant to be today. and just going forward I want to be exactly where I want to be, and in the future that’s what I’m going to be working towards.”
There was no disputing the quality of women ahead of her. The gold medal was won by Marileidy Paulino in an Olympic record of 48.17 seconds, the 27-year-old from the Dominican Republic adding to the silver won three years ago in Tokyo.
Salwa Eid Naser from Bahrain took silver in 48.53, the 2019 World Championship winner’s fastest time since returning from a two-year doping ban. Amber Anning from Great Britain was also closing fast on Adeleke, just .01 back in fifth, her 49.29 a British record.
Only Adeleke wasn’t taking any great consolation from that, nor was the young Dubliner taking any immediate positives from her first Olympic experience: “No, that’s not possible at the moment. Some people, I guess, come here to participate and just happen to be at the Olympics, their goal is to become an Olympian.
“I knew what I was capable of, I was definitely looking at a podium, I definitely wouldn’t be happy coming fourth and my coach [Edrick Floreal] knows I could’ve got on that podium.”
Before another capacity crowd of 77,000 inside the Stade de France, Adeleke got the loudest roar of the night from the large Irish contingent in attendance. A shower of misty rain fell shortly before her final, cooling the air a little, the atmosphere inside the stadium sill heated beyond belief.
Starting in lane four, Adeleke had all three of the main medal favourites outside of her – Paulino, Naser and Kaczmarek. It seemed coming into the home straight that Adeleke may finally have been set to break the stranglehold Kaczmarek has had over her, having been run down by her in the final of the European Championships in June.
There, Adeleke ran her Irish record of 49.07 seconds but it was expected she’d need to break 49 seconds to win a medal here, and so it proved.
Paulino (22.81), Naser (23.12) and Kaczmarek (23.23) were all slightly up on her at the 200m mark, Adeleke splitting in 23.29, when she’d hoped to get closer to 23.00. Despite getting ahead of Kaczmarek around the final bend, she just couldn’t shake her off.
Over the century of Ireland’s Olympic participation, only six people have won medals for Ireland in athletics, and only three of those were won on the Olympic track, the last being Sonia O’Sullivan’s 5,000m silver in Sydney 24 years ago. That’s how rare these medals are. O’Sullivan, for what it’s worth, also finished fourth in her first Olympics in 1992.
“Maybe it comes down to me being more patient and not kicking as early.” Adeleke said. “I also think there’s so much more to come in the 400m, so much more experience, so many more races to be able to learn how I should run my race the best, being able to put down a perfect race plan that fits me.”
Adeleke did confirm she’d take part in the 4x400m final on Saturday night, after the Irish quartet qualified earlier on Friday.
“Yeah absolutely, I think it’s another opportunity.”
♦ Kate O’Connor, the first Irish heptathlete to compete in the Olympics, concluded her seven-event competition on Friday night with a season’s best of 2:13.25 in the 800m finale, the 23-year-old placing 14th overall with her total of 6167 points, Nafissatou Thiam from Belgium winning gold on 6880 points.
