Kate O’Connor is talking through the challenges of competing in five events all in the one day – running, hurdling, jumping, throwing, etc – and admits it’s less about the physical toll, and more about the emotional challenges in between.
Such is the nature of the pentathlon, the indoor, five-event version of the women’s heptathlon, which is seven events spread across two days. Although only 24, O’Connor is well seasoned and successful in both, and heads to this week’s European Indoor Championships in the Netherlands ranked second, thanks to her recent Irish pentathlon record of 4,683 points set last month in Tallinn.
That performance was further telling by the fact she equalled or bettered her indoor bests in all five events – the 60m hurdles, high jump, shot put, long jump, and 800m. Better still O’Connor feels there is more to come, having just returned from a three-week training camp in Tenerife, ahead of the championships which start in the city of Apeldoorn on Thursday.
“I have a mindset, and maybe it’s a multi-event mindset, that so many things can happen,” says O’Connor, her event set for Sunday. “There’s five chances for things to go well and five chances for things to not go well.
“So I never go into a competition thinking ‘this is where I’m going to place’. You don’t really know where you’re sitting until after the long jump, and then it always comes down to the 800m and where you finish up. So it’s just really about taking one event at a time and keeping the pressure to its lowest.”
She’s done that before, the Dundalk athlete first breaking through at the European Under-20 Championships in 2019, aged 18, winning the silver medal with 6,093 points and smashing the Irish senior record in the process. She also won a Commonwealth Games silver medal in 2022, representing Northern Ireland, and last summer in Paris became Ireland’s first representative in the Olympic heptathlon, finishing 14th.
She may have preferred the heptathlon before, given it includes the javelin, one of her specialist events, but she is fast warming to the pentathlon, the “go-go-go” process leaving a little less time to think.
“There’s the obvious challenge that you’ve got to compete five times, it’s a very, very long day. I think the biggest thing that people don’t realise is the emotional challenges of the event. You’ve got to start so early. Let’s say the programme starts at 10am, but then as athletes you’re up at 5.30am or 6am to get breakfast, warm up and all that sort of stuff. Then the day doesn’t end until pretty late in the evening.
“But then if you run the hurdles, and it goes amazingly, you’re on this real high. Then you’ve got to settle down and compete in the high jump. The high jump mightn’t go well and then you’re on a low. You’ve got to pick yourself back up then and go to the shot put. It can be very up-and-down which is really draining.
“Not only are you draining yourself of energy because you are warming up five times, you’re not just warming up once. But things can go well and not so well and you’re trying to balance everything and keep yourself focused all day.
“I think that’s one of the most difficult things about multi-events. It’s harder with the heptathlon. I find personally pentathlon is not so bad, as it’s very go-go-go, squished into one day.”
Born in Newry, O’Connor first took to the multi-events at school at St Gerard’s in Dundalk, coached by her father Michael, who still oversees much of her training along with Tom Reynolds. She’s currently dividing her time between home and Belfast, where she’s completing a master’s in Communications and Public Relations at Ulster University.
She’s also experienced the European Indoors before, finishing ninth in Istanbul two years ago. Her performance in Tallinn last month has left her a lot more confident this time: “In each event that happened, if I didn’t score what I did I would have been a little bit underwhelmed with my performance. At no point did I look at my coaches, apart from the long jump, and say ‘I can’t believe that just happened’.
“I think as well in Paris, although I had a great championships, really, really enjoyed it, an amazing first experience of an Olympic Games, I kind of came away from it, and thought I could be up there with those top girls. And I fully believe I’m capable of that.”
Apeldoorn schedule: Pentathlon (Sunday, all times Irish)
8:0: 60m Hurdles; 8:50: High Jump; 11:21: Shot Put; 14:10: Long Jump; 17:03: 800m.
