Coming as they do 12 days and some 5,300 miles apart, the World Indoor Championships in Nanjing, China, weren’t on the radar of all athletes competing on the European indoor stage in Apeldoorn last weekend. But the Irish medal hopefuls are now well poised for the rollover.
All three medal winners from the last Sunday’s half-hour of success in Apeldoorn are now committed to Nanjing, the three-day event starting on Friday week (March 21st) and aside from the fact it still won’t include her favourite event, the javelin, Kate O’Connor couldn’t be any more excited about her next pentathlon.
“The opportunities, when in shape, don’t come around too often,” O’Connor says, having won bronze in Apeldoorn. “So why not go out while you’re enjoying it, while you’re healthy, and grab everything?
“It’s another opportunity to go for. I’m in the form of my life. No injuries, thank God, and I’m just really enjoying competing ... I’ll try to perform to the top level again, as well as I can, and see where it takes me.”
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The pentathlon in Nanjing will again involve 14 women, qualified by performance or ranking, and O’Connor’s points tally of 4,781 in Apeldoorn would have been enough to win gold at last year’s event in Glasgow. The winner there, Belgium’s Noor Vidts, who scored 4,773, isn’t competing in Nanjing, neither is Dutch athlete Sofie Dokter, who won bronze last time out, and silver in Apeldoorn ahead of O’Connor.
Finland’s Saga Vanninen, the new European champion and silver medal winner last year, will again be the athlete to beat. But O’Connor has every reason to believe she can challenge for another podium position.
Sarah Healy and Mark English will be similarly enthused, both athletes already en route to China via a training camp in Dubai. After her gold medal run in the 3,000m in Apeldoorn, Healy will this time only have to contest a straight 15-woman final. She’s ranked third fastest this year among the final entries. Britain’s Melissa Courtney-Bryant, who she beat in the last sprint for the line, is not competing.
After his latest European bronze medal run in the 800m, English was well inside the qualifying quota for Nanjing, ranked seventh among the final 30 entries, with Cian McPhillips also extending his indoor season, ranked 11th.
Sarah Lavin, fourth in the 60m hurdles in Apeldoorn, is also an automatic qualifier and finished fifth in the World Indoor final last year. Andrew Coscoran will also go again, qualified automatically in the men’s 3,000m and 1,500m, and Sophie O’Sullivan is within the ranking quota for the women’s 1,500m with James Gormley making the cut in the men’s 3,000m.
Ireland hasn’t won a medal at the world indoors since 2006 when Derval O’Rourke struck gold in Moscow in the 60m hurdles; and Nanjing certainly comes as bonus territory. The capital of China’s eastern Jiangsu province, it was originally due to host the event in 2020, then in 2021, and then again in 2023 but all three dates were postponed due to Covid-19 pandemic regulations in China.
O’Connor had slipped back into fourth position in Apeldoorn going into the final event, the 800m, where she went for the proverbial broke, powering off the front with one lap to go to ensure enough seconds were gained on Britain’s Jade O’Dowda.
“The gun went off and I found myself in second behind the Italian ... so I made the commitment that I was going to stick with her for as long as I could and be proud of a run. Because if I was going to finish fourth, I wasn’t going to go down without a fight ... I was just running for my life.”
Her performance in Apeldoorn, setting four personal bests in the five events, having already bettered or equalled all five of her personal bests in her previous competition is a clear marker of her progress so far in 2025 and O’Connor is confident there is plenty more to come.
“I think the biggest change was not just changing my mindset, but changing the mindset of the team around me,” she says. “The progress has been day and night. Before this indoor season, I would have considered myself a heptathlete and not a pentathlete. Indoor multievents has always just been, ‘we’ll break up the winter a little bit’ because it’s not a strong point for me, because javelin gives me a slight edge. If I can stay injury-free this summer could be really, really exciting.”
Irish team for World Indoor Championships, Nanjing, China, March 21st-23rd
Sarah Healy, women’s 3,000m
Sarah Lavin, women’s 60m hurdles
Kate O’Connor, pentathlon
Andrew Coscoran, men’s 1,500m, 3,000m
Mark English, men’s 800m
Cian McPhillips, men’s 800m
Sophie O’Sullivan, women’s 1,500m
