Without any hesitation, Ciara Mageean slips off her right shoe, rolls down her sock, and points to the three-inch scar which cuts neatly through her Achilles tendon to the tip of her heel.
“Aye, that’s my wee souvenir from the Paris Olympics,” she says, beaming in the moment now, as if it’s been a blessing in disguise – not like the death in the family as she described it at the time. Such is the process and healing power of not just her running, but of life.
“In the past, if I just tapped that ankle off the leg of a chair, I’d yelp. Spikes being so tight, they were the nemesis – I never wanted them on my feet. Now I can slide my shoe back on no problem. Before, it was always painful.
“My left ankle is still as good as new, so that’s proof the surgery should work. I’m certainly in a place where I have a lot more respect for my body. It’s just the patience phase that gets frustrating.”
With that, Mageean slips off her left shoe, rolls down the other sock, and reveals a similar three-inch scar through her left Achilles tendon, a souvenir from the exact same surgery in 2012, when she was only 20. Two potentially career-ending injuries right there, yet she’s already got plans for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, when she’ll be 36.
“Yeah, my focus is LA, and (I) fully believe if I just get two consistent seasons, nothing special, no injuries, I think I can still be dangerous.”
She reveals one more souvenir, the Olympic rings tattooed onto the inside of her right wrist, done in advance of Paris last summer.
“Yeah I know, a nice steady reminder every single day!”
This is an even more resilient Mageean than anticipated. It’s almost a year since the glorious high of winning the 1,500m gold at the European Championships in Rome soon turned into the darkness of her Paris experience, where her third successive Olympics ended in tears. This time, before she even stepped on the track, that Achilles injury forced her withdrawal on the eve of her 1,500m heat.
She’s ready to talk through the entirety of it all, and though no need for the Pocket Kleenex, it turns out it’s not all good news.
It’s Wednesday afternoon at the Sport Ireland Institute in Abbotstown, and Mageean travelled down that morning from her new home in Belfast, which she bought a few months after Paris with her fiance Thomas Moran. This is a weekly excursion to link up with Martina McCarthy, the senior S&C coach at the institute, along with other members of the Athletics Ireland endurance squad.
“Earlier in the year, I felt I was right on track. I’d set out my stall, that I’d like to be in Tokyo for the World Championships at the end of the summer. That was the A-goal, maybe a lofty one. I got back running, then had a bit of a setback.
“My ankle was just super stiff. The surgery went well, the pain I had in my heel recovered, but I think being immobilised in the boot, for so long, caused something else to tighten up.
“I’m moving well in the gym, trying to build up my on-ground running. I’m also very aware of what I’m not doing, hard sessions on the track, not even close. I’m still being positive, but realise that coming back this track season is maybe not a realistic goal, and that Tokyo won’t be on the cards for me. At the same time, it takes some pressure off myself.”
So it’s more stretching on long rubber bands and static leg hurdling than running for another few weeks, as she also moves away from the sort of pain management more associated with a defensive linebacker.
“I’ve been running in pain for so long, seven or eight years, the aim is to be able to run and not be in pain. I just ran 30 minutes, four miles, on the flat. With no pain. Then all of my gym with no pain. So today was a good day.”
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It’s said that Achilles himself was unwittingly killed by an arrow shot by the Trojan prince Paris, hitting his vulnerable heel. Mageean still feels she was struck similarly off guard, exactly two weeks out from the Olympics.
Wrapping up an altitude training camp in the Swiss resort of St Moritz, exactly as she’d done in the summer of 2023 before finishing fourth in the 1,500m at the World Championships in Budapest, what should have been one last 200m interval promptly turned sinister.
“I wasn’t trying to hit anything faster. I just felt a little bit more of a tweak in my Achilles. Not where I jumped up in the air in pain. But straight away I couldn’t walk properly, then I couldn’t even jog a lap.
![Ciara Mageean: 'It actually broke my heart, but I remember [her fiance] Thomas said "I think it’s time that we moved home, because I haven’t seen you smile for a while".' Photograph: Dan Dennison/The Irish Times](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/OIRPNXU53JEBRACFR6KYJSL6UQ.jpg?auth=7691a93c2067fbcfba2d1bf12cdfc988d992ff10c469e7ab37db6b46f1002be4&width=800&height=533)
“Maybe I always knew that eventually it was going to give. But we made a plan, to fly straight into Paris, get the treatment there, rest as much as I could. At that stage I was still determined to race. I’d been told for years that cortisone around the Achilles was a risk, could be degenerative. But the doctor gave me the first one, and no kick. Then the second one, no kick either.
“Two days before my race, I was running on a limp foot. It was like a little peg. It would land, but there was nothing coming from it. I couldn’t push off. Then the day before, I was trying some 200m, couldn’t hit 33 seconds. I finished that rep, turned to Thomas and said, ‘I don’t know if I can even finish a 1,500m, never mind race one’.”
Now, staring at the inevitable, she called her agent Ricky Simms for one last roll of the dice: “Ricky just said, ‘you’re not here to participate’, and I went into those Olympics wanting to medal, believing that I could. Then I look at the people I beat at the European Championships, and how they competed. [Britain’s Georgia Bell, who won silver behind Mageean in Rome, won Olympic bronze in Paris.] I still haven’t watched a single second of Paris, but I’m well aware of the outcome. If I’d been able to continue in that vein, you can’t help but wonder, ‘What if?’
[ Few Irish athletes have displayed more resilience than Ciara MageeanOpens in new window ]
“Life goes on, you give yourself new goals. But I think no matter how much time is past, I’m going to find grief in that moment. You can never go back, and in sport we only get a handful of these chances.”
After Sonia O’Sullivan endured her downfall at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, her father John told reporters to keep things in context, that “no one’s died”. Still, Mageean feels the comparison is justified.
“I feel your body experiences grief the same, whether it’s the loss of a loved one, the loss of a dream, going through a break-up. I feel that chemistry within you feels the same. But I also know there’s so much in life to be happy about.”
Her family was in Paris, and that didn’t come cheap, but all she wanted to do was get out of there. On arrival back home in Portaferry, she realised one of her old friends from Assumption Grammar in Down was having her hen party in Belfast, so she got herself along to that.
The following morning she jumped on a bus and went incognito to the All-Ireland camogie final in Croke Park, where another old Portaferry friend, Niamh Mallon, was playing for Galway against Cork.
“Of course the first people I run into are from the Portaferry camogie club, one of them drives me back to Belfast after. And that’s why the people and friends I’ve met though sport are probably the most valuable thing to me, more than the medals or the records.”
By then the date was already set, September 9th, for a return visit to Prof James Calder, the specialist foot and ankle surgeon in London, who had performed the first operation. By then she’d also drifted away from her coach Helen Clitheroe, leaving the New Balance Manchester Group the previous March, her home for eight years.
“So one of the main people who got me through last summer was Thomas, he’s been my rock. At that time in Paris as well, I was discussing with Thomas where we might move to next. It actually broke my heart, but I remember Thomas said ‘I think it’s time that we moved home, because I haven’t seen you smile for a while’.”
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Though partly in jest, Mageean still blames Jerry Kiernan. It was Kiernan, her late coach who died suddenly in 2021, who was looking out for her in other ways back in her college days at UCD.
“With Thomas, oh goodness, we never celebrate an anniversary, but we were both studying in UCD, and in Jerry’s training group. So I always knew Thomas for a long time before we started going out.
“Then I ended up moving into their house, in Rathgar, and I still laugh about this, because I’d been through a break-up, and Jerry would ring me, ‘How are you?’ Then we’d be at training, and he’d say, ‘Sure there’s Tom, a strappin’ young lad’. So Jerry was also a bit of a matchmaker.
“We got engaged on New Year’s Eve, and everyone keeps asking about a date. I would sooner plan an altitude training camp. I have no clue. But I feel very lucky in life to have a partner who is as invested in your goals as much as you are, sometimes he’s even more invested, holds me up.”
She’s convinced she can still improve on her Irish record of 3:55.87, clocked in 2023. “I look back at my 3:55, what I did before that, and if I’m not in pain, I can do that and then some. If I didn’t think I could run faster than 3:55 I would retire. I know I’ll be 36 in LA, but I’m determined to be there.”
With Thomas she’s made another commitment, one of coach-athlete, Mageean clearly also finding happiness in that decision.
“I just said, ‘if anyone is going to coach me, you know more about me than anybody else’. Sometimes my emotions can come in a little too much, and he’s kept me on the straight and narrow. He just loves athletics too, he’s a four-minute miler, and it’s just natural we find our own little groove.”
Their search for a new home was originally split between Dublin and Belfast, then focused on Belfast, and then they settled on Dunmurray, on the city’s southside, about a mile or so from the Mary Peters Track, close to Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park – all beautiful running spaces.
“I’m absolutely loving being home, it’s been the right decision. Now we’ve two wee cats, we’ve got our name for a dog. I feel we’re building a little life for ourselves, close to family.
“And I’d definitely love to start a family. As an athlete, I’m well aware you can have a baby and keep racing. But I’ve been knocked back in so many seasons due to injury, I don’t know if I wanted to willingly miss one to have a baby.
“But post-LA, definitely, and you can only hope you’ll be lucky enough and graced with the ability.
“You do have to be selfish as an athlete, and it’s the part I find the least enjoyable. I don’t like that selfish nature. It is all-consuming, your entire day is planned around your training. But no regrets. Well, maybe if I’d just gone back and fixed this ankle sooner. But what would I have missed?”
