Ciara Mageean within touching distance of a major champs podium

Irish middle-distance runner talks about her winding athletics journey and the mentors who have helped guide her through the twists and turns to put her to the brink of a global medal

Not long after Ciara Mageean crossed the finish line of the women’s 1500m final at the World Championships in Budapest, the tears came. Yes, she had produced a PB of 3:56.61 which also broke the Irish record but she found herself unable to hide the disappointment of fourth place and coming “the closest I’ve ever been to a global medal”.

While Faith Kipyegon had strode to her third world 1500m crown, Diribe Welteji and Sifan Hassan took the other podium places. “I did cry when I got off the track,” says Mageean. “But then, with reflection, I knew there was nothing more I could have done. I needed somebody else to have had a bit less of a good day. I ran the best race that I could possibly run and it was tactically perfect on my part.

“That 3:56 was a time that in the past I thought I never could have run and I was fourth in the world. So, that disappointment very, very quickly made way for pride and a great sense of achievement.”

It was also a confirmation of just how far Mageean has come.

Her journey began when a PE teacher spotted that she could run quickly and the development curve was similarly rapid.

“It was really an upward tangent and, under the guidance of Eamonn Christie, I really excelled as a junior athlete,” says Mageean. Indeed she did. There was an 800m silver medal at the World Under-18 Championships in 2009, while another silver arrived the following year, this time over 1500m at the World U20s. “With my innocence of youth I thought that was how it always would be,” she smiles wryly. “That every time I went out there I would run a PB and every time I would win a medal.”

A serious ankle injury, which ultimately required surgery, brought that idyllic state to an abrupt end. For someone so used to things falling into place, it presented a first major challenge for the then 20-year-old. Yet, while recovering from the operation, Mageean realised how much of her identity had become tied up in athletics.

“My home town [Portaferry] isn’t a big athletics town,” she says. “I would go down the street and people would say ‘Here’s the runner’. At university I couldn’t run, and I wondered what I would be if I wasn’t ‘the runner’?”

It was her new coach, the late Jerry Kiernan, who supported…