After a fortnight when Team Ireland have written an unforgettable series of firsts into the annals of our Olympic history, now Rhasidat Adeleke gets her chance.
Can a nation hold its breath again for just under 50 seconds?
In truth, at least on the evidence of recent days, winning another medal for Ireland might prove just beyond Adeleke at this stage of her young career, particularly given the Paris form of the principal medal contenders around her.
But you know what they say about finals. Her chance is still there for the taking (400m final, 7pm Irish time), and that’s good enough to go with for now.
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Consider firstly how far Adeleke has already come. At age 21, and competing in her first Olympics, she will be the first ever Irish woman to line up in a sprint event final at the Games.
It’s a simple and magnificently exciting prospect: eight women, eight different nations, lined up from lanes two to nine, one lap of the Stade de France, and three Olympic medals to be decided between them. For Adeleke it’s also a first date with her Olympic destiny, and unlikely to be her last.
The only Irish athlete to win a medal of any colour in an outdoor global sprint event is Bob Tisdall, who won gold in the Olympic 400m hurdles back in 1932 in Los Angeles.
It’s now 24 years since the last Irish athlete to win an Olympic medal on the track, Sonia O’Sullivan, who took silver in the 5,000m in Sydney 2000. That’s ample evidence of how rare they are, and how difficult they are to win.
At 21, Adeleke is not quite the youngest of the eight-woman final, Henriette Jaeger from Norway is 10 months her junior. But three of the medal favourites have already stood on a global championship podium; Tokyo Olympic silver medallist and last year’s world champion Marileidy Paulino from the Dominican Republic, 2019 world champion Salwa Eid Naser from Bahrain, and reigning European champion and last year’s world Championship silver medallist Natala Kaczmarek from Poland.
Sada Williams from Barbados also won bronze at the world Championships last year, and Alexis Holmes from the USA has won two world Indoor Championships medals, and a world Championship gold as part of their mixed relay in Budapest last summer.
Adeleke is drawn in lane four, Britain’s Amber Anning to her outside, then Paulino, Kaczmarek and Naser. It means Adeleke will have a clear view of the trio most likely to be in the medal hunt, and what she’ll need to do to stay in that hunt too.
There was perhaps a timely reminder of all that in Wednesday night’s semi-finals, when season or lifetime best times counted for little or nothing when it came to making the final.
Coming into the home stretch, right where the stagger unwinds, Adeleke was already well down on Naser, who had gone clear in the lane inside her, winning in 49.08, her fastest time since 2019, having later served a two-year ban for doping offences.
Adeleke finished in 49.95 seconds and certainly appeared laboured, and well down on her Irish record of 49.07 seconds clocked when winning the silver medal at the European Championships in Rome back in June. The Olympics do take a very different sort of physical toll, on every athlete, but it also appeared this race had taken a lot more out of Adeleke than she would have liked.
She was able to do a brief interview with RTÉ on the exit ramp, before the Team Ireland management intervened, and took her away for some medical attention, purely on precautionary grounds.
According to a statement later on Wednesday night, there were no lingering effects of her effort, other than the need to refuel and recover, and “all the focus is a top performance in the final now”.
Critical to Adeleke’s medal chance is how fully she can recover in the 48 hours in between, and also rebuild her confidence which inevitably took a bit of a knock too.
She described it as “a very messy race,” but was excited with the chance to “fix everything” in the final.
She admitted too that her semi-final tactics were upset given the restart, after Dutch runner Lieke Klaver was given a warning.
Her coach Edrick Floréal at the University of Texas has made no secret of the fact Adeleke’s strength is her opening speed, and wants her to split 23.00 at 200m; in her semi-final, she split 23.22, and still lost ground on Naser.
Her 49.95 was ranked sixth fastest of the eight qualifiers. Indeed the times across the other two semi-finals were not particularly fast; Paulino won the second semi-final in 49.21; Kaczmarek won the third semi-final in 49.45.
“[It’s happened before] where the rounds may not have went as I wanted them to,” Adeleke added, “but the final went great, so I’m not too worried about it.”
All will be revealed in just under 50 seconds.
How they line up
2. Sada Williams (Barbados): Age 26, lifetime best 49.58
3. Henriette Jaeger (Norway): Age 21, lifetime best 49.85
4. Rhasidat Adeleke (Ireland): Age 21, lifetime best 49.07
5. Amber Anning (Great Britain): Age 23, lifetime best 49.47
6. Marileidy Paulino (Dominican Republic): Age 27, lifetime best 48.76
7. Natala Kaczmarek (Poland): Age 26, lifetime best 48.90
8. Salwa Eid Naser (Bahrain): Age 26, lifetime best 48.14
9. Alexis Holmes (USA): Age 27, lifetime best 49.78
