Beaten but not defeated, Rhasidat Adeleke came off the track with her back straight and her chin steeled. Fourth place in her first Olympic final is not how she saw this playing out. As a result, she wasn’t inclined to point anyone towards the bright side. Her 400m career is about winning things and we all presume that will happen eventually. But it didn’t happen here.
Ultimately, her medal went to Natalia Kaczmarek, the Polish runner who Adeleke must be considering finding a voodoo doll of. It was Kaczmarek who came second at last year’s World Championships in Budapest, with Adeleke fourth. It was Kaczmarek who took gold in Rome earlier this year in the European Championships, beating Adeleke into silver. And it was the Pole who swallowed her up here when everything was up for grabs.
Coming around the top bend, the night was alive. Adeleke had done the first bit. Or maybe, the first, second and third bit. She had got herself to the beginning of the home straight in third place. Gold and silver were away and gone in the shape of the fast-disappearing Marileidy Paulino and Salwa Eid Naser. But bronze was dangling out in front of her.
Had Adeleke gone out too hard? Maybe. But that’s her way of running, dictated by her coach Edrick Floreal, with a view to making her the best 400m runner she can be in time. She’s not there yet, being just 21 years old. Kaczmarek is 26 and probably ran the cannier race here, looking for all the world like she aimed herself at bronze and figured she had Adeleke to beat for it.
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And so, with 60 metres to go, you could see Adeleke’s elbows start to get high and her head start to strain. The energy that carried her through those opening 300 metres had long left town and now all that remained was the ne’er-do-well pain that sat on her muscles like a dead weight. Kaczmarek came in her slipstream and passed her with 40 to go. Adeleke’s final 50 metres was the second slowest of the eight runners.
“Honestly I think there’s times where I have had that last 50 metres and there’s times where I haven’t,” Adeleke said afterwards. “It really just depends on how the rest of the race goes. Also maybe it comes down to me being more patient and not kicking as early.
“At the end of the day I think it comes with experience. I also think there’s so much more to come in the 400m, so much more experience, so many more races to be able to learn how I should run my race the best. I think going forward it’s just about repetition and being able to put down a perfect race-plan that fits me.”
That was the tenor of how she spoke throughout her post-race debrief. She was clearly devastated – anyone who saw her RTÉ interview with David Gillick immediately after she came off the track would be in no doubt at the hurt she was feeling. But this wasn’t a dreamer beating herself up because a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity had gone up in smoke. She will have this chance again. If she doesn’t, something has gone wrong.
Adeleke has changed how we consider possibilities in athletics, the most high-profile Olympic sport of them all. She lives on a different plane to all the other Irish track athletes out here. She wasn’t happy just to be in a final. She didn’t come here to settle. Her season, her three years since not being picked for Tokyo, her college career and her pro career and everything else – all of it was aimed at this one lap of running.
“It was just to be able to perform. I wasn’t really too focused on the whole Olympic experience, I didn’t really do much. I came here to perform and I focused on that. The first couple of days I got to see some of the village. I didn’t really go around too much.
“I was just so focused on competing, I was so focused on performance, that I didn’t really take in the whole Olympic experience. That’s part of it. I think my priorities are slightly different. At the end of the day it’s a competition. Yeah, the Olympics are a special moment and I’ve definitely appreciated that. I’ve appreciated being here, I’ve appreciated the moment and I’ve taken it in. But I definitely was performance focused.”
She will run in the women’s relay final on Saturday night. She will go on the circuit and make a living and aim herself at the World Championships in Tokyo next year. She will plan for LA in four years’ time. She will, through it all, keep improving. As the second-youngest runner in the final, we asked her could she see any positives.
“No, that’s not possible at the moment,” she said. “Some people, I guess, come here to participate and just happen to be at the Olympics. Their goal is to become an Olympian. I knew what I was capable of.
“I was definitely looking at a podium, I definitely wouldn’t be happy coming fourth and my coach knows I could’ve got on that podium. It just wasn’t meant to be today but I think I still have so much more to give. We’ll just look forward to the future.”
