ATHLETICS:If tomorrow's All-Ireland football final was judged on athletic tradition alone, no one would give Down a chance, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

I CALLED the usual athletics aficionados this week and asked them to suggest someone famous from Down who might make for a good story. It’s that time of the year again, All-Ireland football final day, and the idea, obviously, was to compare Down’s athletic tradition with that of Cork – who as we all know have considerable representation in the pantheon of Irish all-time greats.

From Dr Pat O’Callaghan to Sonia O’Sullivan, through the likes of Fanahan McSweeney, John Hartnett, Donie Walsh, Marcus O’Sullivan and Mark Carroll, and more recent headline acts such as Derval O’Rourke, Ailis McSweeney, and Rob Heffernan, the list of Cork’s Olympians, national record holders and major championship medallists could go on, and on. Indeed it probably will.

So what about Down? Sorry, but I was told they have practically no athletic tradition of note. Someone mentioned Sam Ferris, who was born in Dromore in 1900 and later ran three Olympic marathons for Great Britain, winning the silver medal, on the third attempt, in Los Angeles in 1932. But after that? They all drew a blank. In fact, if tomorrow’s football final was somehow being judged on athletic tradition alone, no one would give Down a chance.

What they all agreed, however, was that Ciara Mageean was about to change all that. Indeed Mageean has already put Down athletics back on the map, and not only is she the most exciting prospect to emerge from the county since, well, Sam Ferris – and 110 years is a long wait – she’s the most exciting prospect from anywhere in the country since O’Sullivan.

She’s already been labelled as the “next Sonia”, and as unfair an expectation as that is, Mageean continues to live up to it.

There’s no reason why Down shouldn’t have been producing good athletes. Between the Mourne Mountains and long strands of Dundrum Bay it’s as natural a training ground as anywhere in Ireland, although it can be a little isolated. Yet that hasn’t stopped Mageean. Her home in Portaferry, at the tip of the Ards Peninsula, is certainly remote, and meant she’d begin her school days with an 8.15am ferry trip across Strangford Lough to catch the bus to Assumption Grammar, Ballynahinch. The nearest running facility was at the Mary Peters Track in Belfast, so some evenings Mageean wouldn’t make it home at all, but head there to train instead, staying over in Belfast.

It shouldn’t be too surprising to hear there is no athletic tradition of note in the Mageean family. There is, fittingly, a considerable GAA tradition, although the ties are with Down hurling, rather than football. Her father, Chris, is something of a legend in Down hurling, and played midfield on the early 1990s team that famously progressed from Division Three to Division One of the National Hurling League, and in 1992, defeated Antrim in the Ulster hurling final – earning Down their first provincial title in 51 years.

Chris Mageean was nicknamed “The Hunter”, which is fairly self-explanatory, given he was always in the hunt for the ball, cleanly or otherwise. In fact he continued to play with the club in Portaferry up until two years ago, before an Achilles tendon injury forced his retirement.

It was only natural he’d encourage his children to take up Gaelic games, and indeed the young Mageean first made a sporting impression on the camogie field.

It was only as a third year student in Ballynahinch her running potential was spotted, by her PE teacher, and with that she was introduced to her coach, Eamonn Christie, at Beechmount Harriers in Belfast. Since then Mageean’s progress has been nothing short of sensational.

Her father still plays an important role in that progress, as indeed do all the Mageean family. There’s an excellent feature on that relationship in the latest Irish Runner magazine, the writer having spent a day with the Mageeans in Portaferry. There’s a crucial balance there between sporting, academic and family life, too often absent in similar underage stars, and Chris Mageean seems every bit as proud of his daughter’s camogie success as he is of her athletics success.

Crucially, too, she continued to play camogie for school and club and in February was named on the Ulster Schools’ All Star camogie team for 2010 – following on from older sister Máire, similarly rewarded in 2008.

Now, having finished at school (with three A Levels), the 18-year-old Mageean has come to a sort of crossroads, and may well have to hang up her camogie stick. Sensibly, she is taking some time out – or a “gap year” – before deciding where to pursue her athletic and academic career.

American colleges have been knocking at her door for the past year, including those with strong Irish connections, such as Villanova and Providence, but also the likes of Harvard, and those closer to home, such as Jordanstown and Queen’s, so she’s justifiably a little unsure of where to commit.

“It’s been a hectic three years,” she says. “School was flying by and the athletics was constant, so it will be good a have a year to calm down. It’s not even about choosing the right university, it’s choosing the right country. And I want to get a good education as well.”

Hectic is something of an understatement: Over the past three seasons Mageean has run in nearly a dozen underage championships, including the Commonwealth Youth Games, in Pune, India, in October 2008. After finishing fifth in the 800 metres behind a certain Caster Semenya from South Africa, she came out two days later and won silver in the 1,500 metres.

Since then she’s also won silver at the World Youth Championships over 800 metres in 2009, bettering that with gold in the European Youth Olympics over 1,500 metres a few weeks later, and topping it all off last July with the silver medal at the World Junior Championships, over 1,500 metres.

That performance, in Moncton, Canada, was never properly appreciated, partly because it came on the eve of the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona. But of the 24 distance running medals won at those World Juniors, 23 went to African nations – Mageean being the only exception; she also lowered her Irish junior record to an astonishing 4:09.51 to claim that medal.

Mageean really is that good – and will make her senior championship debut next month when she runs for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games, in New Delhi. It’s interesting her coach, Christie, has “no faith in the American colleges system”, and it does appear likely she will pursue her career closer to home, which mightn’t be a bad decision.

After all, how many athletes like Ciara Mageean are Down likely to produce again?