“You could run for Ireland…”
Portaferry camogie coach Elizabeth Collins to Ciara Mageean
SHE works as hard as any of her rivals against the world. Single-mindedly, she pushes herself round the track. Off it, her diet is on point to the last ounce, she takes her rest, she trains her body and her brain, she works on her tactics and strengthens her mind and every muscle in her body.
Then she puts on that Irish vest: The shamrock, the green, white and orange...
In her mind’s eye she can see the crowd, she can hear them cheering. She knows what it means to them and what she means to them.
Oh, to win for them!
The thought adds a splash of ethanol to her potent high-octane mix of talent, hard work and patriotic pride. That’s what gives Ciara Mageean her edge.
That burning pride she feels when she’s running for Ireland is what made her first across the line at this year’s European Championships and it’ll inspire the 32-year-old in her quest for 1500m gold at the Paris Olympics which, for her, begins on Tuesday morning (9.05am) in the first of the heats.
She agrees with the suggestion that wearing the Ireland vest means a little extra to her because she comes from north of the border. Irishness is innate, but maybe we feel we have to earn the right to it in the six counties.
“Chatting to folk, I suppose everybody is different with their approach,” says the Portaferry native.
“My boyfriend is not quite as patriotic as me in many ways and maybe sometimes being from the North makes us hold on to that strong sense of identity even harder? It’s certainly an aspect of it.
“Whenever people threaten your identity I suppose you hold on to it and you’re even more proud of that Irish heritage.
“For me, I grew up playing camogie, I was an Irish dancer… Everything in my upbringing was a very Irish way and there was never any doubt in my mind that I was going to run for Ireland and have green, white and gold across my back. I’m so proud to do it.
“My granda Mageean died when I was 13 and he never got to see me run for our country, he didn’t know that his grand-daughter was going to race for Ireland. My daddy’s eyes well-up at the thought of his own father and how he would feel knowing that his grand-daughter is running for Ireland and that she’s winning medals for Ireland.
“My granda worked on the Irish lightships for years and he was a very proud Irishman, as are all my grandparents. My granny Kathleen was an amazing woman and the stalwart of our family. So it’s just that heritage and that pride that they gave me in my Irish culture and being Irish.
“But look, am I more passionately Irish than someone from Kildare, Cork or Waterford or Wexford? Probably not, we’re all the same, everybody has that pride in being who they are and everybody wears it in a different way and it doesn’t mean to say anybody’s is better or worse.”
GROWING up on the Ards Peninsula, camogie was her focus and her natural speed and stamina marked her out as a special talent. When Ciara got the sliothar on her stick, her team-mates knew to stand aside and let her run, and run…
“I used to play in the backs because it gave me plenty of scope to run,” she says.
“I was chatting to my coach at Portaferry recently (Elizabeth Collins who was also her teacher at Assumption Grammar School) and she said: ‘Oh yeah, we used to say that you could run for Ireland and look where you are now… running for Ireland!’
“Growing up I never thought about athletics. I think people have this idea that I was sitting watching Sonia O’Sullivan (whose daughter Sophie is her team-mate in the 1500m at these Games) race and that made me want to do it.
“No, I wanted to win an All-Ireland for Portaferry, I wanted an Allstar! Those were my childhood dreams. It wasn’t until I started doing athletics that those dreams transferred into athletics dreams and I became more aware of people in the athletics realm and then I wanted to run for Ireland and win an Olympic medal for Ireland.
“It wasn’t until me teenage years that it transferred into the athletics realm because as an youngster an Allstar was my dream.”
Even now, although Olympic Games glory is the driving focus of her entire existence, somewhere in the back of her head wearing that blue and gold club jersey and chasing a ball around the fields of Down remains an ambition for her.
“If my body allowed it, whenever my running is finished I’d love to go back and play camogie,” she says.
“I’d be well into my 30s by that stage – I’m 32 now – but if I could…
“I had so much pride in playing for Portaferry and I always wanted to go and play with my two sisters at senior level. I never got a chance because I left to go and concentrate on athletics and my little sister is a good bit younger than me but for me to go back and give back in any way would be a huge joy.
“I just have to convince my boyfriend that he wants to live in Portaferry!”
Her boyfriend Thomas Moran is a very talented athlete in his own right. They met at the athletics club while students at UCD and as the years have gone on Thomas has sacrificed his own athletics dreams to help Ciara achieve hers.
“Jerry (Kiernan) coached Thomas and he coached me so I joke that Jerry is the matchmaker,” says Mageean.
“But in as much as I can go for runs with Thomas and he can help me with training, it’s the sheer understanding of the commitment that I have to make and I’m so lucky to have a partner – same as anyone who is striving for success in any area of life whether it’s business, or the doctors out there…
“There often has to be a really understanding spouse or partner in the background and Thomas is that for me. He gives up so much of his own dreams to help me achieve mine.
“Like last summer for example, he gave up all of his own racing to help me ready for my World Championships. I don’t like to ask that of him but I know that he gives it willingly because he wants to see me achieve. I’m very lucky to have him, I really am.
“I should probably tell that to him… I never tell him this stuff. Maybe I’ll send him this article!”
IT’S her hard work with Thomas, her team-mates and the rest of the Ireland coaches that has turned the unassuming girl-next-door, who first showcased her talent with a silver medal at the World Junior Games in 2010, into a genuine medal contender.
She didn’t get close to the medals at her two previous Olympic attempts but they mean she has experience to go along with her form. She reached the semi-finals at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and a calf injury meant she was eliminated in the heats at the delayed Tokyo Games in 2021.
Since Tokyo her form line has followed a steady upward trajectory. There were silver medals at the 2022 Commonwealth Games and European Championships and then in Belgium last year she broke the four-minute mark and smashed Sonia O’Sullivan’s long-standing Irish record by two seconds.
A few days later she finished second in Zurich behind reigning Olympic champion Faith Kipyegon of Kenya who will be the woman to beat at these Games. Early last month Kipyegon broke her own 1500m world record by seven hundredths of a second, running 3:49.04.
“When you look at teams that are going from Championship to Championship making wee improvements here and there and you’re thinking: ‘How do they do it?’” explained Mageean.
“For me, in the world of athletics, it’s about consistency, it’s about staying injury-free and staying healthy. I am training and you thread that very fine tightrope in athletics where you want to get to the peak of physical fitness but, if you train too hard, you just tip over.
“That’s the hard thing with my sport – you can do too much, you can want it too much and train too hard so it’s finding that very fine line. But the other margins around it like recovering well, good sleep, good diet…
“I’m in with my sports psychologist, I’m in with my physio, I’m in with my sports therapist, I’ve got an amazing partner in Thomas, I’ve got good team-mates around me… All of these things come together to hopefully give you the perfect recipe for a fantastic summer.
“I can’t say that there’s one specific thing I’m going to do to try and shave more seconds off my PB but I’m going to go out and I’m going to replicate what I did last summer because it worked well.
“I’m also going into that knowing I can run 3.55 and (her personal best in Brussels last year) I didn’t know that I could do that. Now that has stepped up the level in my head and I believe that I am competitive on a global level and going into that World Championship I felt I should be there, now I know I can be and I will be.”
Those who know her best will tell you that when she’s home it’s like she never went away. She’ll knock about and visit friends and family, take the dogs out for walks and be herself but since the start of March she has thrown her heart and soul into preparation for Tuesday morning.
“Full focus, tunnel vision…” she says.
“When March began in my head I was like: ‘Right, this is it, knuckle down’ and I got my plan set out for the summer ahead, I got camps laid out, races laid out and I planned everything to make sure that there’s nothing left for me to stress about in the summer. It’s shoulder to the grindstone!
“It’s an excited nervousness, there’s a lot of pressure that comes with being in the Olympic Games but also I only have a handful of seasons left so there is pressure, but diamonds are made under pressure so I’m going to go and give it a lash!”
She will run for Ireland, she can win for Ireland…
