In terms of records, there never has been a year in Irish athletics to match 2023.
From January through to September, hardly a week passed without a new mark of some kind.
Two Ulster athletes were in the vanguard. Ciara Mageean set new marks over 800m, 1500m and one mile. Something not achieved even by the legendary Sonia O’Sullivan.
The Portaferry woman also had a good year competitively culminating in fourth place in the 1500m at the World Athletics Championships.
Nick Griggs made just about every U20 Irish record his sole possession. Not content with that he also claimed a complete set - gold, silver and bronze - of European Junior medals and for good measure also qualified for the World Athletics Championships where he performed creditably.
It would be impossible to conclude without mention of Rhasidat Adeleke who shared the national Athlete of the Year Award with Ciara Mageean after setting new 200m and 400m Irish record, winning the American collegiate title and finishing fourth in the world at the latter distance.
Here is how the year went month by month:
January
Newry AC’s Gary Crummy made the long journey to Carndonagh to win the NI & Ulster Intermediate Cross Country title with North Belfast Harriers picking up the team gold. Finn Valley’s Stacy Leonard was the women’s winner leading her club to the team title.
Although only days into a new year Irish records started to tumble. Eric Favors was first across the line breaking his own national indoor shot put mark with a superb 19.99m effort at the Larry Wieczorek Invitational in Iowa.
Rhasidat Adeleke took 16 hundredths off her indoor 200m mark to go top of the world rankings.
Competing in the Martin Luther King Invitational in Albuquerque on Saturday, the Dublin sprinter stopped the clock at a breath-taking 22.52 seconds.
February
The record breaking continued in February when Andrew Coscoran broke the 41-year-old 1500m Irish record at the World Indoor Tour Final in Birmingham. The Balbriggan man’s 3:33:49 clocking in third place took one-hundredth of a second off the outdoor time Ray Flynn achieved in Oslo’s Dream Mile in July 1982.
Rhasidat continued her record-breaking spree recording a new national 400m mark of 50.33 seconds in the USA.
At home, Israel Olatunde was the star of an action-packed National Indoor Championships with a new Irish record in the 60m.
The 20-year-old UCD athlete flew to a 6.57 second timing in the final, good enough to take four-hundredths of a second off Paul Hession’s previous Irish mark set in 2007.
Finn McNally and Grace Carson were crowned NI & Ulster Senior cross country championships at Dundonald.
North Belfast Harriers were men’s team champions for the first time since 2002 while Lurgan club St Peter’s, Lurgan picked up their first ever women’s team championship. Simply the best.
There was no other adequate description for the Armagh International Road Races after another breath-taking night of road-running on the Mall. England’s Henry McLuckie scored an impressive win in the men’s 5K setting a new record and Olympic 800m finalist Alex Bell won the women’s race.
Commonwealth Games silver medallist, Kate O’Connor shattered the Irish indoor pentathlon record in France.
March
There were no medals for the Irish at the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul. Mid Ulster athlete Grace Carson scored the greatest win of her career to date when she became the English Inter-Counties Cross Country champion for the first time.
The 23-year-old also won the British Cross Challenge Series overall to cap a fantastic winter season for the Lissan woman.
And it was goodbye from Jason Smyth as the 35-year-old Derry Track Club sprinter retired undefeated in Para athletics after a glittering career spanning three decades.
April
Jarlath McKenna, from Kildress near Cookstown, had a winning debut at the distance won the Anglo Celtic Plate 100K at Portadown Lakes.
Ciara Mageean kicked off what turned out to be her best ever season with an emphatic victory in the Bristol Track Club 5K on Good Friday.
It was another weekend and another two national records for Tallaght sprinter Rhasidat Adeleke.
On this occasion Adeleke was competing at the Tom Jones Memorial meeting in Florida and chopped huge amounts from her own national 200m and 400m records, becoming the first woman from this island to break 50 seconds for the latter distance with a 49.90 second mark.
Road races continued the path back to normality with 46,000 runners turning up to take part in the London Marathon held in cold and rainy conditions.
World Athletics road runner of the year Kelvin Kiptum won the men’s race in the second fastest time ever of 2:01:25. Sifan Hassan claimed the women’s title in 2:18:33.
North Belfast Harrier Conal McCambridge was the fastest Irishman with a 2:24:27 timing.
May
Not for the first time, the women grabbed the headlines at Eamonn Christie’s Belfast Irish Milers’ Club Meeting at the Mary Peters Track.
Ciara Mageean had to settle for third place in the 800m won by Leevale AC’s Louise Shanahan but showed she had wintered well with a 2:00.36 clocking.
Nick Griggs broke his own Irish Junior record finishing second behind Olympian Andrew Coscoran in 7:53.24.
Overseas athletes lifted the top prizes at the Mash Direct Belfast City Marathon with Morocco’s Mohamed Oumaarir taking the men’s title in 2:22:54, the slowest winning time for many years.
Around 4000 runners took part as Ethiopian Shewaye Wolde put her cards on the table early on and enjoyed a comfortable lead throughout the women’s race, winning in 2:37:20. Defending champion Gladys Ganiel turned in a strong second half of the race to fill the runner-up spot in 2:41:18.
Tyrone’s Roisin Flanagan opened her outdoor season in impressive style when she sliced almost half a second off her own Northern Ireland 5000m record in California.
Commonwealth Games bronze medallist Leon Reid made an emotional announcement of his decision to hang up his spikes at just 28 years.
Reid ended a barren medal-less three decades for Northern Ireland athletes at the Commonwealth Games when he finished third in the 200m on the Gold Coast in 2018.
The month ended with another weekend of record-breaking by Irish athletes.
Ciara Mageean kicked off the spree when she regained the Irish 800m record (1:59.27) and was followed swiftly by Rhasidat Adeleke in the 400m (49.54) in America before Nick Griggs destroyed the U20 5000m best with a 13:36.47 in Belgium.
June
Ciara Mageean registered her fastest ever season-opener over 1500m at the Diamond League in Florence but her efforts were overshadowed by a fantastic new world record (3:49.11) from Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon.
Mageean ran an astute race to nab fourth place in a time of 4:00.95, the third fastest of her career.
Rhasidat Adeleke took another huge step forward in her career when she became the first Irish woman in 17 years to win a National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) title in the USA.
Adeleke struck double gold breaking her own Irish 400m record in the process recording 49.20 seconds.
Earlier in the programme Adeleke had been part of the winning University of Texas 4 x 100m sprint relay squad.
Andrew Coscoran and Nick Griggs were the men pushing back the barriers in Nice with new Irish senior and U20 marks respectively over 1500m.
Coscoran clocked a brilliant 3:32.68 while Griggs finished strongly for ninth place in the same race in a time of 3:36.09. Griggs (18) now held the national U20 marks for 1500m, mile, 3000m and 5000m.
Ireland gained promotion from Division Three at the European Team Competition in Poland.
July
A wonderful one-two on the final day of the European U23 Championships in Finland capped a marvellous and extraordinary weekend for Irish athletics.
Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy showed a clean pair of heels to the continental opposition to claim gold and silver in the 1500m.
Elsewhere Andrew Coscoran broke his own Irish 1500m record again when finishing fourth in the Silesia fixture of the Diamond League.
The Balbriggan man stopped the clock at 3:30.42 behind Jakob Ingebrigtsen’s European record of 3:27.14. The Irish 5000m record was also broken when Brian Fay bettered Alistair Cragg’s long-standing mark with a 13:01.40 timing at the Night of Athletics meeting in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium.
Rhasidat Adeleke made her professional debut at the Gyulai Istvan Meeting in Hungary finishing second in the 200m to Jamaica’s Shericka Jackson in a World and Olympic qualifying time of 22.36 seconds. She followed that up with a fifth place at the Diamond League in Monaco behind Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek.
After a quiet few weeks Ciara Mageean positioned herself as a medal contender at the forthcoming World Athletics Championships in Hungary when she finished runner-up in what has been described as the “Greatest Women’s Mile Ever.”
Mageean recorded a time of four minutes 14.58 seconds to shatter Sonia O’Sullivan’s longstanding Irish record of 4:17.25 set in Oslo almost exactly 29 years earlier.
Ahead of her, Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon set a sensational new world record of 4:07.64.
August
Almost all of the leading Irish stars were absent from the National Senior Track & Field Championships where star of the show was Sarah Lavin who won both her specialist 100m hurdles as well as the 100 metres flat, both events held in poor conditions.
Athletics Ireland sent a team of 32 athletes to compete in the European U20 Championships in Jerusalem and came away with two medals. Elizabeth Ndudi won gold in the long jump while Nick Griggs took silver in the 3000m.
There were no medals for Ireland at the World Athletics Championships in Budapest but it was possibly the best all-round team effort at this level.
However, Ciara Mageean and Rhasidat Adeleke went agonisingly close to claiming podium places, both finishing fourth in the 1500m and 400m respectively.
There were also final places for Sarah Lavin (100m hurdles) and the mixed 4x400m relay team.
Kenya’s Daniel Mateiko was first man home in the Antrim Coast Half Marathon in a time of 58 minutes and 36 seconds, the fastest in the world at the end of August.
Ethiopia’s Mestawut Fikir took the women’s race in 66:44, improving her previous best for the distance by over six minutes. Fikir’s time, like Mateiko’s, was a UK and Irish all-comers’ record.
September
Ciara Mageean was breaking records again at the Brussels Diamond League.
Twelve months earlier she took down Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish 1500m record with a 3:56.61 mark but returned to the “super-fast” track in the renovated King Baudouin Stadium to run even quicker stopping the clock at an incredible 3:55.87.
Alas there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for Ciara Mageean at the Diamond League Final in Eugene Oregon.
With $30000 (£24,000) on offer to the winner, Mageean had to settle for 11th in the 1500m behind world champion and record holder Faith Kipyegon.
Tigst Assefa pulverised the world record at the Berlin Marathon storming to the finish at the Brandenburg Gate after a sensational 2:11:53 hours, over two minutes inside the old mark.
But it was end of the road for Mo Farah who had to settle for fourth place at the Great North Run in what was reputedly the last competitive race of his career.
October
Andrew Milligan and Robyn McKee were crowned Ulster & NI champions after impressive victories in the Bangor 10K but there were no medals for the Irish representatives at the inaugural World Road Running Championships in Latvia.
Kenya’s Kelvin Kiptum was in record-breaking form at the Chicago Marathon stopping the clock at a sensational two hours and 35 seconds. Kiptum became the first man to break 2:01 in a record-eligible race taking 34 seconds off the previous world record.
There were world age-group titles for NI runners Elisoa Crawford (F50) and Norman Mawhinney (M65).
Eighteen-year-old Ethiopian Yohanes Asmare and England’s Izzy Fry were the major category winners at the Belfast International Cross Country in Dundonald.
And Ethiopian athletes also claimed victories in both men’s and women’s races at the Dublin Marathon. Kemal Husen set a new men’s record of two hours six minutes and 52 seconds while Amente Sorome Negash was the first woman across the line in 2:26:22.
November
Cormac Dalton and Fiona Everard were crowned national cross country championships at a muddy Gowran in Co. Kilkenny. North Belfast Harriers were runners-up in the men’s team title losing on countback to Kilkenny City Harriers after both sides had tied on points.
December
The year ended on a high note with Tyrone teenager Nick Griggs taking the individual bronze medal and leading Ireland to a team victory in the men’s U20 race. Paralympian Jason Smyth was inducted into RTE’s Hall of Fame.
Mageean was named BBC Sport NI’s Sports Personality of the Year and rounded off the year in style by claiming a new world best time for the parkrun two days before Christmas at Belfast’s Victoria Park.
