This article explores the remarkable journey of Irish athlete Sarah Healy, from her early days at Blackrock Athletic Club to her recent victory at the European indoor championship. It highlights her exceptional talent, unwavering dedication, and the supportive environment fostered by her club.
Gavin Cooney THE DARK NUANCE of luminous talent is expectation, and so the public reception to Sarah Healy ’s European gold in Apeldoorn last weekend was leavened with just a little bit of at last. That general impatience with Healy might seem berserk given she turned 24 last month, but her stunning juvenile career raised hopes she would go on to leave a mark first on international athletics and then on Irish life.
Hence the significance of Healy’s victory at the European indoor championship last week: it shows that she can conquer the pressure of needing to perform in a major championship. “She’s almost had an imposter syndrome in the past, that she isn’t good enough, that she is just little Sarah from Dun Laoghaire,” says her coach Trevor Painter. “There is a lot more to Sarah than that: she can achieve big things on the world stage.” \Healy’s rise coincided with that of her club, Blackrock. The club have a line to mark their longevity: Running since 1944, we’re not going anywhere fast. When Sarah Healy joined the club with her sister Julia in 2009, that line had a second meaning. It was a small operation of around 40 registered athletes, though club stalwart Tony Kelly was determined to build the club back up. For that he turned to conscription: parents who dropped their kids to the club were effectively given whistles and told to get involved. What developed was a matrix recognisable to any other successful sports club in the country: a group of smart and passionate people just so happened to come together, and through their commitment they grew the club exponentially. Today the club has around 950 members. A book published last year to mark the club’s 75th anniversary name-checks Dermot Jackson, Gerry Cheung, Joan Colgan, Paul Walshe, Gerry Flaherty, Peter Cosgrove, and Michael O’Brien as among the key architects. They invested their time and some of their own money in the renaissance, buying portable floodlights to allow for winter training on Tuesday and Thursday nights in Carysfort Park. (Wednesdays were spent anxiously recharging the batteries.) They eventually came to an agreement to use the facilities of a local school, and they also targeted top juvenile athletes from the surrounding schools. Soon Blackrock had a wider juvenile membership base but also a highly talented one, and so set up their own kind of high performance unit, called the development group in which the most committed kids could avail of additional training. Parents were committed to the young athletes, too, with some completing coaching badges to keep pace with them. Graduates of this development include European track cyclist champion Lara Gillespie and Leinster Rugby professional Tommy O’Brien, who attributes the height of his standing jump – which helped squeeze him into the Leinster academy following appraisals – to the time he spent leaping over hurdles at Blackrock. But the star pupil was Sarah Healy, which was made clear when she won All-Ireland cross-country gold at U11. That was in December 2011: Healy remained unbeaten at her age group at national cross-country for seven straight years. Club members remember her grit as much as her excellence, evoking an image of her 2017 victory in Mallusk, Antrim, in which she ran the second half of the race with only one shoe. Her class was easily discernible, too. One Blackrock club member remembers a conversation with former national cross-country senior champion Dave Taylor, who saw a photo on the club website showing a 12-year-old Healy in action during a race. “She has the perfect range,” said Taylor of Healy’s running style. \Blackrock encouraged a multi-sport ethos and in the early years Healy would land down to Sunday morning athletics training directly after hockey training, which she also mixed with Gaelic football for Cuala. Healy and her parents did not allow her shirk athletics, so when GAA and hockey commitments meant missing athletics sessions, Blackrock coach Eoghan Marnell recommended personal sessions for Healy to her mother, Eileen, who would subsequently text Marnell for a debrief. “There were never any skipped sessions because of bad weather, there was never any excuses,” says Marnell. “It might seem like a small thing but it really struck me how committed she was. Athletics is a brutal, unforgiving sport and so many extremely talented athletes just don’t commit and drift out of the sport. Sarah was different.” Marnell eventually started to take Healy for these solo sessions, usually alternating between Kilbogget and Meadowvale, while Healy’s parents walked the dog nearby to pass the time. Those times tumbled and so did the records and the medals. Sarah Healy with her U18 gold medals, pictured in 201
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