Mawdsley and Ireland are WorldClass despite Olympic heart-break
By Shane Brophy
In the Olympic Games, fourth place is the cruellest place of all to finish and that is how it was for the Ireland’s Women’s 4x400m Relay team of Sophie Becker, Rhasidat Adeleke, Phil Healy and Sharlene Mawdsley in the final in Paris on Saturday night.
The magnificent foursome had already made history when they stepped on the track by being the first ever Irish female relay team to contest an Olympic final, before confirming their status as truly world class with their sensational performance.
Knocking just shy of three seconds off their national record set in June when they won silver at the European Championships, the Irish quartet all ran the race of their lives and were agonisingly just 0.18 behind the bronze medallists Great Britain on the line.
Sophie Becker led the team off and the Wexford woman once again showed her class splitting exactly what she did in the heat (50.90 seconds) to set the team up perfectly.
Rhasidat Adeleke, just over 24 hours after placing fourth in the individual 400m, unleashed her killer speed down the back straight of her leg when she had the baton in hand, moving the team up to second and splitting sub 49-seconds.
A phenomenal effort from Bandon flyer Phil Healy kept the team in contention, before Sharlene Mawdsley anchored the team brilliantly on the final leg.
The Newport star ran her fastest ever relay split (49.14 seconds) but was just run out of the medals by Dutch sensation Femke Bol, and Amber Anning of Great Britain who was fifth in the individual 400m final.
The race was won by the USA in a new continental record of 3:15.27, with individual gold medallist Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone running a phenomenal 47:71 second leg. The Netherlands took sliver in a new national record of 3:19.50, just 0.22 seconds ahead of Great Britain in bronze, who also clocked a national record to be barely a metre ahead of Ireland at the finish, with a new national record of 3.19.90s.
Speaking afterwards, an emotional Mawdsley, who turned 26 on Saturday, fought back tears saying: “I honestly don’t have much words, it hurts so much. If we’d come sixth it probably would have been less hard. We wanted that medal so bad.
“I feel like I fell short because you ran the last leg. I know there’s been so many other days where I’ve been praised for my last leg but today it didn’t go my way.
“I’m sure I ran fast but it just wasn’t enough and it’s heart-breaking, but if you had told us last year, we would have come fourth in the Olympics we wouldn’t have believed anyone.”
To put their performance in context, this was the first time ever that a team has broken 3:20s and not won a medal in the event. Their time of 3:19.90 would have been enough for silver in every Olympic final apart from 1988.
As successful as this Olympic Games were for Ireland with a record haul of seven medals, four gold and three bronze, there were also three near misses with fourth place finishes for the Women’s 4x400m (Relay), Rhasidat Adeleke in the 400m and Robert Dickson/Sean Waddilove in Sailing.
They join an illustrious group of Irish fourth placed finishers in Olympic Games, including Eamon Coghlan in 1976 (1500m) & 1980 (5000m), Sonia O’Sullivan (3000m) in 1992, and Annalise Murphy in sailing in 2012.