Olympian Ryan passing on the flame to Sharlene

By Shane Brophy

The must be something in the water when it comes to the Olympics and the area around the Slieve Felim mountains.

To the west, sits the town of Newport where Sharlene Mawdsley is its current famous daughter, preparing to compete in Paris later this week.

Over two decades ago, Gary Ryan was the talk of the area when the Kilcommon native competed in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta in the 200-metres, and four years later in Sydney ran in the 4x100m Men’s relay team.

Ryan is a five-time national 100-metre & four-time 200m champion, with his biggest achievement winning a bronze medal with the Irish 4x400 relay team at the 2004 World Indoor Championships.

But it is as an Olympian that Ryan is generally remembered, at the time being the first Irish sprinter to qualify for a summer Games since 1972.

Olympic memories

“It’s lovely every four years to get these kind of reminders of a really nice time in my life,” Ryan said, speaking from France where he is on holiday but later in the week will be heading to Paris.

“Particularly the first one in Atlanta when it was all new and you go and have an opportunity to perform instead of front of ten people in Tullamore it is in front of thousands of people is what I always wanted to do. It is what I worked for a long time. You’d love to do it every day.”

Ryan, who is Sharlene Mawdsley’s coach, started out, like her protégé at Newport Athletic Club, before taking things to a higher level when joining Nenagh Olympic AC.

“So much of that is down to some people, like (the late) Sean Naughton and what we nurtured in terms of people,” Ryan says.

“The (indoor) facility in Nenagh was a gateway for a lot to try it and it was from his encouragement initially that gave me the opportunity after starting out at Newport Athletic Club.”

Ryan retired from competitive running in 2006 but always had an interest in coaching and undertook his first course at the age of seventeen.

“Early on, I thought my only route to being involved in high performance was being as a coach rather than an athlete,” Gary admitted.

“So, when I retired, I wanted to stay involved in high performance sport and this was one avenue to do that. I felt I had learned a lot and I wanted to give something back as well as testing myself.

It was all those things and learning so much from Sean (Naughton), Drew & Hayley (Harrison) and lots of other people.”

All-Ireland winning trainer

It wasn’t just in athletics that Gary Ryan honed his coaching talents, he also ventured into GAA where he was appointed Tipperary senior hurling trainer in 2013 by Eamonn O’Shea who was a colleague of his at NUI Galway during his time there as an elite sport development officer.

“The great thing about being with a team is that you have 35-40 guys at any one time, but they are still individuals who all have different needs, and you have to adapt pretty quickly, you have to learn very quickly, Ryan said.

“I took it all apart, everything I had learned before, and started again.

“Coaching at the highest level is ultimately about problem solving. We may not get you to the ideal but how can we get you better from today. So, it is how you improve everybody from where they are.”

Gary Ryan was with the Tipperary senior hurlers for six years and was part of the 2016 All-Ireland success under Michael Ryan.

Linking up with Sharlene

Gary had just finished up with Tipperary in late 2018 when then 20-year-old Mawdsley approached him to become her coach. A talented juvenile sprinter, she was beset by injuries at the time.

The Covid shutdown of 2020 might have disrupted the lives of people around the world but for many athletes, it proved to be a time where they are able to make a lot of gains, including Mawdsley.

“For a lot of athletes, it was a time where instead of having to focus on competition, you could focus on the basics and training,” Ryan revealed.

“We made her a lot stronger and improved her endurance. She was able to spend a lot longer training and it was really helpful, not at the time, but definitely long term as an athlete.”

Ryan credits Martina McCarthy, Mawdsley’s Strength & Conditioning coach, for much of that improvement as for Sharlene to get to the next level, she had to get physically stronger and more powerful, as the results have shown over the last two years in particular.

“Very much the way Sharlene operates is not being too worried about what the goals are but how she improves from week to week,” Ryan added, revealing that a recent S&C session was one of the best version of that session she has ever done.

“That is how you get better,” Ryan says.

“She can definitely get better but how much that is going to be depends on lots of things, but I feel she can get better.”

Winning European Relay Gold and Silver medals as well as World Relay bronze in recent months, however, it hasn’t all been plain sailing, particularly post 2021 when Mawdsley was overlooked for selection for the Olympics in Mixed Relay despite being part of the team that qualified for the competition.

“I would never say it was fuel,” Ryan admitted of how Mawdsley has improved since then.

“It was something she said about it in an interview recently that it was a trauma and while some people use it as a fuel, it can also be a waste that people have to carry.

“She had worked with Joanne Browne who is her psychologist, so there is a team there than is helping her get better. No matter who you are you should be working with a psychologist to help you get better.

“That was something of a difficulty for her that she had to overcome. It would have been tough for her to face into a year such as this, but she has done it.”

Relay specialist

Mawdsley’s ability as an anchor leg runner in the relays has been spectacular but it has also left her coach a little frustrated as to why her times in those runs aren’t the same when it comes to her individual races, despite reaching the individual 400m final in Rome last month.

“We’d love to fix that,” Ryan said.

“When you look at the data, her last 150m in the individual should be the same as her last 150m in the relay, but it is.

“There is something where you put the baton in her hand, and she is fighting for a team and knows there is a responsibility on her.

“She has learnt how to be tactically really good in those races and understands her strengths and what she had to do. She is very smart on the last leg and knows what to do which is an advantage to her whereas sometimes in an individual lane she isn’t able to judge the race as well.

“That is part of how she will get better where she can bring the baton form into her individual races, and if she does that, she will run some good times.”

Getting to an Olympic Games is always the dream for an athlete. Gary Ryan has lived it and Sharlene Mawdsley will, starting this Friday in the semi-finals of the Mixed Relay.

It is the start of a busy schedule where she also competes in the individual 400m and the women’s relay, but her coach feels she is well prepared for it. “We knew what might happen in Paris two years ago,” he said.

“She has basically done a dry run in Rome, so this won’t be unfamiliar territory for her, so it is, go run hard, recover, go run hard again.

“She does get fatigued, she isn’t super human but in some of the individual races her time has suffered, possibly in the European individual final, she was tired physically and mentally coming into it.

“She knows what to do and how to recover, that’s it. There is nothing to be afraid of, no mystery to it, just go out and give everything you can and see what happens. You can’t control anything else but your own performance.

“She has prepared well.”