Advertisement League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Behind the Lines Sportswriters discuss their careers and the work that inspires them. Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Sarah Healy with her European indoors gold medal.Morgan Treacy/INPHO Hard work, composure, fun: How Sarah Healy is fulfilling her promise in 'brutal, unforgiving sport' We profile Sarah Healy ahead of next week’s world indoor championship. 7.31am, 16 Mar 2025 Share options 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.” Advertisement 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 2018.Bryan Keane / INPHO Bryan Keane / INPHO / INPHO Healy won gold at the 2017 European youth Olympics at the 1500m, and then won the 1500m and 3000m gold medals at the 2018 European U18 championships – Ireland’s first gold medals at the event. It was also in 2018 that Healy won her first senior national title, claiming the national 3000m indoor title at Abbotstown at the age of only 17. The following year, she added a silver medal in the 3000m at European U20 level, which she fit around her Leaving Cert. But the final step to senior international level proved the most difficult. Or at least that’s the outward impression. “The difference when you start racing internationally is that you are up against all the other prodigies in the world; everyone on that starting line has likely had a glittering junior career,” says Marnell. “They are all winners. The Grand Prix circuit can be very intimidating. There is no way to ease into it – in team sports you can give a young lad a run out for the last 10 minutes if your team is comfortably ahead. Athletics is different, you can’t just join a race half-way through. Sarah did a great job of making the step up. Her performances may not have been consistent for a few years, but she always kept chipping away at her PBs.” The inconsistency was glaring at major championships. She went to the Tokyo Olympics – probably qualifying ahead of schedule – but finished 11th in her heat of the 1500m and lamented to RTÉ post-race that her performance wasn’t good enough. “It’s definitely disappointing,” Healy told David Gillick, her voice quivering. “I let the occasion get the better of me. I don’t normally get too nervous, but I think I got carried away with getting nervous. I just checked out after 400m, I just couldn’t compete. I expected better of myself . . . this is definitely my poorest race of the season and I need to learn to perform when it matters most.” Those lessons didn’t come quickly. In May of the following year, Healy robbed one of Sonia O’Sullivan’s last-remaining underage records, taking three seconds off her U23 1500m time. That qualified her for the European and World championships later in 2022 . . . where she failed to make it out of either heat. Healy after missing out on a semi-final spot at the Paris Olympics.James Crombie / INPHO James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO While her record-breaking time in May was 4:02.86, she ran 4:11.31 at the worlds in Oregon and then 4:10.75 at the Europeans in Munich, finishing among the bottom three each time. “I just decided to check out . . . again,” Healy told journalist Cathal Dennehy after Munich, admitting she was struggling mentally in competition. “Sarah is extremely intelligent, and like most smart people if she has a problem, she would try to analyse it and solve it,” says Marnell. “In sport sometimes you are better off not over-analysing things and instead just controling the controllables: focus on the process, and not the outcome.” The outcomes were about the change the process. Healy was coming around to the realisation she needed a change of training scene, and to join a group outside of Ireland. Marnell recommended UK-based Trevor Painter and his wife Jenny Meadows, off the back of an encounter they had at a Diamond League meet in Birmingham earlier that year. With Healy going through her warm-up, Marnell spotted Painter and sidled over to say hello, realising as he did so that Painter was giving some final instructions to Keely Hodgkinson, whom he coaches. “I turned to walk away but I heard the instructions, ‘Go out there and have fun.’” remembers Marnell. “It seems simple, but it’s so important and that stuck with me.” Healy joined Painter for a training group later that year, and moved full-time to Manchester to work under him the following year, once she had completed her law degree at UCD. “We could see she had a huge talent, and there were a few other things we had to get right to help her,” says Painter. Mechanically, Painter says, Healy was perfect. (Taylor’s opinion a decade earlier was on the money.) He didn’t have to work with Healy on running technique, and so their main area of focus was strength work, as Healy had done little gym work. They worked to improve her balance – which stood to her amid the chaos of her European final last weekend. Healy, meanwhile, worked with sports psychologists to improve the mental element of performance. Painter says she absorbed the qualities of her high-calibre training partners, which include the prodigious Hodgkinson, who won 800m silver as a teenager at the Tokyo Olympics before winning gold in Paris, and Georgia Hunter Bell, the bronze medalist at the 1500m in Paris. “You become an amalgamate of the other people around you,” says Painter. “Keely and Georgia: In training, they’ll be in a world of pain and in a mess, but they’ll peel themselves off the floor and go and do another rep because it’s on the plan.” Healy adjusted to the standard and Painter says she can more than hold her own. Going into the Paris Olympics, he says Healy was holding her own with Hunter Bell on the clock, but their mindsets were still apart. “Sarah was doing pretty similar standard sessions to Georgia,” says Painter. “Georgia is like, ‘Oh my God, I have just done a really speedy session, I am buzzing,’ whereas Sarah would look at it like, ‘Oh my God, that was really hard, I wanted to go faster.’ “It’s just how you frame your mind, as to what you have just done. Georgia went on to win a medal, and Sarah could easily have been in that final and winning a medal. Georgia says it a lot in interviews: Sarah kicks her ass in training most the time. She is an absolute warrior in training but when it comes to races, there was something missing that wasn’t let her achieve it.” Healy, though, again didn’t even make the semi-finals, finishing fourth in a repechage. She spoke afterwards with mild bafflement as to why she didn’t perform. “I don’t really feel like myself the last few days, something is a bit off and I’m not sure what. I don’t know if it’s physical or mental,” she said, saying later she hoped the problem was physical. Painter says Healy simply needed to develop composure, which is rarely seen among athletes in their early 20s. “When you get older in life you don’t tend to worry as much,” he says. “The majority of people don’t get that composure until their mid-20s. It comes from the frontal lobe which controls your emotions. For some people, it takes time to gather it and get it together, thankfully Sarah is starting to get that.” Painter’s attitude is soaking through. After her victory in Apeldoorn, Healy reflected on her mindset changes with the Irish Examiner. Stop us when you realise where you’ve heard this line before. “I tried to have a bit more fun with it this season,” she said, “realise there’s no pressure on me.” Treading lightly: Healy crosses the line in Apeldoorn.Morgan Treacy / INPHO Morgan Treacy / INPHO / INPHO Healy ran without pressure in Apeldoorn, running breezily through a chaotic race disrupted by Maureen Koster’s brutal fall. Her next target are the world indoor championships in Nanjing next week, before renewing focus on the 1500m for the outdoor season. “I’ll joke with Sarah and tell her I’m just a fan now,” says Marnell. “So like any other Sarah Healy fan I got a little choked up when her hands went up in the air as she crossed the line to win the gold. But I’m also thrilled for her family. I’m sure they must have wondered what they were getting into when they were watching those sessions back in Kilbogget years ago, and they have also been on the front lines for some tough times in Sarah’s career, but hopefully that makes this gold medal all the sweeter.” Gavin Cooney Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “Hard work, composure, fun: How Sarah Healy is fulfilling her promise in 'brutal, unforgiving sport'”. Recipient's Email Feedback on “Hard work, composure, fun: How Sarah Healy is fulfilling her promise in 'brutal, unforgiving sport'”. Your Feedback Your Email (optional) Report a Comment Please select the reason for reporting this comment. Please give full details of the problem with the comment... This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy before taking part. 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