Learning to have fun again on the big stage was the key to Sarah Healy joining Ireland's gold medal club. Healy delivered on the promise of her stellar underage career by striking gold in Sunday's European indoors 3000m final. She out-sprinted British race favourite Melissa Courtney-Bryant to claim her first senior medal - and Ireland's first victory in the championships since 2007. Her triumph took centre stage during a magical 35 minutes in Apeldoorn as Mark English won 800m bronze and Kate O'Connor the Pentathlon bronze. The congratulatory messages that stood out afterwards came from Irish team colleagues and she was chuffed that Conor Niland, whose memoir 'The Racquet' won the William Hill Sports Book Of the Year in November, started following her on Instagram. "I loved his book, my dad gave it to me over Christmas, it was just so interesting and really good," said Healy. "When he followed me on Instagram I thought that was cool." Currently at a training camp in Dubai, she will compete in the World indoors final in the Chinese city Nanjing on Saturday week, fuelled by podium recognition at last after a hurtful series of disappointments in major championships. It's a sign of the leap forwards that she has made since moving from her Dublin home to her new full-time training group in Manchester. "It has to be a massive turning point, really," Healy said. "That was a really hard decision to make and quite a big thing to do. “It also represented me becoming a full time athlete and really just going all in. That was so challenging. I took confidence from being able to get through that and make a home over there. Having a team and training group has physically pushed me on so much." The other major turning point was last year's Olympics. In Paris, Healy failed in two attempts to qualify for the 1500m semi-finals in Paris. At 24, a second Games had passed her by. "That was a really hard moment," she admitted. "Coming back to training was also a little bit difficult. But I managed to turn that experience into a big lesson - and this indoor season really changed the way I was approaching things, based off that." Healy always enjoyed training but translating that to the competitive arena was an issue. Not that she was taking it too seriously, but the association between big races and big disappointments was affecting her. She explained: "When you’re bringing that much emotion into it, it can make it more scary, because you know there’s this possibility that you’re going to be so devastated. I’ve just been reminding myself that it’s not such a be all, end all thing - that I’m going to be OK no matter what. "That just makes it less nerve-wracking, less pressurising. It just doesn’t feel as daunting. It’s just trying to realise how lucky I am to get to travel around and race as a job. So, just enjoying the competing aspect a bit more. Obviously it brings out better performances.” And Healy added: "It's a bit of a relief just to finally have a really good performance at a championship, to break a bit of a pattern. "Winning a medal is something I've wanted to do and now obviously I just want to win more. I would've been happy with a medal of any colour, that would have been a big step forward. But winning it was even more special. "Realistically the pressure comes from me. But because it happened so many times, it becomes a bit of a pattern. I definitely felt a bit of pressure to perform because I knew people thought I was capable of a lot more. "But at the end of the day no one really cares too much what I do, apart from myself. Worrying about what other people think is definitely not helpful.” Get the latest sports headlines straight to your inbox by signing up for free email alerts.