The struggle and spirit of Irish sprinters: ‘The lads are living off absolute scraps'

Irish Examiner

23-05-2025

For Sophie Becker, the choice was straightforward. It was up to Gerard O'Donnell as her coach to spell it out: Go to Bali or invest in your sporting future. Spikes over sunsets.
The Leitrim native knows what it is like to have next to nothing. He spent his first few years training in Dublin on social welfare and flat broke. His Carrick-on-Shannon childhood initially consisted of running on the road. Stick that athletics club into Google Maps and nothing appears. They have no home.
Once during the Celtic Tiger, a credit card company came to town and developed a park. Their winding, gravel-filled path was soon consistently occupied by dog-walkers and O'Donnell practicing hurdles. The only time he put his foot into spikes and onto a track was for the Connacht or All-Ireland Championships. His first time in Santry was earth-shattering. An indoor area to warm up? What a wonder.
He knows hardship. He knows how to get through it too.
'The athlete I work with now can achieve much greater things than I did and have already,' he says, revelling in the Dublin sunshine. What is a simple pleasure for most is an occupational gift for them.
'I don't see why they would do anything different. You have more talent, more opportunity, why put roadblocks in your own way if you can afford not to do it? I remember when Sophie first got her relay funding a few years ago. She was working full-time in Pfizer at the time and I was encouraging her to go to four days a week if it was an option.
'Then she got her funding and the next day we had a conversation. 'You know what that money is? That means you can work one day less a week, rather than going to Bali this summer.' She was like, 'I was literally looking up flights to Bali.'
'I just kept saying, 'That is a fifth of your wage or more. You can take every Friday off work now.' The next week she did exactly that. She made that decision and it paid off right away. Six months later, she went down to three days a week and now she is a full-time athlete because she can now afford to do it and she saw the benefit.
'Every Friday she had services provided in Sport Ireland; Friday she is with her physio, nutritionist, sports psychologist. Now that is a very good use of your day rather than sitting in the office for another eight hours.'
O'Donnell is a high performance athletics coach, specialising in sprints and hurdles. He has recently returned from the World Relays in China where he was the head coach of the 4x400m relay teams.
A seven-time national 100m hurdle champion, he can still remember looking at renowned coaches during meets and wondering if they missed competing. Now he realises one is tied to the other.
Take a warm-up. As an athlete, he became incredibly rigid and diligent. The warm-up was his bible. He learned the hard way. Each injury forced him to reconsider every component of his plan. He ran it meticulously. This was one of the reasons Jeremy Lyons asked him to move from athlete to coach in the Dublin Sprint group, which now includes Olympians Sophie Becker, Cillín Greene and Jack Raftery.
They are part of a recent sprint boom. At the bedrock is a dramatic improvement in facilities and funding. Tracks are popping up all over the country. Beyond that, indoor facilities in Athlone and Nenagh have been a godsend. Think about it this way: What does a kid want to do? Run fast. They don't need endless reps and endurance. Go out. Go as hard as they can in a safe, dry hub. O'Donnell didn't have such luxuries. Thankfully.
'It is frustrating in a way, but as a coach I'm more creative because of what we dealt with. What I mean is if we rock up to a track with no shelter, no toilets, no anything, it is pissing rain, everyone is wondering how do we get a warm-up done and I'm used to it.
'I know how you can get strong and fast with good basics. So hop on a track and you can fly. That is easy. How do we do the work without the track? During lockdown I was like, this is fine.
'I was probably under-trained throughout my teenage years. I wasn't hitting max velocity in training because you couldn't on the road in trainers. You are not on the track in spikes with a tail wind.
'But I know lads that were a year younger than me, you go to a competition and they beat you, you think they are just super talented. In one case, years later I was chatting to him and he was telling me his dad had them basically on a training camp all year long. He was reading Ben Johnson's training logs.
'He had his 13-year-olds doing plyos down the central reservation of a motorway while they were on holidays in France. I was running twice a week and a bit of high jumps. It got me thinking, maybe talent wasn't the factor here. But he doesn't make it past 20 in the sport and I didn't win my first national senior title until I'm 26. Which would I trade for? I'd definitely take what I got out of it.'
They have it good. In Guangzhou, the women's 4x400m relay team and the mixed team secured qualification for the World Championships. The women's foursome featured three of the team that finished fourth in the Paris Olympics last summer. Becker opens her individual season in Brussels this weekend. It could be better.
There is an urgent need for more indoor tracks. The funding increase is yet to substantially impact coaches. Sport Ireland's recent funding allocation continued the trajectory of investing significantly in high-performance sport. It can also function as a reward for performance, rather than rewarding future success. Take Cillín Greene and Jack Raftery. Both Olympians. Both in the top 10 for the all-time 400ms.
'The lads are living off absolute scraps. They got more funding this year because the relays did well last year, but Jack is in college and Cillín is working part-time because they have no other option.'
Part of the problem is the lack of different revenue streams. Others can skip around the country and pocket some prize money from a local 5km. That option doesn't exist for sprinters.
'The stress of money kills athletes. They are constantly scraping and scrimping. I need to book that flight for 6am, because it is €200 and the other one is €400. It completely impacts my performance but I can't afford to book the comfortable one. I know one lad, if you gave him 100k this year, he'd break the national record. The money he is on now means he will run this time.
'It is going up and getting better, because lads are running better. Which is funny, it arrives after you really need it. Suffer through and then it starts to come.' Imagine the position this puts coaches in. They know their athletes have little money and the impact it has on their performance. They have to survive as well.
There is a Sport Ireland stipend for coaching that is divvied out by Athletics Ireland. Last year, Dublin Sprint received €10,000. At the time, they had three coaches. It might cover the cost of one camp abroad. This season, they returned to training in October and funding is yet to materialise.
Gerard O Donnell of Carrick-on-Shannon AC, Leitrim, Matthew Behan of Crusaders AC, Dublin, and David Dagg of Dundrum South Dublin AC, Dublin, on the podium after the mens 110m hurdle final at the Irish Life Health National Senior Track and Field Championships 2022 at Morton Stadium. Pic: Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
One possible solution is to add a separate fund to athlete funding dedicated solely to coaching.
Of course, there is more to this rich spell than money. Trace the roots of this hot streak. A spark. Suitable soil to ignite it. A trailblazer. For his group, it was Cork's Phil Healy. In the early days, that was their mantra. Be like Phil.
'Phil was the benchmark for so many years. 'Phil is able to do it.' She is super talented and a national record holder but it was always, 'Look what she is doing.' Phil was the hero for our whole group. She is gritting it out with Shane McCormack down in Cork or Waterford, not off in Florida or Tenerife.
'She is amazing. Competing at international level since 2014, from 60m up to 400m. She just gets out and gets it done. Why can't we have that attitude? Sophie went down and did sessions with Phil, got her ass handed to her. It was literally, someday I can get close to Phil.'
Dublin Sprint continues to go from strength to strength. They are not affiliated to any club. It has all the benefits of team sport, training partners to share encouragement and the workload, without any obligations to take in more members. This team is carefully constructed, piece by piece, to suit themselves. Some of them are Olympians. Some have a good attitude and a car to take others to training. Everyone has to make it work. That's the culture. In Irish athletics, optimism is not so much a feeling as an act of faith.
'Part of it is you don't want to show people the skeletons in the closet. There is enough griping and negativity around the place. So it can seem like, fake it until you make it. Let everyone think it's great and maybe it becomes great. Sponsors, backers, the general public come on board. But also, we need our athletes to think a certain way too.
'They need to think, 'this is the best setup for me right now. If I was in Florida or Spain, the weather is better, but I wouldn't have my family close by. I wouldn't have access to same quality coach and physios. Would I be happy?' They need to be in the mindset that this is the best for me. I have given myself the best chance to succeed. It's about putting yourself in the situation that will get the best out of you.
'It's not 'why am I in Dublin instead of America where they have this and that?' It is 'why would I want to be anywhere else?' If you are not happy with the setup you have created, you are going nowhere.'