9 minute read
Rhasidat Adeleke: Breaking Records could never get boring
Rhasidat Adeleke after winning gold in the final of the women's 200 metres at the European Athletics U20 Championships.
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By Alana Fearon
‘If Carlsberg did starts to the year' is what springs to mind while tallying up Rhasidat Adeleke’s record-breaking 2022 so far. What’s perhaps more impressive than the record-smashing spree itself is the fact that the Tallaght sprint sensation is still only 19.
The year is yet young but Adeleke – a Texas University sophomore student – has already set a new Irish 200m record at 22.59 seconds, which also qualified her for the World Championships in Oregon in July and the European Championships in Munich in August.
That beat her previous Irish senior 200m record of 22.85 seconds, set only weeks earlier indoors in February at the New Mexico Classic in Albuquerque. And that time knocked Phil Healy off the top spot with her time of 23.10 which had stood since 2020, In her curtain raising race of 2022, Adeleke ran the fastest 300m by an Irish woman, either indoors or outdoors, and her 36.87 seconds broke the 37-second barrier for the first time. That’s also the fastest indoor time ever run over 300 metres by a European teenager. Her and Carlow sprinter Molly Scott played ping pong with the Irish 60m record for several weeks until Rhasidat stole back the record in March, running 7.17 just days after Scott ran 7.19 to win the Irish indoor title. And the only way is up for the double European U20 100m/200m champion who Irish great Sonia O’Sullivan has tipped as “one to watch”. But with her name almost now synonymous with success, does record smashing ever get old? Rhasidat beamed: “It could never get boring. It’s just such a great thing to do, putting yourself in the history books, so I’ll always be so grateful.” With such dizzying success at such a young age comes pressure, pressure which could be too much for some to handle. But au contraire, it’s the pressure of the athletics world that helps Rhasidat excel.
“I guess it does put pressure on me, but I put pressure on myself. So I'm used to having pressure on me all the time. That’s just something I'm going to have to get used to regardless. I guess it helps me excel, because I know there's so much more at stake. For example, if I have a bad competition, l feel everyone is going to see my results. But this is what I chose to do and this comes with it so I've definitely accepted it. And there's a lot of good pressure, pressure from people expecting of you because they think you're good and you can perform. So pressure is ultimately a good thing.” Oozing such talent at such a young age, it would be easy for Rhasidat to think herself invincible. But despite the medals, the records and the seemingly endless headlines, her humility shines through in the most endearing way. And when talking of athletes she admires, it becomes apparent that Rhasidat has no idea just how world-class she is. “Growing up, I didn’t really have people I looked up to in the sport because I didn’t know much about athletics then. But I do really like Shaunae Miller-Uibo. She's just so dominant, she’s on a different level. And I’d just love to be able to have that type of dominance, that when you step onto the track and people are like ‘you're the one to watch’.”
Ironically, Rhasidat has become that ‘one to watch’, impressive for a sprinter who is considered a late bloomer in terms of her sport. “I joined Tallaght AC when I was about 12 and I was good but school level and club level are very different. So when I got to All Ireland’s, I wasn't really winning anything but eventually when I was about 14, I took a huge step and I was really good.” With the number of records she has smashed and set in her short career so far, no one could blame Rhasidat for struggling to single out her proudest moment to date. But that milestone rolls off her tongue, for obvious reasons.
“Probably when I was under 15 and I started my career indoors and I ran 24:4.6 when I was 14 indoors. And that literally set the domino effect for me, so from then on I just continued to progress. “That was kind of like the turning point in my career so that was huge for me. It was the first time I ever won an All-Ireland gold medal so everything just literally happened at once. I ran that time and I qualified for Europeans all in that same race, so a lot of great things came from that race. “I was just some random girl before then.” It’s hard to imagine Rhasidat ever just being some random girl, even more so after her achievements on the track over the last year. But what does she think of those achievements?
Her achievements
“It's been really good, I’m really grateful for it. This is my first Fall training and first Winter training under the belt and I was really proud of how it went and I was in a good place going into competition season and to do as well as I did indoors, I was just really happy - especially to make three national finals over here (America), which was huge for me. I didn't even qualify for Nationals last year. “Then to break the Irish record multiple times in three different events, that was absolutely phenomenal. So I had a great indoor season and I’ve kind of brought that on to outdoors with breaking the 200m record in my first race. So yes, I'm really happy with how it’s been going so far and I’m just hoping to excel even more. “I’ve qualified for both the World Championships and the European Championships but I don't have an exact set plan yet. I'm just looking forward to those two events.” Rhasidat credits her move to Texas University and her coach, former long and triple jumper Edrick Floréal, as the driving force behind a lot of her recent success. That and the fact that she’s training alongside some of the best athletes in the world, which helps to motivate her to always push harder. Training with, and competing against, the best in the world is as inspiring as it is intimidating, but Rhasidat isn’t focussing on any one rival. “I always think of my competition here in the US but I have competition everywhere. There isn't really one specific person, it's just pretty much everyone right now in the NCAA because there's so much talent here and so many new names popping up. Even I'm a new name popping up. So it's hard to actually pinpoint one rival so it’s pretty much everyone against me.” Instead, she’s focussing on her own goals and her ultimate dream.
The Olympics
“I definitely want to be an Olympic medallist, world medallist, all of the above. Really I just want to continue to progress and have a really good professional career. And I also want to inspire young girls to stay in sport. I definitely want to have an influence on the newer generations coming up so they can see ‘this is what you can achieve if you work hard’.” Speaking of the Olympics, Rhasidat controversially missed out on a spot at the Tokyo Games last year, a pill she found hard to swallow. “In the team house at the track. they put up on the wall this huge calendar of the people who made the 2020 Olympics and I was like ‘I was supposed to be there’, so it's just small things like that. I don't really think about it on the daily but when I see small things like that, I really think it could have been me. “But it's fine, I'm over it now.” And she blames Covid and her delayed Leaving Cert results for her missed opportunity to vie for Olympic glory. “Obviously we had Covid and I was the class of 2020 for my Leaving Cert and we received our results late. We used to get them on August 14 but we didn’t get them until the end of September. And I needed to get my results to be officially graduated from high school as Americans would say. So in that case, I wasn't able to come to the US to start school the year of 2020. So I had to come January 2021. But I feel like if I got the Fall training I needed and in that winter that I missed, I would have been able to make the Olympic team clear. “I got really close to the standard but it’s fine and I'm looking forward to 2024.” The hopes of a nation will be pinned on Rhasidat and the Irish contingent who might head to Paris in 2024 for an Olympics we hope will be free from the pandemic restrictions which delayed Tokyo by a year and left athletes performing in empty stadiums. But what sacrifices has Rhasidat made to get to where she is today?
Sacrifices
“I've made a lot, especially growing up. I always have to be so disciplined in what I do, who I surround myself with. I made sure not to get into the things other teenagers were doing because it would hinder my career.” For the vast majority of us who will never be professional athletes and will never experience the exhilaration of breaking records, of standing on a podium, of wearing that gold medal around our necks, it’s impossible to imagine what it’s like with the eyes of the world on you and just seconds to perform. Anxiety-inducing surely? “Oh yes, definitely. Because there's so many people watching and so many people expecting things of you. So it's always scary to not perform or think of not performing. Especially when there are a lot of people in your race and girls who are faster than me. But all that goes when the gun goes off. “I don’t really hear people but I can think ‘Oh God, I’m losing’ or ‘I'm winning’. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be thinking those things, but I do. “So you really have to clear your mind when you're in the blocks, just forget about everything and just run. “The ideal headspace is going out there and getting it and being focused. Being like ‘I got this’. You put yourself on a pedestal and think ‘I can do this’. It’s about hyping yourself up.”
Thoughts on the future
While she may only be 19 and very much at the beginning of her career, Rhasidat has given some thought to life after sprinting. “I do definitely consider life outside athletics because anything can happen; it’s not guaranteed. Injuries are just so random and so you have to expect the unexpected.” But for now, Rhasidat is living her dream and grateful for where her talent has brought her. “Life is good and I really can't complain about anything. I'm healthy, I'm doing well and I'm just really grateful for that because sometimes it's easy to be disappointed or compare yourself to others. But you just have to remember how many people would love to be in your shoes right now.”
