Rhasidat Adeleke completed a magic half hour for Irish athletics by picking up a European silver medal in Birmingham last night.
The Tallaght athlete was trailing after the opening half of the race as Britain’s Amy Hunt showed the speed which helped her to the 100m title earlier in the week.
Adeleke stormed home in the final 50 metres — to steal the silver from Britain’s other local favourite, Dina-Asher Smith.
And if the race had been another ten metres longer, there’s little doubt Adeleke would have overtaken Hunt given her expertise over 400m. However, the silver medal and a national record in 22.28 will be more than enough for the Dubliner right now.
Hunt won in 22.19 while Asher-Smith ran 22.29 in third place for the bronze medal in front of an incredible Irish support, which dwarfed even the home crowd. Adeleke came into last night’s final on the back of an inspirational semi-final run which firmly announced a return to form.
It seems so long ago since she burst onto the scene, winning silver in the 400m and setting a new national record of 49.07 at the last 2024 European Championships in Rome, an event the Tallaght athlete didn’t qualify for here.
Injuries have been a frustrating occurrence in recent times, derailing what had been a meteoric rise at this level. She withdrew from the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo after a frustrating year of injury setbacks, and this year hasn’t fared much better. Adeleke pulled out of the Monaco Diamond League meeting last month physically; she seemed to be struggling.
What transpired at the Paris Games in 2024 clearly took an emotional toll as well. Adeleke, who was 21 at the time, had been widely tipped to secure an Olympic medal, but she finished fourth in the women’s 400m final, with Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek, beating her to third place, the same athlete who pipped her to gold in the European final earlier that year.
Adeleke was seeking to become the first Irish athlete to win a track and field medal at the Olympics since Rob Heffernan did so retrospectively at London 2012, but she was overtaken on the final bend by Kaczmarek.
LA 2028 and unfinished business at the Olympics is her north star, and this week could well be seen as the true beginning of that path.
