Sarah Lavin shares a birthday — May 28 — with Derval O’Rourke, the queen of Irish hurdling.
y the time O’Rourke retired at the age of 33 in 2014, the then 20-year-old Lavin had already won a silver medal in the 100 metre hurdles at the European junior championships. She looked destined to be Ireland’s next world class hurdler. Then fate intervened.
With a wry smile she recalls watching the heats of the 100m hurdles at the Rio Olympics while exercising on a leg extension machine in the University of Limerick gym. Her dream of competing at the Games had been shattered when she was diagnosed with a stress fracture in her foot which necessitated wearing a boot for 16 weeks.
Roll on four years and she was on target for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics when disaster struck again. She sustained a serious ankle injury in a freak accident after a race in Holland.
She caught a lucky break, however, when the Olympics were postponed for 12 months. Little wonder she refuses to contemplate the possibility that the rescheduled Games might not go ahead.
“I am fully convinced the Games will go ahead,” she says.
A self-employed physiotherapist in her native Limerick, she hasn’t worked since January as she focuses on qualifying for Tokyo.
Even though she is a full-time athlete she must support herself as she is not funded by Sport Ireland.
“I’m not going to sugar-coat it. Being completely honest it is very difficult financially to be involved in an Olympic sport, particularly now.
“I don’t want to sound like a cribber or a moaner because that is not who I am. But these are the facts. It costs a lot of money to be a high-performance athlete.
“Look at any sport, whether it is the Premier League or even Gaelic football or hurling, the teams with the money do really well. Unfortunately, in every aspect of life, money talks.
“But the people in my corner are exceptionally good people — that’s how I can do it. Of course, it would be easier if there was money.”
On the first night Sarah went to Emerald Athletic club, she met Noelle Morrissey who had recently moved to the area. Noelle had kids in the club and had been roped in to help with the session. Morrissey has coached Lavin ever since.
Lavin was lightning fast from day one. “I was the kid that went to the All-Irelands and won the under 9s 60m and 200m and thought I was ready for the Olympics. I just loved it. It was the most amazing thing ever.”
Even though she didn’t switch to hurdles until her mid-teens, she made an immediate impact.
In 2013 she was ranked fourth junior in the world; had a European junior silver medal in her trophy cabinet and had posted a 13.3 personal best. “I still had three years to run the Olympic A standard and it seemed quite attainable. But no pathway is straight forward.
“The only thing I regret is not being more patient. I guess when Derval (O’Rourke) retired I was 20 and people looked to me to fill her boots. But they were massive boots to fill.
“Hindsight is wonderful and at 26 you are far more mature. Derval won a medal when she was 33. I am still quite young and there are a lot of great running years left in me yet.”
A combination of over-training and under-eating resulted in her developing a condition called relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S) which was the underlying reason for the stress fracture.
At the time she was a final year physiotherapy student in UCD and had listened to lectures about RED-S. But she didn’t recognise she was in danger herself, although she went ten months without having a period.
“There was never a point when my family or friends were worried significantly about my health. But as an athlete you have to take on a certain amount of fuel — you are not a typical person. I think it is something so subtle that it misses the point if it is dramatised.”
The drama in her case came when she had to have a pregnancy test due to her missed periods, before getting a CAT scan which confirmed she had the stress fracture.
“Of course it is dramatic, and it catches a headline. But I think it misses the point that this can happen to anyone. You can be a very smart person and think you are very strong willed and all the rest.
“This can be a subtle thing which builds over many years and suddenly you find yourself down a rabbit hole.”
Last year’s injury was just a freak accident which happened while she was slowing down on the banked area of the track immediately after a race. But the damage was substantial — a complete tear of the deltoid, anterior and posterior talofibular ligaments in her ankle.
Initially she was advised that surgery would probably be required. But a chance encounter in a coffee shop in Limerick with renowned physical therapist Gerard Hartmann convinced her otherwise.
Surviving two career threatening injuries has shaped her as a person. “You learn so much about yourself and mentally you acquire so much strength during those times. Those two moments have really defined me as a person and not just as an athlete.”
A semi-finalist in the 60m hurdles in last month’s European Indoor Championship in Poland where she set a new personal best of 8.06 seconds, she is now focused on securing a slot in Tokyo. There are two pathways to Tokyo — run the A qualification standard of 12.84 or be ranked in the top 40 in the world.
The ranking list is based on your five best performances — but only two indoor races can be used. “It is quite a weird system. My two fastest races from the European Indoor Championships are not included because they weren’t in a final, whereas coming third in the World Indoor Tour final is included because it was a higher ranked race.”
Lavin is currently ranked 42nd so everything depends on how she performs when she begins her outdoor campaign late next month. “I have a pretty intense six weeks of racing up until the qualification closes on June 29. It’s all about being smart when picking races.”
The cancellation of both the Cork City Sports and the Morton Mile meetings due to Covid-19 restrictions means that Lavin will have to travel abroad to race.
Though her priority is to secure a spot in the Olympics, she is not interested in merely making up the numbers in Tokyo. “I definitely want to be in the semi-final, and I need a 12.8 to make the final.”
Lavin’s ambition is to perform to her best on the days that matter — a trait which was the hallmark of Derval O’Rourke’s career.
“It is what you work for every day. I want to get out there and be competitive and be better than I’ve ever been.”
Sarah Lavin was speaking at the launch of the Olympic Federation of Ireland and FBD Insurance ‘Dare to Believe’ campaign
