Rhasidat Adeleke started her outdoor season with a bang by playing a starring role at the Texas Relays in Austin over the past few days, helping the University of Texas to victory in four different events, setting a remarkable three collegiate records.
he 20-year-old Dubliner saved her best for last, clocking a blazing 49.47-second split to anchor her team to victory in the 4x400m in 3:23.27, with Adeleke holding off the charge of Britton Wilson of Arkansas, who last month had beaten her to gold at the NCAA Indoor Championships, where Wilson clocked an American indoor record of 49.48.
Adeleke raced five times across Friday and Saturday, beginning with the sprint medley, where her 200m leg helped Texas to victory in 3:36.10. She was back in action in the 4x200m, joining teammates Julien Alfred, Lanae-Tava Thomas and Kevona Davis to clock a collegiate record of 1:28.78.
Then came the 4x100m, where she joined Alfred, Davis and Ezinne Abba to clock another collegiate record of 42.00.
By the time Adeleke got the baton in the 4x400m, which closed the meeting on Saturday evening, Texas had firm control of the race, though with Wilson just six or seven metres back, it didn’t look like an entirely safe lead.
In front of several thousand vocal fans, Adeleke ripped through the first 200m and didn’t concede any ground to Wilson, and then opened up distance on the NCAA champion nearing the line.
Her split of 49.47 bettered the 49.49 she ran to help Ireland into the European women’s 4x400m final last August and the 49.80 she split to help the mixed relay into the world final in Oregon last July.
“I was just making sure I was protecting our house, our home track, and to not give the lead to anybody else,” she said. “Our goal was to win every single relay, break collegiate records, and we did exactly that, so I’m really proud of me and my team.
"We’ve been working so hard and I’m happy we’ve been able to display all the hard work we’ve done.”
Adeleke has enjoyed a stunning start to the year, smashing Irish records over 200m and 400m and becoming the first Irish athlete to win a medal in an NCAA sprint event when taking 400m silver behind Wilson at the indoor championships last month.
She is continuing her build-up to the NCAA Outdoor Championships, which will be held at the same stadium in Texas from June 7-10, after which her attention will turn to the European U23 Championships in July and the World Championships in August.
Elsewhere, Peter Lynch had a breakthrough performance at the Stanford Invitational, the Kilkenny City Harrier clocking 27:59.27, which moves him 10th on the Irish all-time list.
Meanwhile, Irish athletics lost one of its long-standing supporters over the weekend with the passing of Harry Gorman, who had travelled to 15 consecutive Olympic Games as a fan, the last of them in Rio 2016 when he was 87 years old. “Getting there is one thing, getting back alive is another,” he joked at the time. “I know there’s a lot of trouble, but there’s trouble everywhere you go. That wouldn’t stop me.”
As an athlete, Gorman won national medals at every distance from two miles to the marathon, and after hanging up his spikes, he was ever-present as an official, putting in the unpaid, unseen and often unappreciated work that keeps the wheels of the sport in motion.
His first Olympic sojourn was in 1960, which he travelled to alone, but in later years, he was joined by fellow friends and athletics nuts such as Seán Callan, Matt Rudden and the late Paddy Larkin. “I have some great memories, but when the Irish get a medal, it’s an absolutely wonderful time,” he said.
Ahead of his trip to Rio, he said: “I’m going to make it a good one because I’d say it’ll be my last. My family tried to talk me out of it, but I’m well capable of getting there and back. If you put all the obstacles in the way, you wouldn’t go anywhere and you wouldn’t enjoy life either. That’s the approach I’ve always taken and I’m happy as a lark.”