WHEN you’re lying in a heap watching the football on St Stephen’s Day, or enjoying a lie-in after New Year’s Eve exertions, spare a thought for Rhasidat Adeleke.
The Dublin sprinter is back home in Tallaght at the minute, but there will be little opportunity to let her hair down over the festive period, with the 2024/25 season already in full flow.
“It’s a little different because we only have Christmas day off,” she said, speaking at the launch of KPMG’s research celebrating an inspiring year for women’s sport in Ireland.
“So I wouldn’t really go crazy on Christmas with the food and the enjoyment, because you have training the next day. But I think these are just the sacrifices that we take to be able to get to where we want to be.
“And as long as I’m able to spend time with my family now, and appreciate everything and kind of reflect, I’m able to understand that it’s okay to miss out on certain things, because it’s part of the bigger picture.”
Ah, the bigger picture. This time 12 months ago, it was the Olympic Games and Adeleke’s impending arrival as a global superstar on sport’s biggest stage.
Plenty more was achieved away from Paris, not least an unforgettable 4x400 mixed relay gold, as well as 400m and 4x400m women’s relay silvers at June’s European championships. Yet, as the year draws to a close, any hangover from the summer is the obvious place to start when looking into 2025.
Because, irrespective of the expectations placed upon her young shoulders from everybody else, Adeleke struggled to shake the shock of being edged into fourth place in the 400m final. That the Irish 4x400m women’s team suffered a similar fate days later sought only to add injury to insult.
It is for those reasons she still scrolls past the photos of Paris, rather than stop and smile. It’s still a bit too raw, a bit too sore, even four months on. That will come in time, of course.
Once the season was over, a well-earned break brought her back to friends and family in Ireland for three weeks, before rubbing shoulders with Rihanna in London then a few days in Mexico.
After that it was back to the grind with Edrick Floreal – or “coach Flo” – at their Austin base, the joys of winter training, and a renewed determination to kick on again.
“Training has been really hard - we’re working on my weaknesses so anything that you’re not that good at is always going to be very hard, very difficult to get used to.
“It’s been a lot of progress so I’m happy about that but it’s been very difficult. That’s what fall training is for - it’s the grimy stuff you don’t really like, the hills, the long runs… it’s getting better though and I’m really excited for the next season.”
Embracing weakness is a necessary, if painful, part of the process. So, with 2024 almost in the rearview mirror, where does one of the world’s top sprinters turn to get better? What can she improve to close the gap when the big days next arrive?
“This year, strength was definitely one of my weaknesses - I think because of the way we set out to maybe change things a little bit when it comes to my training.
“So I was doing a lot more of the short sprints training and that initially didn’t work out with the strength when it came to the strength part of my 400 metres because in 2023 I ran my races very differently, I’d more to close at the end instead of tiring up, so that’s definitely something what we’re working on this year. Hopefully in 2025 we’ll see the results of that.
“And I think that my strength issues weren’t just with actually having the stamina to finish a race, it was things like posture and tightening in various areas, and strengthening work in my physique and not necessarily the training also.
“So it’s a bunch of different things that I’m fixing with my training, but also in the weight room and with mobility and prehab -just the little one percentages that you don’t think matter but they do matter a lot.
“I’m very self-aware… I know what I’m not good at, and I’m really good at taking constructive criticism as well, so if someone is like, ‘oh, you need to work on this’ then I’m like ‘okay, what do I need to do?’
“I want to do everything I can to get better at this sport and to reach our full potential, so if anyone is able to help me with that I’m all ears and I’m willing to do the work to get to where I want to be.
“Because there’s nothing worse than feeling, like, ‘oh, I could have done more and I didn’t’. So when it comes to working on my weaknesses, I’m all for it.”
There are no plans to enter the European or World indoors, with ‘coach Flo’ plotting out a different course for the months ahead that will include a handful of indoor races Stateside, but not a full season.
“If I do any at all, it’ll be one or two in America and that’ll be it,” she said, “short and sweet.”
And those plans do not include Michael Johnson’s initiative to shake up the athletics calendar.
The American four-time Olympic champion has launched Grand Slam Track, a professional track and field league that will see the world’s fastest athletes competing head-to-head in four annual Slams.
However, while big-name announcements and lucrative prize money have helped build its profile, Adeleke will not be involved in Grand Slam Track’s inaugural campaign.
“Yeah, Michael had talked to my coach and my agent, but Flo just didn’t see a fit for us so he just decided wait and see how things work out.
“It’s a different season already so we didn’t want to add too much. Flo had his reasons, he didn’t really go into it, but we just didn’t sign to it.”
