The father of the Cian McPhillips, the first Irishman to qualify for a World Athletics Championships outdoor 800 metre final, has said he was "literally speechless" watching his son race yesterday.
Cian McPhillips won his semi-final at the Worlds in Tokyo, securing a spot in tomorrow's final with a new Irish record time of 1:43.18.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Paddy McPhillips said: "We probably didn't see it coming, that particular performance.
"We knew that he had trained incredibly hard. He went to the Europeans in Apeldoorn in Holland, had the fall, got a stress fracture in his leg and he was pretty much injured for about 10 or 11 weeks.
"During those weeks, he just worked flat out with Tokyo on his mind.
"He trained maybe three hours a day on the cross trainer, he was on a stationary bike in a heat chamber, he was using the non-gravity treadmill.
"He worked fantastically hard to get back and he was also trying to do his second semester exams at the same time."
Overcoming setbacks
Mr McPhillips explained that Cian missed the Paris Olympics last year due to long Covid.
"He's had so many knocks in the past and so many injuries. He missed Paris last year because he got Covid in April just when he was hitting peak fitness. That ruled out the Olympics because it turned into long Covid.
"Our big anxiety was just to get him on the plane, just get him on the track in Tokyo, and that would make up for a lot of the disappointment."
He described how he and Cian’s sister Sarah were watching the race yesterday on the television and were speechless.
"Sarah, his sister, and myself were here watching it on the telly. His mom was making a lasagne. She doesn't watch the races, and we were shouting up until about 80 metres to go.
"And then there's sort of the realisation that 'God, he's going to do this.'
"We were literally speechless at that stage."
He added; "You have to run what's against [you], what's in front of you. You have to run whatever happens on the day.
"So, what happens, what would have happened in the past, there's no relevance whatsoever on tomorrow."
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Mr McPhillips was his son’s first coach.
"I'm not sure you'd even use the word coach," he said.
"I looked after him for the first couple of years and when he started winning All-Irelands with very little training and certainly very little methodical training, I began to panic and I thought, 'No, I could do damage here, rather than anything else'.
"So, I gave Joe Ryan a call in Mullingar. Joe actually had seen him run and kind of knew of him.
"And Joe said, 'Yeah, no problem, send him up.' He went up to Mullingar in his first year in secondary school, and he's been in Mullingar ever since", Mr McPhillips said.
Watch Cian McPhillips compete in the final of the 800m at the World Athletics Championships on Saturday at 2.22pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player. Coverage begins at 11am.
