Back in May, Para shot putter Mary Fitzgerald travelled to the UK to fine tune her build-up to Paris.
While not technically assured of her spot at a second Paralympic Games, her distance from the 2023 World Championships looked to have her well placed.
The 25-year-old was competing against both para and non-disability athletes at the Paula Radcliffe Stadium in Loughborough, and put to bed any doubt over her participation in the French capital by putting over half a metre onto her personal best with a throw of 8.87m.
"I knew there was something in me, maybe a nice PB, but didn't anticipate it being that big," she tells RTÉ Sport.
"I usually know (that it’s good when leaves the fingers) but not this one.
"I threw it but it was nothing amazing in my head. I had no sense of it really and then it came up on the board, on one of those manual boards where they flick the dial, like something from the '80s.
"I was in total disbelief and just so excited. It was a nice confidence booster and set me up nicely for Paris."
The Kilkenny woman joined the Paralympic Ireland’s High Performance squad in 2019, marking her first international event with a credible seventh-place finish at that year’s World Championships.
A bronze at the 2021 World Para Athletics European Championships set her up nicely for Tokyo, and again she held her own on the elite stage, claiming sixth on her Paralympic debut.
Fitzgerald cites "a lot of factors coming together" for her significant improvement earlier this summer, but the most obvious one is that of her coach Paul Wilson, a name synonymous with the world of shot put.
Reigning women’s indoor and outdoor world champion Chase Jackson and 10-time British national champions Scott Lincoln are just some of the names within his stable of athletes, and last November Fitzgerald was like a sponge when they crossed paths at a training weekend.
Wilson had little experience with para athletes and Fitzgerald had no intention to relocate to the UK, but the two found common ground in their thinking around the sport.
"We’re very alike, both very driven," she admits.
That drive to succeed led to the online training regime which suits both parties and is already bearing fruit aided by a sheltered shot put circle with a toe-board constructed in her backyard during the pandemic.
Three times a week Fitzgerald sets up the tripod and iPad, with Wilson observing and offering live feedback during the half-hour sessions. Every couple of months she travels across the pond for face-to-face training to tidy up a few aspects, but the bulk of her training is in her own backyard.
"We haven’t spoken about it but I don’t think he saw me and thought, ‘Oh she’s short’. I think he thought ‘she’s a shot putter that needs to fix her left arm,’ just purely technical," she says.
"There is no sympathy piece at all, not like ‘she’s different, we need to wrap her in bubble wrap.’ Our training programme shows that.
"He has coached me from the States, from a European Cup in Italy, if I’m in Dublin once I have my phone and my iPad he can coach me if I get delayed. He knows and trusts I can do my work when I’m not with him, there’s that trust and respect there."
Fitzgerald’s ambition to improve on her sixth-place in Tokyo is fuelled by that mammoth throw in May. Of the 23 competitors in the F40 category, only Lara Baars of Germany is ranked higher based off the season’s best.
The bar, however, has been raised significantly in just three years.
"A bronze medal in Rio required a distance of 7.16m and I think the third ranking now is 9.02m (to get bronze) so it’s come up a lot," she says.
"There’s lot of established athletes that you think are going into retirement and then they throw a massive PB and you realise they’re not going anywhere. And then you’ve ‘newbies as well, from countries that didn’t have para sport as established but it is now and it’s great to see."
The qualified occupational therapist, who spent a year in UCC as a housemate with three-time Olympic medallist Paul O’Donovan, is savouring every minute of the build-up after the Covid cloud that hung over the Tokyo Games.
Everyone says it's the biggest thing in your life, the highest level of competition. I think it’s not until you get there and fully immerse yourself in that build-up that you understand that
"It nearly feels like it’s my first because the build-up has been so different," she says. "I remember walking out for the Opening Ceremony in Tokyo, when you should be waving to the crowd and I remember waving at this stand-alone camera, thinking my parents are on the other side of that.
"Literally, a camera on its own in the middle of the floor. It was so, so surreal.
"Everyone says it’s the biggest thing in your life, the highest level of competition. I think it’s not until you get there and fully immerse yourself in that build-up that you understand that."
The 2024 Paralympic Games takes place from 28 August - 8 September. Follow all the action from Paris with our coverage on RTÉ.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app, watch live on RTÉ2 and the RTÉ Player or listen to updates and live commentaries on RTÉ Radio.
