A star-struck doctor, an All-Ireland winning footballer made famous on YouTube and a 35-year-old who says her running age is ten years younger thanks to training alongside her two whippets.
Met Sara Treacy, Michelle Finn and Kerry O’Flaherty - Ireland’s women’s 3000m steeplechase team.
This is one of the few sports in the Rio Olympics where Ireland will be sending it’s full compliment of athletes, with three runners qualifying.
The three are good friends, on an incredible night for Irish athletics they all achieve qualification in the same race in Letterkenny last summer and at the recent European Championships in Amsterdam they proved their abilities by all making the final.
A 3000m steeplechase is made up of seven and-a-bit laps of the track which crosses 35 barriers of 30 centimetres each, seven of them water jumps.
None of Ireland’s trio started with the discipline - in fact, they all excelled at different events on and off the track - but they all eventually found their way there.
#FontRomeu evening walks with my girls #Mountainlife #AltitudeAttitude #Stunning #Golf #Snowsgone pic.twitter.com/C3OhVlfWMr
— Kerry O'Flaherty (@runkerryrun) May 3, 2016
Let’s start with Kerry O’Flaherty, from County Down, who does much of her training at Font Romeu in France alongside Lola and Ella - her two loyal whippets who go most places with her.
“They’re churning out about 70 miles a week with me - they’re great wee pace setters,” laughed O'Flaherty, who likens the French mountains to her home in the Mournes.
“A few people have asked me do they struggle at the altitude, but they are speeding ahead on me.
“ I had my first whippet and I named her Zola after Zola Budd. I had her until she was 16 when she passed away in 2013.
“I said that I wasn’t going to get another dog until I was finished running, but then I met Lola. She’s the same colour as Zola and he’s only one letter away - she had a name already because she’s a rescue dog so I said to myself ‘maybe it’s meant to be’ and I’m really glad!”
Rio will be the 35-year-old’s first Games, but already she has half an eye on Tokyo 2020 with no notion of retiring any time soon.
“I took five years off serious running when I was in uni so I don’t feel like my running age is 35,” she explained.
“I still feel like I’m in my twenties and my running age isn’t even 30 yet. I look at Joe Pavey winning at the Commonwealth Games two years ago when she was 40 - that’s an inspiration. A lot of female athletes don’t hit their peak until their mid or late thirties.”
Michelle Finn is from Kanturk in Cork and won an All-Ireland minor title with the Rebels alongside legends of ladies football like Ciara and Roisin O’Sullivan.
Having done two years at the University of Limerick she headed to Kentucky on an athletics scholarship and now she’s back at UL in year three of her studies to become a PE teacher.
It’s through her involvement at UL that most people have heard her name - she took part in that YouTube smash that was the 4x400m race at the Irish Universities Athletics Track and Field Championships at Morton Stadium in April.
UCC’s Phil Healy came from ‘the depths of hell’ in the words of commentator Cathal Dennehy to win the race, beating Finn in the process.
“I had just run the steeplechase,” said the 27-year-old. “I won it and I was actually really happy with the way I had run.
“I was asked to run the 4x400 and my coach said ‘no way’. But it’s a team thing and we needed to get the points for UL - the 4x4 is nearly always the last event and it’s usually a hodgepodge of different types of athletes.
“They ran it differently to us - we both had three distance runners and one 400 metre runner. We put our 400 metre runner second to try to build up a lead, they put their’s last to try to catch up.
“I got the baton in second and I finished in second, even if there was a change in the order, so I don’t think I did too bad!
“It was very funny. I’ve had a great laugh watching it - even Cathal in the commentary talking about the steeplechaser.”
The youngest of the team is 27-year-old Sara Treacy from Meath, who trained as a doctor and ran in Birmingham and is now on a on sabbatical from her job in Alexandra Hospital, Redditch in England so she can concentrate on her Rio preparations.
“Before I took sabbatical I was in Accident and Emergency and when I go back I do a rotation in General Medicine and then after that I go on to paediatrics,” she said.
“You spend two years on rotation normally, but I have spread my training out, I qualified three years ago, because of athletics. I have no idea what I want to do, but I am looking at all different things.
“I studied here, I got my medical degree in University of Birmingham. When I finished school I was looking around and most athletes were either going to the US or DCU, which has no medicine course. UCD has a very strong athletics set-up now, but it wasn’t the case then.
“In Birmingham I had top class people to train with, there is a lot of internationally renowned athletes, and the university is excellent so it was the best place for me to do both.”
When u run a PB to make ur first major final & spot ur best mates & teammates in the crowd! #ECH2016 pic.twitter.com/8LNq19b9Mr
— Sara Treacy (@sara_treacy) July 9, 2016
Treacy admits she got star-stuck at her first major championship appearance at last year’s world championships at Beijing, being on the same track as some of athletics’ biggest names.
That won’t happen again in Rio, where she is looking forward to competing alongside and against her two good friends.
“We meet up occasionally and do training sessions and we get on really well. We’re all against each other, but we get on well,” she said.
“Athletics is like that - you’re friends, then when you get to the starting line you’ll do anything to beat them and then as soon as it’s over you congratulate each other and you’re friends again.”
