Name: Rhasidat Adeleke
Event: 400m, Women's 4x400m, Mixed 4x400m
Age: 21
Rhasidat Adeleke is heading to Paris fresh from triple medal joy in Rome at the European Championships. The Tallaght woman was initially disappointed to have been beaten to individual gold by Poland's Natalia Kaczmarek but it represents her first senior medal in the individual event.
On her way to silver she broke her own national record running 49.20, which would have been fast enough to claim a medal in the last two editions of the Olympic Games. With stiff competition Adeleke may need a faster time again to ensure her position on the podium in the French capital.
Adeleke was a true prodigy, winning European sprint 100m, 200m doubles at youth and junior level, including a European Under-18 200m title when she was just 15. She now holds the full deck of Irish senior sprint records from 60m to 400m, adding the 100m at Nationals last month with a sensational 11.13 seconds.
Tallaght AC nurtured her talent before she moved to the University of Texas in early 2021, and even before she specialised in one lap, she was ninth at 400m in her first World Championships, and fifth at Europeans in 2022. In 2023 she became the first Irish athlete to win an NCAA sprint title and was fourth at World Championships.
