By Yavuz Yavuz
“Just hold your nerve! She’s holding her nerve! This is wonderful from Sharlene Mawdsley!”
This was how Greg Allen, veteran athletics commentator, celebrated Ireland’s first gold medal in European Championships since 1998 live on RTÉ’s air as Sharlene Mawdsley, the anchor for the Irish team, widened the gap down the final stretch. With a time of 3:09.92, which scrapped more than a second off of the country’s former national record of 3:11.53 that they clocked at World Relays this year, Ireland secured the first ever senior relay title of their history.
Ireland named the strongest line-up it can field for the mixed relay final, with Chris O’Donnell opening the run by handing the baton to Rhasidat Adeleke in the fourth place. In the meantime, Liemarvin Bonevacia ran the first 400m for the Netherlands, big favourites of the final, but with a rather slow split of 46.10, which meant that Lieke Klaver, one of the essential components of the Dutch relay teams, was in the fifth place when she took off with the baton.
Home nation’s Luca Sito made the fastest round in the opening leg and placed Italy in a more comfortable spot for the remainder of the race. Meanwhile Poland, a renowned relay nation, was riding on the bad luck of drawing lane 1 and was struggling to connect with the head of the race.
While Klaver clocked a rather slow split of 50.74 seconds in the second leg, Adeleke, Ireland’s sprint prodigy, produced a split of 49.53 and carried the team to first place. After that, Thomas Barr, the 2018 bronze medallist in men’s 400m hurdles, made the best effort he can do (with a 44.90-second split) to safely bring the baton to the change zone where Sharlene Mawdsley waited. In the meantime, while the Netherlands continued to crumble, Alexander Doom, this year’s world indoor champion in 400m, brought Belgium to first place.
In the final lap, it was Helena Ponette – running in Cynthia Bolingo’s place for Belgium – Sharlene Mawdsley, named among the best anchor any relay team can ever dream of, and Alice Mangione of Italy in top three. Femke Bol, whose “from the depths of hell” run from last year’s women’s 4x400 world final is still fresh in minds, was chasing down this trio.
Having trailed behind Belgium for the first 300 metres, Mawdsley began her final kick in the final 100 and pulled well ahead of her rivals. Under the cheers of scores of Irish fans lined up by the side, she crossed the finish line and looked at her teammates in disbelief. Ireland became the inaugural European 4x400 mixed relay champion.
Irish team’s time of 3:09.92 is now the sixth-best in the all-time list, and as Irish Independent’s Cathal Dennehy notes, “Four of those times were to win world or Olympic titles. The fifth was to win a world silver medal.” With this result, Ireland’s list of European champions extended as well, since before Friday night it included only one person; Sonia O’Sullivan, whose last gold medals came 26 years ago when she made the 5000 & 10.000 double.
In the race for the rest of the podium spots, Ponette lost pace and Alice Mangione made Italy the silver medallist. Femke Bol managed to pull the Dutch team on the podium with a bronze, as her final push for silver fell short and the Italian team finished ahead by a margin of only 0.04 seconds. At the back of the race, while Poland finished seventh, France was eventually disqualified due to a hors-zone baton handover coming into the final lap.
