It wasn’t out of any great envy or regret that one of the things Mark English brought up after winning his European 800m gold medal last Thursday night was the money. Unlike the World Championships, and now for athletics at the Olympics too, there is no guaranteed prize money for any individual event at the European Athletics Championships.
“Athletics isn’t the most financially backed sport,” English said. “Certainly not as much as sports like soccer, etc. We do it for the love of it. To get moments like tonight really makes all the hard work pay off.”
It’s not quite all just for the love of it. The Gold Crown initiative was launched at the 2024 European Championships in Rome, and once again offered a pot of €500,000 for the 10 leading performances across all final events in Birmingham, divided into five categories, thus worth a sort of bonus prize of €50,000 to each of the successful athletes.
Up until Friday night, English was the number one performer in the men’s middle and long distance category, thanks to his 800m victory in 1:45.26. The performances are ranked using the official World Athletics scoring tables, but unfortunately for English, his score was surpassed by Andreas Almgren from Sweden, who won the 10,000m on Friday night in a championship record of 27:23.44.
After her heptathlon gold on Saturday, Kate O’Connor was also in the running for the €50,000 in the women’s road, combined events and relays category, but in the end that prize went to Sofia Fiorini from Italy for winning the marathon race walk, in a world record time of 3:15:11. The fact the marathon race walk is a new distance perhaps skews the value of that world record, although Fiorini still walked away with the money.
Those gold medals won by English and O’Connor, plus Rhasidat Adeleke’s silver in the 1,500m and Andrew Coscoran’s bronze in the 1,500m, left Ireland in ninth place on the final medal table, a one spot improvement on Rome two years ago.
Italy were again number one with 22 medals in all, including 10 gold, but Ireland still finished ahead of some traditional European powerhouses in athletics including France (who finished 19th on the medal table, without a single gold) and Poland (18th, also without a single gold).
Ireland winning four medals was along most predicted lines, although there is clear potential for winning more. There was also a fourth and fifth place finish for Sarah Healy, in the tactical 5,000m and 1,500m respectively, and after finishing ninth in the hammer in Rome years ago, Nicola Tuthill, still only 22, moved up to fifth this time. At his best, Cian McPhillips would also have been in contention for a medal in the 800m, before illness wrecked his preparations.
Silver medalist Rhasidat Adeleke of Ireland looks on after the women’s 200m final. Photograph: Sona Maleterova/Getty
Sharlene Mawdsley must also have been watching the final of the women’s 400m and wondering what if? After lowering her lifetime best to 50.06 seconds at the end of June, she was forced to withdraw from Birmingham with a hamstring injury sustained at the National Championships. The bronze medal in the 400m on Saturday night went to Lieke Klaver from the Netherlands in 50.15. Just saying.
It’s not inconceivable that the Irish medal count could have gone as high as six or even seven, which would have been extraordinary. So, the Birmingham return doesn’t represent anything exceptional, but the new normal.
There was also ample warning from the medal return for last year, when there was a record international haul of 25 Irish medals won, by 16 different Irish athletes, including the first senior multi-event medals won by O’Connor in the pentathlon and heptathlon.
While O’Connor’s season is now finished – complete with European and Commonwealth Games gold, and World Indoor bronze – English will get to cash in a little on his European success, starting with his appearance at this Friday’s Diamond League meeting in Lausanne.
English will also be eyeing up the Diamond League final in Brussels, on September 4-5th, where there is a $50,000 (€43,000) prize to each event winner. Adeleke is lining up several more races too.
After that, English and Adeleke are also on track to race at the new World Athletics Ultimate Championships, a three-day event taking place in Budapest from September 11th-13th, which has a record $10 million prize fund. Athletes are invited based on their ranking, with events up to and including the 800m beginning at the semi-final stage, while the 1,500m, 5,000m, relays and all field events will be straight finals.
Women’s heptathlon gold medalist Kate O’Connor at Dublin Airport on return from Birmingham. Photograph: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile via Getty
For English, who remember is also a qualified doctor, that new earning potential is significant. Only three Irish athletes received the top Sport Ireland podium funding grant of €40,000 for 2026 – O’Connor, McPhillips and Adeleke – while English received the world-class grant of €25,000.
Sport Ireland did increase to €28.5m their annual investment in high-performance programmes for 2026, an increase on the €27m invested last year.
They also announced a record allocation of €33.36 million in core funding across the 57 National Governing Bodies of Sport (NGBs) and the 29 Local Sports Partnerships (LSPs) for 2026. That represented an overall increase of €1.2 million on the 2025 amount, and an 87.4 per cent increase on the €17.8 million investment in 2018, when the National Sports Policy was first published.
The top-20 supported NGBs were unchanged from last year, with Special Olympics Ireland again topping the list (€1,732,000), ahead of Athletics Ireland (€1,333,000) and Swim Ireland (€1,275,000).
Given Swim Ireland also produced five medals at the European Championships in Paris last week, it’s clear that sort of investment is now paying off.