{"id":614695,"date":"2026-08-01T06:12:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T06:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/614695\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T06:12:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T06:12:26","slug":"these-are-rare-and-precious-times-for-kate-oconnor-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/614695\/","title":{"rendered":"These are rare and precious times for Kate O\u2019Connor \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days before Kate O\u2019Connor<\/a> finished up a training camp in Portugal, ahead of her trip to Glasgow for the Commonwealth Games<\/a>, she was made available for a Zoom interview to talk about all things running, jumping and throwing.<\/p>\n

You know the way these things work. The email scheduled our meeting for 4pm, but between this and that and whatever else, one of us joined it about three minutes late. And let\u2019s just say it wasn\u2019t her.<\/p>\n

So, there she was waiting, sitting in the shade, still in her training gear, and for a split second giving me a gentle look of \u201cwhere were you?\u201d. These are rare and precious times for O\u2019Connor and it\u2019s no wonder she considers every minute of it to be important. <\/p>\n

Over the next half-hour, she was nothing but generous with that time, patiently detailing the preparations for what would turn out to be her sixth successive multi-event medal, this one wrapped up magnificently in gold<\/a>. It means between her last six pentathlons and heptathlons, indoors and outdoors, she has now completed 36 events in all without any major mishap, all the while perfectly aware that anything can and often does go wrong.<\/p>\n

Every multi-event competition starts out with another reminder of that. Hit a couple of hurdles in the first event and it could soon be game-over. Fail to clear a decent height in the high jump in the second event and it\u2019s definitely curtains.<\/p>\n

Better still was the way O\u2019Connor finished up events in Glasgow on Wednesday evening. After the near-wintry conditions on Tuesday, when she ended up splashing through the torrential rain to clock a defiant 24.14 seconds to win the 200m, she rounded things off with three imperious performances in the long jump, javelin and then the 800m. By her own admission, her final tally of 6,569 points \u2013 291 clear of England\u2019s Jade O\u2019Dowda \u2013 was a little short of expectations. But it\u2019s also true that every time she does compete, she\u2019s still learning more about the heptathlon. And hey, aren\u2019t we all?<\/p>\n

She came out on top in five of the seven events, and while the depth and standard of opposition will be significantly more testing at the European Championships in Birmingham \u2013 which start on Monday week \u2013 there is clear room for improvement. O\u2019Connor\u2019s shot-put best on Tuesday of 12.85m, albeit in a slippery throwing circle, was almost two metres short of what she\u2019s managed before. And in more favourable conditions, the 24-second barrier for 200m might well be broken.<\/p>\n

\"KateKate O’Connor celebrates after the 800m at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow on Wednesday, safe in the knowledge she had won heptathlon gold. Photograph: Inpho <\/p>\n

She produced another of her clutch performances in the high jump, clearing 1.82m on her third attempt, when another failure there might have properly dented her medal prospects. She\u2019s jumped 1.86m before. In winning the 800m, O\u2019Connor then displayed all the tactical nuances of a middle-distance specialist. Already clear in the gold-medal position, she \u201cwanted to put on a show\u201d, and did exactly that, kicking hard over the last 150m with a turn of speed that also indicates more lies in reserve. <\/p>\n

The heptathlon events in Birmingham begin on the Friday, August 14th, which means she\u2019ll have had just 15 days in between the two competitions. It will also be her first showdown this year with Annik Kalin, the 26-year-old from Switzerland who O\u2019Connor has been competing against since they were both teenagers. <\/p>\n

They know each other inside out, particularly their own strengths and the other\u2019s weaknesses. Kalin produced a national record of 6,819 points in Germany last month, which puts her ahead of O\u2019Connor\u2019s Irish record of 6,714, set when winning the silver medal at the World Championships in Tokyo last September.<\/p>\n

Also in the mix in Birmingham will be Sofie Dokter, the Dutch athlete who won pentathlon gold at the World Indoors in March, when O\u2019Connor won bronze. Dokter has scored 6,627 points this year. Britain\u2019s Katarina Johnson-Thompson, the two-time world champion who missed the Commonwealth Games through injury, is also planning on being there. O\u2019Connor will have most of the spotlight on her, which is no bad thing as it seems to bring out the best in her.<\/p>\n

It will be important for O\u2019Connor to carefully manage her time over the next fortnight. And not just with all things running, jumping and throwing. Central to all that is her father and coach Michael, who also acts as her agent. O\u2019Connor spoke about this during the interview, which was set up on behalf of one of her sponsors, Davy. She stressed the importance of having her father as the middleman.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of pros in having my dad as the main man like that,\u201d she said. \u201cWith a separate agent, I would have to be going back and forth, between the two, trying to allow myself a day away from training. Because it all goes through him, he\u2019s able to adjust the training schedule for sponsors if we do need to.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince winning the medals, that job gets more difficult and he\u2019s actually very good at it. He\u2019s very good at asking questions, even if it might sound like a silly question sometimes. He knows how valuable the time is and I know he hates giving days away. But he also understands that as an athlete at this level, you have to make some money. He\u2019s able to weigh all that up, because there\u2019s a big operation around all this and he\u2019s central to it. And I think he enjoys it too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two days before Kate O\u2019Connor finished up a training camp in Portugal, ahead of her trip to Glasgow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[142659,18,19,17,10889,132],"class_list":["post-614695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-commonwealth-games","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kate-o-connor","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}