{"id":677873,"date":"2026-09-08T03:25:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T03:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/677873\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T03:25:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T03:25:22","slug":"sharlene-mawdsley-to-make-return-at-new-10m-ultimate-championship-in-budapest-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/677873\/","title":{"rendered":"Sharlene Mawdsley to make return at new $10m Ultimate Championship in Budapest \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Six weeks of rehab and recovery has put Sharlene Mawdsley<\/a> back on track to compete at this weekend\u2019s newly minted World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest. With a record $10 million prize pot \u2013 including the largest first-place pay-day the sport has ever seen \u2013 Mawdsley is understandably keen to take up her 400m invitation.<\/p>\n

Before that, however, Mawdsley will have a sort of test run over 400m on Tuesday evening at the Palio Citt\u00e0 della Quercia meeting in Rovereto, Italy. It will be her first race since sustaining a hamstring tear when competing in the 200m at the National Championships in Santry on July 25th. That injury forced her withdrawal from the European Championships in Birmingham last month.<\/p>\n

Assuming the Tipperary athlete can come through Tuesday\u2019s race without any setbacks, she\u2019ll then take up her place in the 400m at the National Athletics Stadium in Budapest, which will host the inaugural Ultimate Championship over three evening sessions from Friday to Sunday. <\/p>\n

Designed to take place every two years as the conclusion to a season without a World Athletics Championships, the Ultimate Championship will consist of 13 individual events for men and women, plus two mixed relays. The elite athlete event is by invitation only.<\/p>\n

The intention is to bring together the best athletes in the world in each event \u2212 Mawdsley is ranked 13th of the 16 women invited to take part in the 400m. Mark English<\/a> and Rhasidat Adeleke<\/a> are the only other Irish athletes to receive an invitation, again by virtue of their rankings, with English seventh of the 16 athletes invited for the men\u2019s 800m, while Adeleke is 16th in the women\u2019s 200m.<\/p>\n

The invitations include all the Olympic champions from Paris 2024, the world champions from Tokyo last year, and the 2026 Diamond League final winners from Brussels last weekend. The remaining invitations were decided on event rankings over the last 12 months, or in some cases, by exceptional invitation.<\/p>\n

Each individual event winner will pocket $150,000, the largest winner\u2019s prize in track and field history. The runner-up will earn $75,000, while third will get $40,000. Every athlete will leave Budapest with something, right down to the 16th and last-place finishers who get $2,000.<\/p>\n

\"MarkMark English wins gold in the men’s 800m at the European Championships. Photograph: Morgan Treacy\/Inphio <\/p>\n

All events up to 800m will include two semi-finals, the top four from each advancing to the final. The 12-athlete 1,500m and 5,000m are straight finals, as are the five field events, each with eight athletes. Andrew Coscoran<\/a> was inside the top-12 for the 1,500m in recent weeks but missed out by three spots when the cut-off mark was made. Cian McPhillips was also on course to make the 800m before illness cut short his season.<\/p>\n

Mawdsley is the fastest woman in the 400m field for Rovereto, thanks to the 50.06 seconds she clocked at the Paris Diamond League debut in June, her fourth personal best of the season. After winning her 200m heat at the National Championships in Santry, she pulled up after 80m in the final.<\/p>\n

Adeleke went on to win the 200m national title in 22.80, securing her place for the European Championships in her last attempt. The Dubliner went on to win silver in Birmingham, lowering her national record to 22.28 in the process, and improving her 200m ranking enough to secure an invitation for Budapest.<\/p>\n

Mawdsley withdrew three days before the start of the European Championships due to the injury sustained in Santry, saying: \u201cWe made huge progress after I was diagnosed with a tear in my hamstring, but unfortunately the timing just wasn\u2019t on my side\u201d.<\/p>\n

English hasn\u2019t raced since winning the European 800m title in Birmingham, opting instead for another spell of altitude training at Sierra Nevada in Spain. The Donegal man will have to negotiate a tough semi-final on Saturday evening if he\u2019s to earn his place in Sunday\u2019s final.<\/p>\n

Adeleke, who clocked 22.85 to finish sixth over the 200m in Brescia in Italy last Sunday, will race in the 200m semi-final in Budapest on Sunday evening, with the final due to take place just over two hours later.<\/p>\n

Sophie O\u2019Sullivan<\/a> is also running in Rovereto on Tuesday, joining Sarah Healy<\/a> in the 1,500m. Last weekend, O\u2019Sullivan ran a personal best of 1:58.60 in the 800m in Brescia, putting her second to Ciara Mageean\u2019s national record of 1:58.51. Bori Akinola will race in the 100m, while Darragh McElhinney and Brian Fay go in the 3,000m. Eric Favors will compete in the shot put.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Six weeks of rehab and recovery has put Sharlene Mawdsley back on track to compete at this weekend\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[76],"tags":[18,19,17,10888,8302,10883,132,286923],"class_list":["post-677873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mark-english","tag-rhasidat-adeleke","tag-sharlene-mawdsley","tag-sports","tag-ultimate-championship"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117233288761020137","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677873","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=677873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}