Ciara Mageean: LA Olympic dream still alive despite Paris heartbreak

Ciara Mageean insists that Los Angeles is still in her sights as she continues her recovery from the surgery that kept her out of the Paris Olympics.

The 32-year-old from Portaferry looked to have timed her Olympic preparation to perfection during the summer as she won 1500m gold at the European Championships in Rome in June.

But the decision to put off surgery on troublesome bone spurs on her ankle eventually came back to haunt her at the worst possible time.

"Chatting to my physio after he said that I was a victim of my own success," she told RTÉ Sport's Greg Allen this week.

"It was nearly the worst thing to happen to you that you were so successful over the past few years, because I knew five years ago I needed surgery on this ankle.

"I chatted to the consultant who did the surgery and he said to me: 'you need surgery on it but you're running too well for me to open you up.'

"I was running PBs and taking on the world so I wasn't going to stop. I was going to keep going until I was forced to stop.

"Unfortunately for me, that was the Olympic Games this year and it's heart-breaking because I don't know why it couldn't have been two weeks after; put me out of some Diamond Leagues, I wouldn't have minded."

Mageean pulled out of the Irish National Championships shortly after her European success, before posting a worrying performance at a Diamond League event in Paris in July, in which she came home nearly three seconds off her own Irish record.

The form didn't seem right and speculation began to mount about whether the two-time Olympian would make it to the start line of the heats in Paris. Finally, the news that followers of Irish athletics had feared arrived in early August as she pulled out with an injury.

Mageean says she had