Ciara Mageean remained relatable, unaffected and authentic across her extraordinary career

In the summer of 2023, Ciara Mageean wrote a tender and typically candid piece for the athletics magazine Spikes. In it she reflected on the tortuous cycle of setbacks and comebacks that had shaped her career, and the times when she was carried by mulish perseverance.

At the beginning of the piece she wrote about an operation on a bone spur that had haunted her early career and threatened to derail it. She would train for a day and stop and suffer for the next two. She took injections and advice. Second opinions. She rested, she stretched, she iced, she ran, she stopped. If she was out with friends and they had to make a burst for the bus, she couldn’t sprint on command. It cut the ground from under her feet.