Greg Allen: Resilient Ciara Mageean on the edge of greatness

As I read through some of the race reports and reaction to Ciara Mageean's brilliant performance in the 1500m final at the World Championships in Budapest, one headline caught my eye.

'Heartbreak, but heroic’ and that really summed up the performance in going within a whisker of claiming just a seventh medal for Ireland at a World Championships.

It was both those things.

Faith Kipyegon added to her legacy with a third world title, followed closely by Diribe Welteji from Ethiopia. When Sifan Hassan passed Mageean coming off the last bend, there was still plenty of fight left in the Portaferry woman to hold off challenges from behind, but there was no catching the front three.

Sonia O’Sullivan knows what it is like to finish fourth at the World Championships final having done so 30 years ago in Stuttgart, while Eamonn Coghlan had two fourth-place finishes in the Olympics.

It’s a lonely place, but it’s also the edge of greatness.

Thirteen years ago she was the second best junior in the world and now she has finished fourth in World Championships final at senior level, and is in the shape of her life at 31 years of age.

There have been four European medals along the way, but along with the highs, she has endured some crushingly low experiences.

Those setbacks have never beaten her down and that vast canvas of experience fed into what we saw last night.

What we heard from her post-race is why the public have always warmed to Mageean; it was all human life in that interview zone afterwards.

It was a near-perfect race that she executed, but there were three women better than her, so her speed, endurance and concentration to keep her place, perfectly poised to move, just wasn't enough for a place on the podium, but she left absolutely