Rhasidat Adeleke breaks national record to finish fifth in European 400m final

Rhasidat Adeleke has produced a superb national record run of 50.53 to finish fifth in the final of the women’s 400m at the European Championships.

The 19-year old Tallaght woman, running in lane one and, by her own admission, still learning to compete at this distance, had brought the fifth fastest PB to the field of eight lining up at the Olympiastadion in Bavaria.

As the Irish Examiner reports, Femke Bol of the Netherlands franked her pre-race favouritism with the gold medal and a time of 49.44 and she was followed home by the Polish pair of Natalia Kaczmarek and Anna Kielbasinska in third.

For a while there it looked like being even better.

A superb start took Adeleke beyond Poland's Iga Baumgart-Witan in lane two before too long, and she was right in the mix for the medals coming down the home straight but just couldn’t hold on for a podium place.

Adeleke had made it through to the final on the back of a 51.08 run in the semi-final. That gave her a third-place finish in her class and passage through as the fastest of those to finish outside the top two across the three semis.

That was her 48th race of the year between her college duties with the University of Texas and her efforts on the international stage, at the World Championships in Oregon last month and now here in Munich. The question was whether she had enough left in the tank.

The 4x400m still awaits for the teenager whose good friend and former training partner, Israel Olatunde, stormed home to a sixth-placed finish and national 100m record with a time of 10.16 24 hours

'She left nothing on the track' - Rhasidat Adeleke runs a new Irish record in a brave fifth place finish in the final of the 400m, won by Femke Bol #Munich2022 #rtesport