Rhasidat Adeleke burnishes potential for today and beyond after Olympic final near miss

Potential: A noun meaning latent qualities or abilities that may be developed and lead to future success.

When you look at the podium for the women's 400m final at Paris 2024, the ages from gold to bronze read 27, 26 and 26 for Marileidy Paulino, Salwa Eid Naser and Natalia Kaczmarek respectively.

They are all mature athletes in their primes, with significant experience behind them at continental, world and Olympic level.

And then you look at Ireland's own Rhasidat Adeleke. At 21, in her maiden Olympics and with only a few short years of know-how over the 400m distance, the fact that she feels a sense of what-might-have-been after finishing fourth in the final at the Stade de France brings us back to that word 'potential'.

"I don't think it was anything beyond what I can do. I just feel like it wasn’t meant to be today and that’s okay, I’ll move on," she told RTÉ Sport's David Gillick as she reflected on the blur of the Olympic final in the immediate aftermath.

She latered reveal that she had been feeling far from her best after the semi-final - "very dizzy" and "shaking" - before her team got her back on track literally and figuratively in time for Friday night on the biggest stage.

"This is life, this is sport," Adeleke added, "Things aren’t always going to go your way but it’s about how you bounce back. How you take this and make your future better."

Before touching on that brighter future, the context of the past is important. Adeleke's time of 49.28 may have been a small bit shy of her PB of 49.07 but would have been enough to earn bronze at Tokyo 2020, and gold at both London 2012 and Rio 2016.

Of course, times do come down incrementally as the years go on in athletics but still, at 21, to be in such company on the