Rhasidat Adeleke: Knowing what I have to do will make me better

In her first year a professional athlete, Rhasidat Adeleke can look back on more than a few achievements. Yet, there is still a disappointment of sorts at just missing out on a podium finish in the 400m final at the Paris Olympics.

And as we say goodbye to 2024, reflections on what has passed are still being mulled over while preparations for what is to come will shortly crank up. A World Championships in Tokyo next September the next target for the Tallaght athlete.

That near miss in the 400m at the Stade de France was followed, some 24 hours later, by another fourth-placed finish as Adeleke and her 4x400m relay colleagues more than played their part in the denouement of the athletics programme.

Earlier in the summer, Adeleke appeared to be taking her best form into the Paris Games after securing silver at the Europeans in Rome, where she came home just nine hundreds of a second behind gold medallist Natalia Kaczmarek.

It was the aforementioned who would eventually deny the 22-year-old a place on the Olympic podium. More medals in the shape of a 4x400m mixed relay gold and silver in the women's 4x400m were won in the Eternal City

Assessing the 2024 season, Adeleke told RTE Sport's Greg Allen: "I felt somewhat disappointed at how the season played out because I had such high expectations."

In accentuating her disappointment, she added: "Looking back on it now I can appreciate what I did achieve but I put a lot of the achievements aside because I focused on the main one - the Olympics.

"Once I didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve at the Olympics I kind of dismissed everything else I had done this year."

LISTEN TO FULL INTERVIEW FROM RTÉ RADIO'S SATURDAY SPORT

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