David Gillick believes Ciara Mageaan is now in Olympic medal class as she attempts to finish the season with another podium finish on Thursday night.
Six days on from beating Laura Muir and breaking Sonia O’Sullivan’s long-standing Irish 1500m record in Brussels, Mageean competes in the Diamond League final in Zurich.
Muir will be there as will Faith Kipyegon and Gudaf Tsegay too – the gold and silver medal winners in the World Championships this summer.
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“It’s going to be stacked,” said Gillick, the former European indoors gold medallist.
“Confidence is a great thing to have going into a race like that. She 100% won’t fear anyone. She’s tactically running spot on. I’d say Ciara will be thinking, ‘OK, could I possibly go a little quicker or could I at least back up what I did last week?’.
"That would be success. But you couldn’t write her off after what she did.”
Gillick now interviews elite Irish athletes in major championships for RTE.
He has spoken to Mageean on the dark days of recent years as injury, grief and loss of form have hampered her progress.
Gillick says her failure to kick on after medalling in the 2016 Euros was the Portaferry athlete’s “difficult phase” and she could have walked away from the sport. Instead, her resilience is standing to her now on the back of a summer that has seen Mageean win European and Commonwealth silver behind Muir.
“Maybe you’re seeing that now at 30, all the stuff that made her tough in her early 20s,” he said.
“We’re seeing her clearly now at her best. She targeted Tokyo, didn’t run a whole lot on the circuit, then this year she had two championships, Commonwealths and Europeans.
"You look at that and go, ‘Right, she’s just focusing on medals’.
“I’ve interviewed her when she’s puked on me, when she finished fourth in the last Europeans – then this year she’s delighted.
“Ciara wears her heart on her sleeve and lays it all out there and she said, ‘My day will come’. She sensed she was in great form. You could see she was getting close to the likes of Laura Muir.
“I sat with her after Munich and I asked her what’s next. She said, ‘I’m going to continue racing, I really feel there’s something in me, a good time’.
“So it’s fantastic. It’s the biggest win of her career by far, never mind medals. To win a Diamond League in a huge time, even from a sponsor’s perspective, gear contracts, it changes the game completely.
"With two years to Paris, who’s our best chance of a medal? That puts Ciara very much in that frame going forward.”
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