Sprinter Rhasidat Adeleke will represent Ireland at the Paris Olympics in the 400m athletics events from August 5. The national athletics record holder has suffered a torrent of racial abuse online. But this has not discouraged her from aiming to become the first Irish woman athlete to secure a gold medal in athletics.
Rhasidat Adeleke, 21, has held the national record for all of the sprint distances, from 60m indoors to 400m, her preferred distance, since last month, when she won the 100m at the Irish National Championships in a record 11.13 seconds.
The Irish sprinter officially qualified to compete in the Paris Olympics in July 2023, when she finished second with a time of 22.36 seconds for the 200m in the World Continental Tour Gold competition in Hungary.
Adeleke, who stands at a towering 1.83 metres (6 feet), has long had her eyes set on competing for track medals. While still studying for her Leaving Certificate (final school exams) four and a half years ago, she told the Irish Mirror: “God-willing, I want to be one of the best sprinters in the world, competing on the world stage, competing at the Diamond League, making world finals.”
Adeleke also said at the time that she hoped to represent her country and be a role model, as she hadn’t grown up with a lot of female role models. “I just want to represent Ireland at major championships on major stages. And I want to make a difference. Hopefully I can be a role model for more girls to do sport.” Her hopes of having more women in sport have come true, as there will be full gender parity parity at the Paris Olympics for the first time in Olympic history.
'She's going to be number one'
Born in Dublin in 2002 to Nigerian parents, Adeleke played a wide range of sports, including Gaelic football, camogie (the female version of hurling), basketball, badminton and volleyball as a young child. However, her primary school PE teacher at St. Mark’s National School in Tallaght, southern Dublin, encouraged her to take up running after watching her run in events on sports days.
“We were doing sports day in school and Rhasidat was racing against the boys and she beat them,” Adeleke’s older sister Latifah told Irish broadcaster RTE News after her sister's performance in the 2022 World Championships in Munich. “One of the teachers said, ‘You need to join an athletics club’. The teacher then got the contact details for Tallaght Athletic Club and that’s how she joined.”
Adeleke joined the club at 11 years old, initially taking part in a number of events including the 60m, hurdles and cross-country running before settling on sprinting. At 14 she made her mark on the national athletic scene by winning the junior sprint double at the Irish Schools Championships for her secondary school, Presentation Community College, in south Dublin.
Johnny Fox, Adeleke’s coach at the Tallaght Athletic Club, also saw her potential when she first joined the club. “You make sure to listen to this: She’s going to be number one, there’s absolutely no doubt about it,” Fox told RTE News after Adeleke's performance in Munich.
The club nurtured her talent and helped her achieve many early successes. “Tallaght Athletic club was definitely where I discovered my love of running. There was so much support and I just loved the social aspect as well. All the coaches loved the sport so much, so they kind of poured that into us. It’s just an amazing environment. I’d be buzzing to train every day,” Adeleke told Life Style Sports.
At just 15 years old, she won a European U18 title in the 200m and took silver at the World U20 Championships in the 4x100m relay. By 16 she won the European sprint 100m/200m doubles at Youth and Junior level. And at 18 she won the 100m/200m sprint double at the European U20 Championships in Estonia, securing a scholarship with the University of Texas at Austin.
During her time with the Texas Longhorns track and field team, she came in fifth in the 400m final at the European Championships in Munich, setting an Irish record of 50.53 seconds. In 2023, she also became the first Irish athlete to win a National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) sprint title.
Setting Irish records
Adeleke waived her final year of NCAA eligibility to go pro and graduated seven months early with a degree in corporate communications, an achievement lauded by her fans. In a post on Instagram, she wrote that she was “blessed” to have graduated and that her time at the University of Texas had been “an opportunity that elevated and enriched my world in several ways, from the lifelong friends I made to the opportunities & knowledge I obtained”.
Shortly after graduation, Adeleke won three European senior medals in Rome: gold in the mixed relay – Ireland’s first gold at this event since 1998 – and silver in the women’s 4x400m and 400m – setting a new Irish record and her best time at 49.07 seconds. This competition saw her become the first Irish woman to cover the distance in under 50 seconds, a feat she repeated weeks later as she won her first Diamond League in Monaco.
Adeleke’s wins on the European and world stage have not only benefited her but her home country as well. “I feel like athletics in Ireland is just starting to be taken seriously,” Blanaid Dwyer, a volunteer with the Tallaght Athletic Club, told Irish newspaper Sunday World on the sidelines of this year’s Dublin Athletics Championships, in which Adeleke’s younger brother Abdullahi took part.
“There’s a lot of support for these kids. It’s expensive, they have to pay for their competitions, they have to pay for their travel to competitions and they have to do that from their own pocket. It’s no harm that athletics is getting some serious recognition at this point of time.”
Racial abuse
Despite these recent phenomenal successes, Adeleke – the only Black member of Team Ireland – has had to contend with a wave of racist abuse online, questioning her right to represent Ireland at the Olympics. This has severely impacted her mental health.
“I think that’s probably the most pain I’ve seen her have,” Edrick Floreal, her coach at the University of Texas, told AFP. “She was really in a dark place when she read those things on the internet. She doesn’t cry ever, so when she cries it’s like ‘Oh my God’, so that bothered her more than I ever thought and I just let her handle it.”
Following this online abuse, Sport Against Racism Ireland issued a statement saying that it is “appalled but unsurprised that one of Ireland’s magnificent young athletes, Rhasidat Adeleke ... has suffered racial abuse online. It is shocking that one person ... can be targeted in this manner. This is another wake-up call for our legislators and those who govern Irish sport”.
Taoiseach (prime minister) Simon Harris also expressed his support for Adeleke with a post on X: “Rhasidat Adeleke is not only a world-class champion, she is a world-class person,” said Harris. “You are class, so please do not let online cowards bring you down. You are Ireland and Ireland could not be more proud of you.” However, the post no longer appears on the social media platform.
The abuse has not diminished Adeleke’s love for the sport: “I run because I love the thrill, and it just gives me so much joy from being able to see the way I progress,” she told Life Style Sports.
Others, however, have enthusiastically embraced her. A mural of Adeleke sporting a flower crown and in her Ireland sporting gear, with the words ‘Mise Eire’ (‘I am Ireland’, referencing a poem written by Irish republican leader Patrick Pearce) stamped across the front, appeared on a street in central Dublin on July 25. Canvaz street art, one of the artists in residence at the Irish Cultural Centre in Paris, told the Irish Independent that she made the artwork to celebrate Adeleke. “I feel we should honour and shout about our new heroes. Too often we just shout about bad things.”
Described by RTE News as “the new face of Irish athletics”, Adeleke also featured in their documentary series “Path to Paris”, which followed Ireland’s top medal prospects over three years and aired from June 27-July 18. Cathal Dennehy, a sports journalist featured in the documentary, explained that Adeleke was chosen to feature in the documentary as a way of “announcing to the world that the image they know of Irish athletics is now very different”.
While the Paris Olympics have long been foremost on her mind, Adeleke told Life Style Sports three months ago that she was doing her best to remain level-headed: “I think about Summer 2024 pretty often. It definitely makes me excited. I’m just trying to put myself in a positive mindset to be able to maximise my performance. At the end of the day, putting too much pressure on yourself, probably won’t serve you right.”
This philosophy has served Adeleke well, as she has run the fourth-fastest time in the 400m this year at 49.07 seconds. As only three athletes have gone sub-49 in 2024 – Jamaica’s Nickisha Pryce, American Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Poland’s Natalia Kaczmarek – Adeleke is in a strong position to go for gold at the 400m final on August 9.
Initially due to take part in the 4x400 mixed relay on August 2, Adeleke decided not to participate in this competition so she could focus on the women's individual 400m. She will, therefore, be making her debut at the Paris Olympics on August 5.
