The Showdown At Santry
The 1,500 meter clash featuring Sarah Healy and Sophie O’Sullivan was likely the most interesting confrontation of the 2023 Irish Track and Field championships.
Just two weeks before, at the European Under 23 Championships in Espoo Finland, Healy led the race while being shadowed by O’Sullivan. When the two runners arrived at the finishing stretch, the taller O’Sullivan unleashed a determined kick over the last 100 meters yielding both a gold medal and a lifetime best performance of 4:07.07
At the starting line in Espoo, Healy had sported a dramatically better lifetime best of 4:01.75 versus O’Sullivans then 4:08.06. Did Healy believe that the performance gap was wide enough to simply enable her to outrun her main competitor? If so, she likely needed to run at least a second faster per lap in Espoo than she actually had. While the race was quick enough, breaking new territory for O’Sullivan, the pace never approached Healy’s prior figures.
Should Healy have run faster that day in Espoo? If that was her intent, did she miscalculate her pace or maybe after running a semi final the prior day, had fatigue limited her ability to run at 4:01 pace? No doubt there was much speculation following the race which was considered an upset by the cognoscenti.
Now, two weeks later, at the Irish Nationals held at Dublin’s Santry track, it was rematch time. Would Healy set a faster pace to run the kick out of O’Sullivan? That seemed the best strategy, however that was not how the race unfolded, and yet, a different result emerged. How and why?
There are many different factors which can result in alternate outcomes in the world of Track and Field, but keeping a close eye on the stopwatch during the Dublin race and comparing to what happened in Espoo two weeks prior, yields some interesting clues.
Simply put, the race in Espoo was run more evenly, while the Dublin race was a confrontation characterized by lulls and surges. Splitting the Dublin race up into it’s three and 3/4 constituent laps, reveals a better sense of what actually happened and why that might have yielded a different outcome from that in Espoo.
Lap 1 — A Dawdle
The Dublin race started off quickly in the first 100 meters, before settling down into a slow pace with O’Sullivan at the front of the field. Towards the end of the first lap, Healy took the lead hitting the 400 meter mark at 1:10.3 which was 1.5 seconds slower than the time two weeks before. Did Healy realize continuing at a similar, relatively slow pace, would play into her opponent’s hands? Likely that was the case and so she decided to surge to the front.
Lap 2 — The Surge
Healy applied her foot to the accelerator and stretched things out, the race had already devolved into a two woman showdown, the rest of the racers falling far behind the two main protaganists. The increase in tempo yielded an initial 3–4 meter gap between the leaders, but as the 2nd lap drew to a close, the gap had narrowed and there was very little difference between the two women. Healy’s injection of pace had resulted in a 63.7 second lap and the two runners were now moving a lot more quickly than they had in Espoo hitting the 800 meter mark at 2:14:0 some 2.8 seconds faster than they had run in the prior race.
Lap 3 — The Big Downshift
Healy continued on at a torid pace for another 100 meters picking up more than another second on the Espoo race, and then all of a sudden, she slowed down. With 600 meters to go, both women were now running over 5.2 seconds faster than they had in Espoo. That might still have been within Healy’s compass, but it was certainly far faster than O’Sullivan had run before. Yet, it was at this point, that Healy decided to slow down, was she feeling the pinch, was it too much?
By the time the women had passed the finish line to start their final lap, the pace had dropped precipitously, in the space of 200 meters they had yielded 6.8 seconds, hitting 1,100 meter mark at 3:07.6. Healy’s sustained surge had turned to a jog. The jog persisted and by the time the 3rd lap was complete, the two women had fallen futher behind their Espoo pace. They were now 3.1 seconds slower. Surely O’Sullivan must have sensed some weakness in her opponent?
The Final 300 Meters — The Unexpected
Some 20 meters past the three lap marker, O’Sullivan made her bid for the win, and drew up on Healy’s shoulder on the back stretch, but Healy also quickened her pace again to match her oppponent’s spped and then surprisingly turned the dial up and drew ahead opening a gap. By the time she reached the middle of the final bend, a significant margin of 5 meters had opened. Much as O’Sullivan gritted her teeth, she could not close the spead, the race was over. Healy hit the finish line in 4:11.11, over 4 seconds slower than the race in Espoo. She had won, surprisingly with a slower time.
Analysis
A quick look at the splits below, shows the Espoo race had been run with two fairly even initial laps of 68.8 and 69.0 seconds followed by a rapid increase in pace all the way to the finish. The race in Dublin had produced a 2nd lap of 63.7 seconds that was sandwiched between two pedestrian laps of 70.3 and 70.7 seconds.
Was that third lap, by Healy, a head fake encouraging O’Sullivan to make her move earlier than in Espoo? Did Healy feel she could match O’Sullivan’s speed better from 300 meters out rather than waiting for the finishing straight? The only way we will ever know is if the two women opted to compare notes publicly. I very much doubt they will do that, and I would encourage them otherwise. Soemtimes it’s best to preserve the mystery
Race Videos
— Espoo, Finland — July 16, 2023
— Santry, Dublin — July 30, 2023
