PHIL Healy is determined to prove she has more to offer and that, at only 29 years old, her best days are not behind her.
‘I want to end my career on a high and not have the glory years as between 2018 and 2021,’ Healy insists, as she gets back on track after a challenging 18 months that led her to question her future in athletics.
In recent times it has been a slog. But she’s a fighter. And she’s stubborn. There’s a hardiness in her that can be traced back to growing up on a farm in Knockaneady. She loves to work, to roll up her sleeves and get her hands dirty, and that approach hasn’t changed so she was never going to give up easily.
‘Every athlete goes through turbulent times, no matter the sport you are in. Usually it's an injury but mine was more challenging and I struggled a bit more, but the aim is to get back to the top level and back to winning ways again,’ she adds.
There’s an inner steel to Healy that means these words carry weight. She’s not rolling them out for soundbites. She is convinced there is more to come, with the Olympic Games in Paris next summer her target. Healy competed in three events at the Tokyo Games, caught the Olympic bug and wants to get back there again.
‘For me, I will turn 30 in November 2024 so will this be my last Olympic cycle? That’s possible. There is more at stake than Tokyo. Everyone wants to become an Olympian, I want to become a two-time Olympian; that’s what I am aiming for,’ she says – but to achieve that the Ballineen Bullet needs to rediscover the speed that took this trailblazer from the family farm in Enniskeane to the world stage.
Healy knows her form in 2023 was not good enough. She pulled out of the individual 400m at the World Indoors in March. Healy describes her fourth place finish in the women’s 400m at the outdoor national championships in July as ‘chronic’ – and that performance led to her cutting her season short and withdrawing from selection for the Irish relay team bound for the World Championships in August.
‘I was fourth at the nationals – and it was a chronic time as well,’ she explains.
‘I know conditions were bad, but that performance was the final straw. I had races to go to after that, but I said no, I can’t put myself through it mentally and physically for any longer because there was no return and I was not achieving anything.
‘There were the World Athletics Championships and the relay coach asked me to train for another four weeks to do what I could for the team but I didn’t feel I could offer anything – and that was a hard position to be in. Between the 4x100 and 4x400, I have been running relays for the last ten years but then you have to give up your spot.’
Given the slump she was in, Healy felt she had no other choice. There were mitigating factors though. She had health issues since the World Indoors in 2022 and then struggled to get on top of autoimmune disease, but the outlook is far more positive now on that front.
‘It’s under control, constant monitoring and keeping up the medication. I have a great team around me and I have had that support,’ she says – and her decision to call a halt to her 2023 season on August 3rd is paying off.
Healy needed a break. Physically and mentally. A reset. More importantly, she recognised that she needed to step off the track, too. To become a two-time Olympian, and given the importance of the upcoming season, stepping back was the best way to move forward. There were two weeks in August when Healy stopped completely. It was time for family and friends.
‘I just needed a full reset, mentally and physically,’ Healy explains.
‘Now that I am out the far side of it, I can really understand why I needed a break. For an athlete to recognise they need that, for others to recognise that too, we’re not robots, we can’t keep going year after year. As athletes we don’t want to take a break and we want to keep on pushing, but I wasn’t in a good place.
‘I kept on trying because I was living in hope. You are just digging the hole deeper and deeper, and you aren’t rising out of the hole. My body became stressed, and you are constantly living in that hope – every time you go to training you hope it’s going to be a good session but then it’s not, and then there is that negativity that you need to process. You are in this continuous spiral where things are going bad; it was nearly 18 months of that, which was hard because you can’t put your finger on what was happening.
‘I had a very good run and achieved a lot, and then I hit a tough spot and I didn’t have the answers, and that does take a toll mentally as well. For the nationals to go so bad, that was a blessing in disguise; that forced me to stop. But now I am in a really good place after switching off.’
Phil Healy wants to become a two-time Olympian.
On Monday, August 28th – the day after the Irish women’s 4x400 relay team finished eighth in the world final – Healy returned to training. That’s earlier than normal, but 2024 is not a normal year either; there’s an Olympic show to be part of.
‘Things are in a really good place now compared to other years,’ she says, and while Waterford is still her base, the journeys home are now more frequent.
‘Finishing up early last season is a decision I am happy I made because the year ahead, with Paris, is far more important. It’s about getting back on track and I feel I have done that. I am in a much happier place as well; I am back and forth to Cork a lot more so I have a nice balance.’
It all points towards – fingers crossed – a return to form in the year ahead. Healy knows she has to if she is to achieve her target. The Irish relay teams offer her best route to Paris. She has raced on both the 4x400m women’s and mixed teams at the highest level, including an Olympic final in Tokyo in 2023. The World Athletics Relays in the Bahamas at the start of May is one qualification route. First, she needs to prove she’s got what it takes. Challenge accepted.
‘I want to earn my place back on the team again,’ she says, with potential in both the women’s and mixed quartets. Take the women’s 4x400m team. At the Worlds last summer the four of Sophie Becker, Róisín Harrison, Kelly McGrory and Sharlene Mawdsley qualified for the final with a time of 3:26.18, just 0.12 off the national record. Add in Rhasidat Adeleke and a returning Phil Healy, and this team could cover the ground faster than ever before. That’s exciting, and it’s why Healy is excited too. The World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow at the start of March are also on her to-do list, and if she can qualify in the individual 400m for Paris, she’ll leave it all on the track again.
Healy feels she has emerged on the other side of her most challenging period as an athlete, and with a pep back in her step, it’s time to remind us all why she dominated Irish women’s sprinting for so many years.
