WHILE Phil Healy admits this week’s European Athletics Indoor Championships will probably be her last, she won’t let emotion impact her performance, insisting she still has a job to do.
The Ballineen Bullet will compete at her FIFTH European Indoors in a row when she takes to the track in Apeldoorn in The Netherlands, but the likelihood is this will also be her last.
Healy turned 30 last November and had previously hinted that 2024 could have been her final year on the track, but she’s back for more. Still, while the Bandon AC trailblazer has an idea of her finishing line, her focus is on ensuring the best version of herself is ready to do a job for the Irish women’s 4x400m and mixed 4x400m relay teams this week.
‘This is my fifth consecutive European Indoors, but it will also be my last, so I want to enjoy it and see what both relay teams can do,’ Healy told The Southern Star.
‘Even for me at the nationals (Irish indoor championships), in the back of my head there was a high chance that it was my last indoor nationals but I do know it will be my last European Indoors unless I am swayed massively. If I am swayed to 2026, that’s one thing. To be swayed until 2027 is a big ask.’
Phil Healy in action at the 2024 World Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow.
Healy is also in control of her own destiny, and that’s important, too. She watched as her older sister Joan had to hang up her spikes last year after a terrible run of injuries slowed her down. In January Phil saw her former Irish relay team-mate Thomas Barr retire from athletics, the 32-year-old calling time on his career. Two different and contrasting endings.
‘It would be nice to go out on your own terms instead of being forced out if you lose form or get injured or whatever,’ Healy said.
‘It’s so hard to keep it going, the physical and mental toll it takes on you. For me, it’s 12 years in a row of high-performance sport, 11 months on, one month off.’
Her coach Shane McCormack has hailed Healy’s ‘amazing durability’ to reach a fifth European Indoors in a row and also race at 12 consecutive Irish indoors championships. He also knows the warrior that lives within Healy and her competitive fire is still burning bright.
Phil Healy in the 2021 women's 400m final.
Knowing that this could be her last time at the European Indoors won’t knock Healy off her stride. It won’t alter her approach either. It was similar at the Paris Olympics last summer when she helped the Irish women’s 4x400m relay team finish fourth – she knew that was her last Olympic Games, but her focus was on her role in the team.
‘For me, Paris was going to be my last Olympics. I was there to compete so in that sense it’s just another championship. Obviously, it’s an Olympics which is massive and I get that, and what we did was crazy, but I am not going in with the mindset of “this is my last ever”,’ Healy explained.
‘This week at the European indoors, whether it’s my first or my last, I am going out there with the same mentality. I am definitely one of the older members of the team; there is a 17-year-old on the mixed relay team so I am bringing the average age down! I have to bring my experience, I am there as a leader, and you have different roles in a team as you get older. For me, this is just another one.’
Healy points to her experience and how she can help the team off the track, as well as on it, but she also explained that running indoors is all about experience, even for her still. At the recent national indoor championships Healy wasn’t happy with how she executed the semi-final. She finished second to qualify for the final, but was annoyed with herself afterwards.
‘If I finished first I would have had lane five for the final, but I switched off too much at 250, and I wasn't ready for the reaction and the change of pace,’ Healy said, as she finished second in her semi-final, just behind Rachel McCann.
In the final, Healy leaned on all her experience to hold off McCann in the battle for the silver medal, as Sharlene Mawdsley raced to gold.
‘Even though I have the experience I still messed up the semi-final. You have to act on your feet when you are running indoors,’ Healy stressed.
‘I had to use my experience in the final, it was definitely a tactical race and I had to run wide. When it comes to 400 indoors, it definitely becomes tactical because you can run wide at times to block off the other runners, that’s where my experience counts.’
Healy also knew she had to perform at the national championships. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have been selected on the Athletics Ireland team for this week’s European Indoors.
‘Because I hadn’t raced before this season I didn’t have a quick time on the board so I knew there was going to be a lot of pressure. Times didn’t matter at the nationals, it was about championship racing and getting those placings,’ Healy explained. ‘After the mess-up in the semi, the final was very important for me – that came down to deciding who will run this week and, probably, who will run at World Relays, so there was a lot of riding on it.’
With Sophie Becker (injured) and Rhasidat Adeleke (unavailable) this week, Healy and Sharlene Mawdsley are the two remaining starters from the Irish women's 4x400 team that finished fourth at the Olympics and won a silver medal at the 2024 European Athletics Championships. Healy hopes both are back in contention for the World Athletics Relays in China in May as that has a knock-on effect for the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo in September. Right now, the focus is on the European Indoors.
‘The mixed is on Thursday and the women’s is on Sunday, both are straight finals and anything can happen,’ added Healy, who would love to bow out of the European Indoors in a blaze of glory.
