KIERAN McCARTHY caught up with Olympic finalist and European silver medallist Phil Healy to chat about her incredible comeback year
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SHE had dropped subtle hints that, possibly, the Olympic Games in Paris could be her swansong, but Phil Healy knows better than most how quickly it can all change in the world of athletics.
Look at her journey in the 12 months leading up to last summer’s Games – just over one year after Phil ended her season early in August 2023 and withdrew from the Irish women’s 4x400m relay team for the World Athletics Championships because her form was so bad, she lined out in an Olympic final on August 10th with the same team. It’s been crazy, she smiles. Crazy, but remarkable; perhaps that sums up her own story, the farmer’s daughter who has spearheaded Irish women’s sprinting for over a decade.
The dream team of Sophie Becker, Phil Healy, Rhasidat Adeleke and Sharlene Mawdsley after the Olympic final.
From questioning her future in the sport during her challenging 2022 and ’23, the Ballineen Bullet returned to the fast lane in ’24 to enjoy her best year ever. She is the comeback queen.
‘I didn’t know whether my best days in the sport were gone and that’s a hard position to be in,’ Phil admits.
‘I have had unbelievable days, and when you are training day-in and day-out, it does take its toll. I have done this for 12 years in a row, that takes a huge effort and you are missing out on a lot of life things as well. Is it worth it? Is it not?
‘I didn’t know whether I was going to finish post-Paris, but I never got that feeling that I was done now. I am back for one more year, anyway.’
Phil couldn’t walk away from athletics after her exploits in 2024; they all hinted there’s even more to come with the trailblazing Irish women’s 4x400m relay team. To earn her place on the squad she needed to prove she’s still a force – and Phil did. Rising from the depths of her own athletics hell when every step felt weighed down in a mud that wouldn’t let go, Phil challenged her inner warrior spirit to hit top speed again in 2024.
Phil Healy with her silver medal at the European Championships in Rome.
The Ballineen Bullet won her 16th and 17th national senior titles this year, in the 200m indoors and 200m outdoors respectively. Phil and the Irish dream 4x400m women’s relay team of Sophie Becker, Rhasidat Adeleke and Sharlene Mawdsley set a national record of 3:24.38 at the World Relays in the Bahamas in May to qualify for the Olympics.
It got even better: Phil, in the same quartet, won a sensational silver medal at the European Athletics Championships in Rome in June, smashing the Irish record again, this time in 3:22.71. This was Phil’s first major international medal and, 29 years old at the time, it was worth the wait.
It got even better than that: Phil, Becker, Adeleke and Mawdsley pushed Irish women’s sprinting to new heights with a fourth-place finish in the Olympic 4x400m women’s relay final in August – an heroic effort, they missed out on an Olympic bronze medal by just 0.18 seconds, obliterating the national record on the way, moving the dial to 3:19.90. Phil ran her fastest-ever relay split (50.94) in the Olympic final, further proof she is back in business. Coming off a season like that, she couldn’t jog off into the sunset.
‘It was always in the back of my mind,’ she says of retirement.
‘I remember talking to people who said you’ll know when you know, that you’ll get that feeling, that moment, but for now don’t think about it and just enjoy the moment and soak up what is present. That was the perfect way to do it, because if I kept thinking “am I done, am I not”, I could have ended up wasting the current moment.
‘When we came fourth in Paris I didn’t get the feeling that I’m done.’
Phil Healy takes the baton from Rhasidat Adeleke during the Irish women's 4x400m team's record-breaking run at the World Relays in the Bahamas.
The smile is back. So too is the spark. And the speed is there too. Athletics is fun again, and that’s a game-changer. Phil turned 30 in November – no surprise here, but she didn’t mark it in style, no fuss or fanfare – and has been at the top of Irish athletics for over a decade. When she picked up her first senior national title ten years ago, Adeleke was just 11 years old, Mawdsley was 15 and Becker was 16. Those young guns are now posting the fast times, taking Irish women’s sprinting records into new territory but while they have taken the baton off Phil, she loves her latest challenge: to keep her place on the Irish relay team.
‘I am the oldest member of the team and I have been there the longest. There was a time when I was the number one seed, but that’s changing all the time. We need to see that, for Irish sprinting to go to the next level. When I retire I want to see that legacy continue,’ she says.
‘The challenge for everyone is to keep their spot because we know we could be knocked off at any point. Just because I have the most experience it doesn’t mean that I am going to be on the team; everyone is fighting for their spot.
‘When I look back on my career I have been in major championships in the 100, 200, 400, 4x100, 4x400 and mixed relay. I have been there in all the events. I have gone to a major championship every single year since 2013. Sometimes two major championships in the same year. I am one of the only Irish athletes to have competed in major championships in consecutive years for that length of time; it’s been great to be part of that. To be the first Irish woman to go sub-23 seconds in the 200m. To start off the 400m journey and break the barrier by being the first Irish woman sub-52 seconds, and now we see that go from strength to strength.’
Phil’s not finished yet, and that’s one of the reasons she has pushed any retirement thoughts to the background. There’s huge potential in the Irish women’s relay squad, with the likes of Kelly McGrory and Lauren Cadden keen to win a spot on the starting team, so 2025 has the potential to be another big year.
Phil Healy at the Team Ireland homecoming in Dublin after the Olympics.
‘There is great buy-in with the relay team and we have had so many special moments together,’ Phil says.
‘We were fifth at the World Indoors, without Rhasidat. We came second in the Europeans. Then fourth in the Olympics. This team can get even better. Next year we have the European Indoors, World Indoors, World Relays and World Championships so it’s a massive year for the relay.
‘Some years when you come off an Olympics there is very little happening the next year; it could be a lull year, a hard year, but next year is stacked. I definitely want to be part of this relay team and we can have more magical times together and hopefully more silverware too.’
Driven as ever, Phil’s back for 2025, eager to remind us all again that we will never see anyone like the queen of Ballineen (coronated after her incredible homecoming in Enniskeane and Ballineen post-Paris), the West Cork speedster who was the fastest woman in Ireland, the record-setter, the idol, the trailblazer, the two-time Olympic finalist and the resilient woman who never shirked a challenge in her life.
Bring on 2025.
