My Best Race, Ciara Mageean, Dublin: Gill Books, 2026
ISBN 978 1 8045 8547 4
When Ciara Mageean completed first within the 1500m on the European Championships in Rome in 2024, little did she understand that it might show to be her final ever important race. Damage pressured a last-minute withdrawal from the 2024 Olympics, and most cancers has now threatened not solely her athletics profession however her very life.
I used to be within the Olympic Stadium in Rome that night time in 2024 to see her win the gold medal simply as I had seen her take silver in Munich two years earlier. I had additionally seen her take silver within the Commonwealth Video games in Birmingham in 2022 and bronze within the European indoors in 2019, together with watching her in 2 Olympics and a lot of Diamond League races. She as soon as gave me time for a correct 1-to-1 interview for a function in RunBlogRun.
As a youngster rising up in Northern Eire, Ciara performed lots of a recreation referred to as Camogie – a bit like ice hockey the place if you happen to can’t hit your opponent with the stick, then getting the ball is an effective second greatest. Later she found her capacity to run.
It is a brilliantly written e book with the previous and current interwoven. The story of her life and athletics profession is included in 14 chapters, with, in between, 3 or 4-page italicized mini-chapters on an incident in the middle of her sickness, virtually as a reminder that the most cancers by no means goes away however dominates the story. The 2 are always inter-connected: “As an athlete with my explicit harm historical past, I’m uniquely effectively geared up to deal with the trauma that most cancers remedy has on the physique. Athletics has given me the bodily and psychological fortitude to deal with lots of this”. The e book title highlights an eventful life in athletics however the very completely different race she is now caught up in.
The surprising most cancers prognosis is described starkly, sparing nothing of the ache and shock – but with the human contact of not sharing the information with household till after Christmas so as to not spoil it.
The profession achievements and disappointments are effectively described with humour and emotion. There may be the irony of the query of whether or not she might name herself a three-time Olympian. In spite of everything, she obtained the accreditation and competitors equipment and made it so far as the village in Paris; she simply by no means made the beginning line.
The method of drug testing for elite athletes is one thing that most individuals don’t know about. Ciara describes a time with an harm when she needed to hold her leg elevated for 50 minutes each hour for 3 weeks. Throughout this era in a lodge, she described being woke up very early within the morning, in her underwear and on crutches, to be drug examined! “How ironic was that? I simply needed to drop out of the Olympic Video games due to an harm. I simply had surgical procedure on it and was nonetheless bleary-eyed with ache, but the drug testers nonetheless turned up”.
This web site is all the time all for connections between sport and religion. Ciara is trustworthy however not sure of her personal place. She identifies as a Roman Catholic, maybe extra culturally than religiously. She writes: “I don’t truthfully know if I nonetheless imagine in God, however I wish to suppose that there’s one thing greater than the right here and now”, including a reference to an individual who died: “I wish to imagine he’s up there someplace and has seen it from afar”. She acknowledges relations gaining energy by means of their religion in robust instances and sees “prayer as an outlet; it provides individuals solace… if it helps individuals… prayer is in itself a type of meditation”.
A compelling story, brilliantly advised. My one reservation was the tedious repetition of the F phrase.
