Mawdsley turns World Championship heartache into a positive
By Shane Brophy
Sharlene Mawdsley showed her mental toughness once more as she turned a massive disappointment into a huge positive for herself and her country to help Ireland to a fifth place finish in the Women’s 4x400m Relay final at the World Indoor Athletics Championships in Glasgow, Scotland on Sunday.
The Newport AC athlete suffered bitter disappointment on Friday night after she believed she had qualified for the final of the individual 400m, but not long after was controversially disqualified for a harsh transgression which earned her lots of sympathy from the athletics community.
Mawdsley had been ranked last of the six competitors in her semi-final but after a turbulent end to the first 200 metres, the 25-year-old ran strongly and found herself in fourth place entering the final lap with the first three across the line qualifying automatically for the final.
After a tangle with Gogl-Walli at the 200-metre mark as the athletes broke from lanes and clustered around the third bend, Mawdsley summoned enough reserve to pass the Austrian runner with around one hundred metres to go but her move to claim the inside running line was a sharp one. Mawdsley kept up her forward momentum and crossed the line in third position for what appeared to be a qualification berth for the final in 52.16 seconds.
But when Gogl-Walli completed the race in fourth position, the Austrian delegation were entitled to appeal to the track referee and they were successful in making their case, so Mawdsley was disqualified for breaching the rule on obstruction.
Mawdsley described herself "heartbroken" at the decision on Instragram.
"Thank you for all of the love but I'm so sorry to say I was disqualified for the impediment of another athlete in the race.
“This sport is one of the hardest of them all. The highs and lows feel second to none.”
Director of High Performance at Athletics Ireland Paul McNamara outlined why the decision to penalise Mawdsley was unjust.
"A key factor from our perspective is the outcome of the race. Was the outcome affected by the contact? "We feel in that regard it certainly wasn’t. Sharlene passed the Austrian at speed and had real momentum. She was closing the gap on Lieke Klaver at that stage and was going to finish third or better in that race. The Austrian wasn’t negatively affected. She retained her fourth position, didn’t lose any further ground.”
However, Mawdsley turned the disappointment of missing out on competing in an individual final by joining forces with Phil Healy, Sophie Becker, and Roisin Harrison in the women’s relay where the quartet set a new national record in the semi-finals on Sunday morning to progress to the final as one of the fastest losers, with Sharlene running a storming final leg.
In the final later in the evening, they clocked a time of 3:28.92, which was just factionally outside the national record of 3:28.45 they ran hours earlier to come home fifth of the six teams, with Mawdsley running the second fastest leg of any runner, (only Lieke Klaver of the victorious Netherlands team ran quicker).
The Newport runner spoke of her pride in the team and what they had achieved.
“I never felt pain like that before, I left everything on the track out there,” she said.
“We have a great group of girls involved in the relay squad now and Irish athletics in general is in such a great place, so I think a lot of other teams are going to be watching out for Ireland at future championships”.
This performance continues a remarkable run for Sharlene and the women’s 4x400m relay team, who have now made finals at recent European Championships, World Outdoors, and now World Indoors, and with Rhasidat Adeleke to come in, the team will certainly be targeting a strong performance at the Olympic Games this summer.