Mawdsley returns from injury in winning fashion
By Thomas Conway
The very fact that Sharlene Mawdsley was in the mix and competing in last weekend’s suave, new World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest was an achievement, even if the 28-year-old Newport woman looked just a little bit out of her depth.
In her semi-final on Friday night, Mawdsley could only manage a seventh-place finish, clocking a time of 51.28s and crossing the line well behind winner and reigning Olympic and World Champion Marileidy Paulino of the Dominican Republic, before blasting to victory in the final on Saturday in a time of 49.07s.
Given Mawdsley’s driven mentality and indeed her desire to break the 50-second barrier, she will probably have departed Budapest marginally disappointed with her time. However, there are caveats. Her race was stacked to the brim with some of the finest 400 metre runners on the planet. And perhaps more significantly, Mawdsley was only just returning from injury.
The Newport sprinter was enjoying the season of her life prior to sustaining an unfortunate hamstring tear at the National Championships in July. At that stage, she appeared to be on the cusp of shattering the 50-second barrier, having recorded a personal best of 50.06 on her Diamond League debut in Paris. However, the hamstring tear torpedoed her European Championship hopes and Mawdsley only returned to the track on Tuesday of last week, bouncing back in style to secure a win at the Palio Città della Quercia meet in Rovereto, Italy, in a time of 50.58s. While that result would have boosted her confidence ahead of Budapest, the combined effects of travel fatigue and a lack of competitive action in her legs may have eventually caught up with her.
Asked to describe her season in one word following her race on Friday night, Mawdsley chose “grit”, saying that she didn’t expect to get to Budapest on account of her injury.
“It has been hard. This sport is hard, being injured is hard, but there’s more to life than this, so I’m just trying to dig in and hold strong,” she said.
Alongside Mark English and Rhasidat Adeleke, Mawdsley was one of three Irish athletes to secure a ticket to the inaugural Ultimate Championship – a newly created, star-studded, end-of-season invitational with a total prize pot of $10 million and individual awards worth $150,000 for each event winner.
European Championship silver medallist Adeleke failed to progress from her semi-final in the 200m on Sunday. English, however, fresh from his European success in Birmingham, set a new personal best of 1:42.78 to finish sixth in a scorching 800m final on Sunday night. The race was ultimately won by Algerian Djamel Sedjati, who, like all the winners, was presented with a trophy made out of stone. No medals were awarded for second and third-place, one of the many distinct features of the competition.
Designed to broaden the appeal of athletics globally and maximise the sport’s media exposure, this inaugural edition of the Ultimate Championship will probably be registered as a success. All the stars were there, including Mondo Duplantis, who triumphed in the pole vault, Jakob Ingebritsen, who stormed to victory in the 5,000m, and Great Britain’s Josh Kerr, who took gold in the 1500m.
While the track was its customary orange in colour, the field was dyed black and the sand-pit for the long-jump was pink.