MANX EYES ON OLIVE WHEN SHE TOOK SILVER IN BERLIN
Olive pictured during the mid-stages of the race, working hard but in complete
control. The 2k lap to the immediate east of the Brandenburg Gate is in the
former Russian part of the city, and there are still some tangible reminders of
that including the Aeroflot Headquarters (photos by Gail Griffiths).
The highlight of my week in Berlin with Gail at the World Athletics Championships was witnessing the superb silver-medal
winning performance by Ireland's Olive Loughnane in the women's 20k walk last
Sunday, writes David Griffiths. Olive is well known to many Manx race walkers as she has visited the
island several times since 1996 to take part in the annual early-season Manx
Open Meeting (formerly the Manx Airlines meeting) at the NSC. Her most recent
visit was in 2006, when, although several months pregnant, she still came over
to support her sister Ann and to enjoy the night out at Coasters
afterwards.
Since her maternity break from the sport 3 years ago, Olive has taken her performances onto a new level. In 2008 she broke
through the 90-minute barrier for 20k for the first time before producing a
phenomenal performance in the Olympic Games in Beijing. Her time of 87.45 broke
the previous Olympic record - but amazingly on that particular day this was only
good enough for 7th place! Her richly
deserved reward came in Berlin last week when she produced the performance of
her life to land the silver medal. In hot (31C) and humid conditions, which
reduced several of her rivals to a state of collapse, Olive looked in complete
control right the way through the race.
The first 10k was relatively sedate, and Olive was in the leading group of around 12 athletes at halfway. The brilliant young Russian Olga Kaniskina then put the
hammer down and pulled rapidly away into an unassailable lead, whilst Olive
remained at the front of the chasing group that gradually started to break up as
the pace got faster and faster. By the 8th lap this group was down to 3; by lap
9 Olive and the Chinese athlete Liu Hong had broken away from the 4th placer.
The excitement and anticipation at the realisation that Olive was now odds-on to
win a medal was almost unbearable. On the 10th and last lap, Olive produced a
final heroic effort to break the resistance of the Chinese athlete to confirm
the silver medal - a wonderful, wonderful performance. She actually reduced the
gap on the winner significantly towards the end, and recorded the fastest final
5k split time of the entire field. Her second 10k was around 2 minutes faster
than the first 10k - a spectacular 'negative split' if ever there was
one!
Olive is an absolute credit to her country and to her sport, and deserves every bit of success she gets. Many of her family were at the finishing line to greet her,
including her husband Martin, her parents and three of her
brothers. Ireland's national race walking coach Michael Lane was, not surprisingly, a picture of joy afterwards. Shortly after the race Olive
phoned home to speak to her 3-year-old daughter Eimear, and told her she had won
a silver medal. Eimear's reply was apparently something like "I can't talk now
mummy, I've got to go out and play"! She's obviously inherited her mum's very
focussed and down-to-earth attitude!
The highest compliment I can pay to Olive's performance is that Usain Bolt's incredible 9.58 clocking in the 100 metres
Final later that day did not even come close to being the highlight of the day
for me! Congratulations Olive - bring on London 2012!!
Great Britain's Jo Jackson started strongly and held onto the leading group for
the first 3 laps. After receiving 2 cards from the judges she dropped back, but
unfortunately received a 3rd card resulting in disqualification at around the
10k mark. Gail and I sat with her parents and elder sister Sarah on the plane
from Liverpool to Berlin. Sarah has been to the Isle of Man twice, once for the
Easter Festival about 10 years ago and once for the Manx Open Meeting in 2007
when she competed in the 10k run.
Olive on the final 2k circuit, on which she powered away from Chinese athlete
Liu Hong to take a fantastic 2nd place. The was plenty of Irish support all
along the course as can be seen here. There was also plenty of vocal Manx
support for Olive - I was nursing a sore throat for the rest of the day and was
delighted to do so!
An overjoyed Olive is about to greet the Irish contingent in the winners
enclosure at the Brandenburg Gate a few minutes after the end of the race. Other
competitors were collapsing in the heat at the end of the race, but Olive
remained cool as a cucumber throughout. It must be something to do with the
climate in the west of Ireland!.
This photo captures history in two very different ways. The first is of course the
world-class athlete in the foreground, who has just written her name into World
Athletics Championships history. The other is the thin line of cobblestones
running across the photo just to the right of the white line in the road. This
marks the course of the Berlin Wall that divided the city from 1961 to 1989.
Olive is standing in what was formerly East Berlin; everyone else in the photo
is in the former West
Berlin. The journalists at the back of the press box in
the background are sitting in almost the exact spot from which American
President Ronald Reagan delivered his famous speech in 1987 - “Mr Gorbachev,
open this gate, tear down this wall!”
Olive pictured on the big screen at the Olympic Stadium during the medal
ceremony later that evening. The ceremony took place in front of a huge crowd
shortly before Usain Bolt's sensational performance in the 100 metres
Final.
- It was an absolute privilege for Gail and I to be invited to celebrate with
Olive, her family and friends in an Irish Bar in Berlin later that night. She
may now be a star of world athletics, but she remains exactly the same modest,
down-to-earth and friendly person that she was when she first visited the Isle
of Man as a novice race walker 13 years ago. Amongst her friends celebrating
with her that night was former Australian race walking star Jane Saville (triple
Commonwealth Game gold medallist and Olympic bronze medallist in 2004), When I
told her I was from the Isle of Man she immediately asked after Steve and Cal
Partington!
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