Shanahan 'at home' as she bids to continue Belfast winning run

Louise Shanahan will come down from a month at altitude in St Moritz to make her outdoor season’s debut at a venue that she loves when she competes in Saturday’s Belfast Irish Milers Meet at the Mary Peters Track.

The Cork athlete, 27, has produced the fastest 800m times of her career over the last two years at the meeting as she went under two minutes on both occasions to beat local hero Ciara Mageean – which included setting a then Irish record in 2022.

Shanahan now knows even more about Belfast having moved to the city a number of months ago to link up with coach Mark Kirk’s training group which includes Tyrone middle-distance talent Nick Griggs.

County Down woman Mageean will not be among Shanahan’s 800m opponents this year but event director Eamonn Christie has still been able to assemble a strong field which includes British 20-year-old Abigail Ives, who became only the fourth British junior to go under two minutes when she clocked 1:59.92 to take second spot behind the Cork woman last year.

Having not raced outdoors so far this season in contrast to 2022 and 2023 where she came into the meeting on the back of the varsity track season in the UK, Shanahan says she is going into Saturday’s meeting “completely cold”.

However, there is a method to her approach as she builds toward producing her very best form at what she hopes will be second Olympic Games, rather than peaking right at the start of the summer campaign.

“It’s going to a busy year with hopefully the Europeans in Rome in June and the Olympics in Paris in August,” Shanahan told BBC Sport Northern Ireland.

“For me, it’s important that (a), I get to those championships, and (b) that I can also perform when I get there. And running your fastest time in May is not the strategy to doing that.”

But the gutsy competitor in her means she will still be determined to secure a three-in-a-row against a field which includes another British sub two-minute runner in Ellie Baker.

The race will be paced over the opening 400m to open the door to another potential sub two-minute winner, with the likes of Baker and Ives looking to lay down early-season markers in the fierce British battle to secure 800m Paris spots.

The Olympic standard is 1:59.30 – 0.22 seconds faster than Shanahan’s personal best set in Belfast two years ago.

The Cork athlete is also currently high enough in the world rankings to earn selection – which was her qualification avenue for Tokyo – although there is a long road remaining in that process.

Louise Shanahan says she wants to compete in a second Olympics so that she can be joined in Paris by her family, friends and support team after they all missed out on the Tokyo Games because of Covid-19 restrictions

Shanahan opted to relocate to Belfast after, by chance, linking up with Kirk’s group in the French Pyrenees last September during a period when she was mixing a training stint with writing her dissertation for her PHD in Quantum Physics at Cambridge University.

“I really enjoyed the training and that was the reason why I ended up going to Mark in Belfast when I finished my thesis.

“Phil Odell at Cambridge had done incredible work to get me from running 2:04 when I went to Cambridge to 1:59 but he’s a university coach and I have the opportunity to run full-time this year which involves things like spending a month up in St Moritz.

“I couldn’t exactly ask Phil to leave the rest of the team to come just with me so it was a very natural or obvious time to find a group that was going on camp and that I could train with.”

Shanahan made her Olympic debut in Tokyo but Covid-19 restrictions meant family, friends and her support team couldn’t experience it with her so she immediately resolved to target another Games appearance in Paris to rectify that.

“I definitely left Tokyo saying ‘that’s great but I want to qualify for Paris as much for my parents, coaches and physios, the huge team around me as much as myself’.”

Her father Ray was a former Irish international athlete and coached Louise prior to her move to Cambridge.

Griggs faces McElhinney over 1500m

Shanahan’s training group colleague Griggs is also returning home from St Moritz to compete in a Belfast meeting which, as ever, will attract athletes from all over Europe – and indeed beyond – with ranking points in the run-up to Paris available because of its World Athletics Continental Challenger Tour status.

An interesting 1500m women’s entry is Mexican Laura Galvan, who set national 1500m [4:03.06] and 5,000m [14:43.94) records in a 2023 campaign which included finishing 10th in the longer event at the World Championships in Budapest.

Galvan will be up against last year’s 1500m winner Dutchwoman Marissa Damink who improved her personal best to 4:05.84 in Italy last week.

Griggs will take on one of his big domestic rivals Darragh McElhinney in the men’s 1500m with the Tyrone man eyeing a tilt at the European Championship standard of 3:36.00 – which is 0.09 seconds inside his personal best set last summer.

The Tyrone talent showed encouraging by clocking his second fastest 1500m of 3:37.38 in difficult conditions in Spain last week as he finished ahead of a host of athletes with faster personal bests when finishes sixth at a meeting in Huelva.

With the Belfast meet featuring track events from 100m to 3,000m, highlights will include the women’s 400m with Phil Healy and Sophie Becker in action after helping Ireland secure 4x400m Olympic qualification at last weekend’s World Relays in the Bahamas.

The meeting will start with junior races from 11:30 BST and will continue until 17:30.