Loughnane sets her sights on top eight finish

CIARAN TIERNEY

HER experience of finishing in seventh place at the Beijing Olympics and subsequent silver medal at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin have established walker Olive Loughnane as one of the genuine medal contenders on the Irish team for the London Games.

Only one other member of Team Ireland, fellow walker Robert Heffernan (Cork AC), is set to match her achievement of appearing in four consecutive Olympic Games when the athletics events begin in earnest next week.

Loughrea native Loughnane, who has lived in Cork for some years, was one of the few Irish athletes to emerge from Beijing with a truly creditable performance four years ago.

She beat her own personal best time in the 20km walk – and her old Irish record by 90 seconds – thanks to a storming finish in which she moved up the field from 13th to seventh position, in heavy rain.

Two years later, there was even more joy for the Loughrea woman when she finished 49 seconds behind defending champion and Olympic gold medallist Olga Kaniskina (Russia), who won the World Championships final in a time of one hour, 28 minutes, and nine seconds.

Loughnane’s own personal best time is 1.27.45 and, like fellow Galwegian Paul Hession, she has had over a year to concentrate on London 2012 since achieving the qualifying time for the Olympics in Dublin in June of last year.

Now 36, Loughnane has a brilliant record in major championships and is relishing the prospect of competing in London after already representing her country at the Sydney, Athens, and Beijing Games.

Her seventh place in Beijing was her best performance at the Olympic Games, as Olive finished 35th at Sydney in 2000 and failed to finish in Athens in 2004. Her silver at the World Championships was the highlight of her career.

The Athens final was the first time in her career in which she failed to complete a walk in a major championship. She had been feeling unwell the night before the race and dropped out, in some distress, just past the 12km mark. Olive made up for the frustrations of that race with her superb performance in Beijing four years later.

The 20km walk is a notoriously unpredictable event, as conditions and courses can vary considerably from one event to another, but Loughnane should clearly relish the fact that conditions in London will not be a million miles away from what she’s used to on the streets of Cork throughout the year.

Her chosen sport is an extremely technical discipline, which rewards endurance and technique. Athletes from Russia have tended to dominate the event, in which competitors must have a foot on the ground at all times, in recent years.

Loughnane joined Loughrea Athletic Club as a youngster and was a leading cross-country runner in her teens. Coaches Mary Barrett and Martin Collins introduced her to the sport of walking at the age of 19, and she soon found that she had a natural ability for the event.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.