{"id":197645,"date":"2025-12-18T03:32:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/197645\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T03:32:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T03:32:13","slug":"wexfords-emma-hickey-on-how-the-death-of-her-mother-shaped-her-journey-to-become-european-medallist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/197645\/","title":{"rendered":"Wexford&#8217;s Emma Hickey on how the death of her mother shaped her journey to become European medallist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">16-year-old Wexford athlete, who became Ireland\u2019s first female to medal at the European Cross Country Championships, lost her mother Olive to cancer on Christmas Day last year\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"14 December 2025; Emma Hickey of Ireland celebrates finishing third in the U20 women's race at the 2025 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Lagoa, Portugal. Photo by Sam Barnes\/Sportsfile\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/3d5dbc4c-82f6-4e84-a2e1-4212c5305155.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">14 December 2025; Emma Hickey of Ireland celebrates finishing third in the U20 women&#8217;s race at the 2025 SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Lagoa, Portugal. Photo by Sam Barnes\/Sportsfile<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Wexford teenager Emma Hickey made Irish athletics history at the weekend, becoming the country\u2019s first female U-20 medallist at the European Cross Country Championships. However, behind the podium finish lies a year the New Ross athlete and her family describe as \u201cbittersweet\u201d, marked by personal loss, resilience and quiet determination.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">Speaking exclusively from the principal\u2019s office at St Mary\u2019s Secondary School in New Ross, Emma, who took home the bronze medal from the European Cross Country Championships in Portugal over the weekend, described the response from her friends and family as \u201cunbelievable\u201d. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"16-year-old Wexford athlete, who became Ireland\u2019s first female to medal at the European Cross Country Championships, lost her&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,7675,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-197645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-jessica-oconnor","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}