Now, the 23-year-old Longford athlete is a world finalist. Now, the UCD student has shown he can beat a world champion. Now, he\u2019s the fastest Irish 800m athlete of all time.<\/p>\n
And now he can really dare to dream.<\/p>\n
With a performance plucked from a different stratosphere \u2013 relative to all he\u2019d done before coming to Tokyo \u2013 McPhillips outran many of the world\u2019s best to win his 800m semi-final in an Irish record of 1:43.18 at the Japan National Stadium in Tokyo on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
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His ecstasy, however, meant utter agony for Mark English, who had produced a fine performance himself to come home third in the first of three semi-finals, clocking 1:45.47. That was not enough to advance as a non-automatic qualifier, with McPhillips leading the first seven men in the race that followed to quicker times. It meant English had to sit and watch as the 32-year-old lost not only his Irish record, but what is likely his last shot at a global outdoor final.<\/p>\n
As cruel as the championships have been to English, who was beaten only by two Olympic medallists, they\u2019ve been oh-so-kind to McPhillips, who came in ranked outside the top-40 in the 800m but who will go into Saturday\u2019s eight-man final \u2013 at 2.22pm Irish time \u2013 as a genuine medal contender, having powered to victory in both his heat and semi-final.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty nervous for the first race, I just wanted to make the semis and in my mind, that was the main box checked,\u201d he said. \u201cEverything else was a bonus. I\u2019m not even nervous for these races, to be honest. I see this as a bit of a free hit.\u201d<\/p>\n
McPhillips, the European U-20 1500m champion in 2021, missed a whopping 11 weeks of training following the European Indoors in March and cross-trained on the elliptical machine for up to three hours a day, building a huge foundation of fitness which now appears to be bearing fruit.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever I run this year is hopefully going to be the floor, not the ceiling, in terms of what I do as this year hasn\u2019t been optimal,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a full understanding of what was needed and I\u2019ve been tweaking and learning throughout the year. I went back to a first-principles approach. My coach, Joe Ryan, did a great job making sure I was peaking coming into this.\u201d<\/p>\n
McPhillips had been ultra impressive in his heat but few expected him to contend for the win in his semi-final, given the calibre of opposition, with four men who had run 1:42, while his previous best was outside 1:44.<\/p>\n
But the Longford man was class and calmness personified as he coasted through 400m in 51.92 seconds, running in fifth place, before surging up to second as they entered the final turn. He swept to the front coming off the final bend and claimed victory ahead of Britain\u2019s Max Burgin (1:43.37) and the 2019 world champion Donavan Brazier (1:43.82).<\/p>\n
And now a whole new whole world of opportunity has opened in front of him. Ireland has not won a medal on the track at this event since Sonia O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s triumph in 1995. It hasn\u2019t won a medal of any kind since Rob Heffernan\u2019s race walk gold in 2013. He remains an underdog, but now nothing is off the table.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve run each of those races like they had been a final and I\u2019m going to have to do the same again,\u201d he said. \u201cWith three rounds, it\u2019s going to be tough. But it\u2019s nice going into a race when you know the worst you can do is eighth in the world. I\u2019ll recover as best I can. I\u2019m just going to go for it, and see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
His time, which was run amid steady rainfall at the Japan National Stadium, broke the 1:43.37 national record that English set in Budapest. For English, there was more frustration on the global stage as he again came up just shy of a world final, something that has repeatedly eluded him despite being a five-time European medallist.<\/p>\n
With only the first two to advance from each race, the Donegal man came home third behind Canada\u2019s Marco Arop (1:45.09) and Algeria\u2019s Djamel Sedjati (1:45.09). After a steady early pace, Arop towing them through 400m in 52 seconds, English found himself down in fifth but he used his ample speed to sweep to the front with half a lap to run, leading as they turned for home. He was soon passed by Arop and Sedjati but held on well to hit the line third, which ultimately would not be enough.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, US superstar Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone smashed the American record to win the women\u2019s 400m in 47.78, going close to Marita Koch\u2019s world record of 47.60 which has stood since 1985. Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino was second with 47.98 while Bahrain\u2019s Salwa Eid Naser took bronze with 48.19.<\/p>\n
World Athletics Championships, Tokyo \u2013 Live, RT\u00c9 Two, 11.45am; BBC Two, 10am<\/p>\n
Irish in action, Friday (all times Irish)<\/p>\n
9.33pm: Kate O\u2019Connor, heptathlon 100m hurdles<\/p>\n
10.20am: Kate O\u2019Connor, heptathlon high jump<\/p>\n
12pm: Brian Fay, men\u2019s 5000m heats<\/p>\n
12.19pm: Andrew Coscoran, Darragh McElhinney, men\u2019s 5000m heats<\/p>\n
12.30pm: Kate O\u2019Connor, heptathlon shot put<\/p>\n
1.38pm: Kate O\u2019Connor, heptathlon 200m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now, the 23-year-old Longford athlete is a world finalist. Now, the UCD student has shown he can beat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[16452,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-29186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-cathal-dennehy","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29186","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=29186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}