{"id":360075,"date":"2026-03-23T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T00:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/360075\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T00:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T00:01:10","slug":"kate-oconnor-makes-light-of-injuries-to-win-bronze-at-world-indoor-championships-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/360075\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate O\u2019Connor makes light of injuries to win bronze at World Indoor Championships \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s one measure of how far and fast Kate O\u2019Connor<\/a> has ascended the global athletics stage that she can battle her way to the bronze medal in the pentathlon at the World Indoor Championships<\/a>, yet still harbour some feelings of regret.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another measure entirely that O\u2019Connor did it without being at her absolute best. By her own admission she has been nursing a couple of tricky injuries in recent weeks, as well as shouldering some considerable pressure and expectation, well before the battles even started here.<\/p>\n

Instead, she simply rose to each of those challenges right through to the fireworks of an 800 metres finale in Torun, Poland \u2013 the 25-year-old Dundalk athlete unrelenting in her now irrepressibly competitive style.<\/p>\n

In the end O\u2019Connor still backed up her breakthrough season in brilliant fashion \u2013 winning a fifth successive championship medal in just under 13 months, and further reinforcing of her star status as one of the most consistent multievent specialists in the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it awful that I\u2019m a little bit disappointed in myself?\u201d said O\u2019Connor, who rounded off her five events by clocking 2:10:26 in the 800m, another indoor best, to leave her in the bronze medal position on 4,839 points \u2013 smashing her own Irish record in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came in here and wanted to win the gold. I suppose that\u2019s the competitiveness in me coming out. And I have to check myself a little bit and say, \u2018come on, Kate, you just did a national record there, and came away with another global medal\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"Ireland’sIreland\u2019s Kate O\u2019Connor in action in the Pentathlon 60m Hurdles at the World Athletics Indoor Championships. Photograph: Morgan Treacy\/Inpho <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I am proud. But, yeah, I\u2019m competitive and I want more, and I think it\u2019s a great thing that I want more. I think I carried myself really well today, I dealt with a lot of things behind the scenes that were pretty tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brilliantly in-form Sophie Dokter from the Netherlands wrapped up her gold medal on 4,888 points, with gold medal favourite Anna Hall from the US moving herself ahead of O\u2019Connor in the last event, winning the 800m outright in 2:06.32, and finishing on 4,860 points in the silver medal spot.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor won silver at these championships last year, then added another silver behind Hall in the heptathlon at the World Championships in Torun. But as she reflected further on her injury problems in recent weeks, everything about her performance underlined her ability to deal with whatever obstacles come in her way.<\/p>\n

\u201cGosh, it was just on and off,\u201d O\u2019Connor said of her recent injuries. \u201cWith the knee I couldn\u2019t literally walk, had to take a week and a half off. A week after Nationals [last month]. I have a cartilage defect, the same knee that I hurt in Tokyo. It\u2019s not a reinjury, it\u2019s just something I\u2019ll deal with. It\u2019s one of those things, if you want to win gold medals, you\u2019ve got to run that red line.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I\u2019m not going to lie, it\u2019s been really stressful. I even came here with a stye in my eye, which I\u2019ve never had before, so I that tells you I have been stressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inevitably it all came down to the 800m, the four lap race ultimately deciding the medal destinations: Hall needed to beat O\u2019Connor by at least two seconds to move into silver, and made sure of that when blasting though 400m in 59 seconds. Her 2:06.32 was also an indoor best. The 23-year-old Dokter nailed fifth in 2:12.27, still plenty enough to take gold, upsetting Hall on this occasion.<\/p>\n

Still channelling all her nervous energy exactly the way she wanted, O\u2019Connor\u2019s tally bettered her Irish record of 4,781, set when taking bronze at last year\u2019s European Indoor Championships.<\/p>\n

\"KateKate O’Connor competes in the Women’s high jump pentathlon. Photograph: Michael Steele\/Getty <\/p>\n

In the penultimate event, another superb effort of 6.38m by O\u2019Connor in the long jump moved her into the silver medal position: \u201cA few events, like the high jump didn\u2019t really go to plan. And then, yeah, I slipped on some cables on one of the attempts. But a few events I was really with, like the long jump. I think that I dealt with the pressure there really well after failing that first attempt.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor had finished the opening session earlier on Sunday by breaking new ground in the shot put, her third and final throw of 14.70m, a second successive best, leaving her on 2,909 points at that stage. Dokter and Hall were some way off O\u2019Connor here, Dokter producing a best throw of 13.92, before Hall managed 14.23 with last throw, a critical performance by her.<\/p>\n

Shortly before, in the high jump, O\u2019Connor had first moved herself into the bronze medal position after the opening two events, a critical clearance at her third attempt at 1.81m keeping her in contention for a podium position. In her opening event, O\u2019Connor\u2019s fifth place in the 60 metres hurdles had left her in joint fourth position overall, her 8.23 seconds just off her recent lifetime best of 8.21 seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully, I\u2019ll just continue building,\u201d she added. \u201cI think that the sky\u2019s the limit for me. I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know where I\u2019ll go, but I\u2019ll keep working really hard behind the scenes and hopefully change the colour, and move upwards again next time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Starting just after 10am local time and finishing just after 8pm, it made for a stressful 10-hour day inside the competition mindset \u2013 and all in the most demanding and attritional of track and field events.<\/p>\n

Torun may be famous as the gingerbread capital of the world, but O\u2019Connor is returning home with something far more substantial, and a little more tasty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s one measure of how far and fast Kate O\u2019Connor has ascended the global athletics stage that she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,14940,112,161450],"class_list":["post-360075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kate-o-connor","tag-sports","tag-world-athletics-indoor-championships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360075","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=360075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}