Name: Darragh McElhinney
Club: Bantry AC
Event: 5000m
Personal Best: 13:02.06
Tokyo Schedule: Fri 19 Sept 12.05pm. Final Sun 21 Sept 11.50am
The formative years
Darragh McElhinney started his juvenile athletics career with Bantry AC in West Cork. His talent was noticed by Steve Macklin an Athletics Ireland high performance coach, who took over his athletics development. At 15 years old he was picked by Macklin to travel to the 2016 Games in Rio as a training partner for Irish pentathletes, Arthur Lanigan O’Keefe and Natalya Coyle. (Macklin also coached Lanigan O’Keeffe). Those two and a half weeks fuelled the motivation and inspiration required to get to that level himself. Later that same year (he had just turned 16), he competed in the European u20 Cross-country Championships, the first of four u20 European and one world cross competitions he would qualify for. He was still at school when he dipped under 14 minutes for the first time in a 5000m race – an Irish record and the first of his age ever to do so. Not even the great John Treacy had managed that feat. In fact, it was many of John Treacy’s long standing records that Darragh had managed to obliterate in his teenage years. On the track his performances over a range of distances from 1500m to 5000m were steadily improving. He secured a bronze medal in the 2019 European u20 5000m. Then it was off to UCD on a sports scholarship where he was coached by Emmet Dunleavy.
Moving on
In 2021 he thrilled a home audience in Dublin with his u23 European Cross-country silver medal, a late comeback almost taking Charles Hicks (GB) on the line. It’s incredible to think that by the age of 22 Darragh competed in a total of six European and one world cross-country.
2022 was a great year for the young Bantry athlete. A rapid 7.45 for 3000m indoors in Metz qualified him for the World Indoors in Serbia. He had entered the world of senior majors. In May of that same year at the IFAM meet in Belgium, McElhinney shaved nine seconds off the 44-year-old 5000m u23 record. Another of John Treacy’s records to fall to McElhinney. European track and field championship qualification ensued, with the now UCD AC athlete finishing 16th in the 5000m final in Munich. Before 2022 had drawn to an end he had set four national u23 records and won three national senior titles (indoor 3000m, outdoor 5000m and national senior cross-country).
That success rolled into 2023 when he finished an incredible 4th at the European Indoor 3000m in Istanbul. While there were some magic moments in 2023, the remainder of the year and through 2024 were not what McElhinney would have hoped for.
The Road to Tokyo
