Lessons learned and some painful perspectives on finishing fourth

Aside from very nearly sending him flying off his e-scooter and headfirst into the Danube River, the chance shout out to Eamonn Coghlan was perfectly timed.

Friday morning in Budapest and my idea to write something about that teasing sense of torment after finishing fourth in a major championship required some further perspective. No better man to provide an insight into that than Coghlan himself?

“That is true,” Coghlan stops to tell me. He is in Budapest for a few days to enjoy the spectacle of the World Championships, 40 years after his own triumph in Helsinki in the 5,000m – after finishing fourth in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, and again in Moscow in 1980.

Coghlan tells me the story of being approached by the American high jumper Dwight Stones, sometime after the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. They’d known each other for years, Stones also competing in Montreal, where he won the bronze medal.

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After missing Moscow because of the American boycott, Stones finished fourth in Los Angeles, at the age of 30. He cleared 2.31m, only to lose out on the bronze medal to Zhu Jianhua from China on the countback. He wouldn’t get another chance.

“Christ almighty, now I know what it feels like to finish fourth at the Olympics,” Stones says to Coghlan; to which Coghlan replies: “Yeah, but you have no idea what it feels like to finish fourth in the Olympics twice!”

After Ciara Mageean and Rhasidat Adeleke both finished fourth on successive nights here in Budapest – Mageean over 1,500m, then Adeleke over 400m – the widely consoling feeling afterwards was they would get another chance. Ideally at the Paris Olympics next summer.

“For me, when you’re dreaming of Olympic gold, and you end up finishing fourth, it feels like a disaster at that moment in time. Then the Olympics moves on, you’re still fourth, and you carry that disappointment through others, if you like.

“But it inspired me, more than anything else, not to give up, which is why when I did win the World Championships gold, and clenched my fists like I did, it felt like a redemption, total fulfilment.”

Still, there are countless tales in the annals of athletics history to indicate things don’t always work out that way. Like Coghlan, Mageean has also now finished fourth twice (missing a 1,500m medal at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin). She’ll be 32 come Paris.

“For Ciara, it’s maybe what I was like going into those Helsinki World Championships,” Coghlan says. “Paris will probably be one of her last hurrahs in terms of going for that medal, and I think this fourth place has only confirmed to her that she belongs right in there.

“She’s got the credentials now, and can say ‘I belong here, next year I’m going to do it’. And I think it will only make her mentally stronger to succeed. But no, it doesn’t always work out that way at all.”

Adeleke unquestionably has age on her side, only 21 on Tuesday, her decision to turn pro in the run to Paris something Coghlan also endorses: “She’s fortunate enough that she has the credentials that allow her to do that. Many athletes turn pro and they’re on their own, don’t get a nickel out of it. After I finished fourth, I was out of the college system, that allowed me to set my own schedule in terms of training and racing.

“So I think it will drive her on, but her income now will depend on her performances. It’s a rough world out there, but Rhasidat is a class act in every sense, and will surround herself with good people.”

Mageean and Adeleke got me thinking again about Thomas Barr, and his perspective on this too, and that night we were somewhere under the Olympic Stadium in Rio.

Barr had just finished fourth in an absolute flat out final of the 400m hurdles. And he was positively beaming, despite missing out on a medal, and coming away with nothing only a quick high-five from the winner, a slap on the back from second and third.

“When I saw the time I was ecstatic, because 47 seconds is ridiculous territory,” he says, complete with that bright, chirpy smile that rarely leaves his face, even when he needs it to. “Maybe I just didn’t execute the perfect race, but I left everything on the track, and I’m thrilled with that.”

I remember my dad texted me later that night to say it was, definitely, Ireland’s closest ever fourth-place finish “by a mile” – which wasn’t much of an exaggeration: the 0.05 of a second which denied Barr that Olympic medal may as well have been a mile, such is the sense of infinite distance that comes with finishing fourth.

For Barr too, that day in Rio also came with the sense his medal chance would come again, sooner if not later. He was just 24, had twice broken the Irish record, his 47.97 seconds in the final within licking distance of Olympic bronze: 47.97 would also have won him bronze in London 2012, and silver at each of the previous two Olympics before that.

With the 2017 World Championships in London already looming, maybe Barr only needed to bide his time. But guess what; things didn’t work out that way. Barr made it to London that summer, only to be struck down by the rampant gastroenteritis, forcing him to withdraw from his semi-final.

Two of the medal winners from Rio, the American Kerron Clement and Turkey’s Yasmani Copello, were trumped by the then 21-year-old Norwegian Karsten Warholm, who after missing out on the Rio final (fourth in his semi-final behind Barr), won the gold medal in 48.35.

There was some redemption for Barr the following year, winning a bronze medal behind Warholm at the 2018 European Championships in Berlin. Since then, though certainly not through lack of effort, he hasn’t made another global final, his national record of 47.97 from Rio still untouched.

Meanwhile his event has moved on to a level previously unimaginable. In 2021, Warholm broke the 29-year-old world record of 46.78, set by the American Kevin Young in the 1992 Olympic final, before improving that again to a crazy fast 45.94 to win the Tokyo Olympic gold.

On Wednesday, Warholm ran 46.89 to become the first man in history to win three World Championship 400m hurdles, while Barr was watching from home, his aspirations for some redemption in Budapest struck out by a torn calf muscle in one of his last training sessions.

That’s some properly painful perspective.