Rhasidat Adeleke paid tribute to her home crowd at Morton Stadium as the Olympic-bound runner broke the Irish 100m record.
Adeleke won gold at the National Championships in a time of 11.13, beating Sarah Lavin into second place and breaking the 11.27 record that Lavin had set last year.
The Tallaght runner now holds every single Irish women’s sprint record and she going into the meeting had made no secret that the 100m record was her target.
Speaking to RTÉ Sport afterwards, Adeleke admitted that she wanted to give her home crowd something special, to thank them for their support this year.
“I feel really good, oh my God, the crowd is amazing,” she said. “Just coming out and seeing so many people out here for an athletics competition, I absolutely love it and it definitely riled me on to go on and break the record.
“I feel like I was like at the Europeans or World’s, literally. There’s so many people here, so many people turned out for me and it really helped me appreciate what I’ve done and just having some people who are supporting me, it means the world.
“I love competing in Morton Stadium at the Nationals. It’s very important to me to come back home and make sure I put on a performance for everyone who’s been supporting me throughout the season.
“I didn’t really know what I was going to do. I haven’t been doing that much speed work, I’ve been trying to focus on the 400m. But to be able to come here and get the national record, 11.13, I’m really happy with that.”
With the Olympics now less than a month away, the National Championship served as an ideal tune-up for Adeleke and with Paris looming, she’ll review her performance with coach Edrick Floreal before thoughts fully turn to the summer games.
“I’m going to have to see what Flo says. Because sometimes I think OK, that was great. And then he’s like ‘no you did this wrong, you did that wrong’. But I think he’ll be happy with that considering it’s not the hottest of days, but it’s still nice out today. So I think he’ll be happy.”
The sensational Rhasidat Adeleke thrills the crowd at Morton Stadium as she wins a high-quality women’s 100m in a new Irish record at the National Athletics Championships #RTEsport pic.twitter.com/bvXtJNVUAN
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) June 30, 2024
