Olympic star visits their Ballina roots
24-year-old Sarah Healy has represented Ireland at the Olympic Games in Paris and Tokyo. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
European Indoors 3000m champion and Irish 1500m record holder Sarah Healy was in Ballina in recent days to visit family and during her stay, kindly agreed to meet athletes from Moy Valley AC. The club facilitated a question and answers session with Sarah during which she was extremely forthcoming with inspirational advice derived from her experience in athletics.
Sarah recalled her own growth in the sport from the age of 9 right through to her current training as a professional athlete with the M11 track club based in Manchester.
Sarah Healy’s father, Philip, is a native of Ballina while Sarah herself is from Monkstown in Dublin.
A former European U18 and U20 champion at 1500m and 3000m respectively, Sarah has already represented Ireland at Olympic Games in Tokyo and Paris and at World Championships also, including in Tokyo last month. And yet she won’t turn 25 until next February.
The Glasgow Kennedy Centre at the Quay in Ballina was full to capacity as a captive audience of athletes, parents and coaches hung on every word and were eager to get autographs signed and pictures taken afterwards.
Moy Valley AC club members and relatives of Sarah, Eve and Cillian McHale, whose dad Eanna is a first cousin of Sarah, made a presentation to the Irish athletics star in appreciation of her meeting with the club. Moy Valley AC officials were extremely grateful to Sarah for her time and her words of advice to athletes of all ages.
