"I promised myself after 2021 that I would give it everything for the three years to try and qualify for Paris and if it didn’t work out at least I would never look back and say I didn’t try my best.
"But I did and here I am going to the Olympics which is so exciting. I wasn’t leaving that unturned this year, because I didn’t want anyone to take my spot away."
'We have two really strong relay teams' -Paris-bound Sharlene Mawdsley is targeting an Olympic medal pic.twitter.com/e6k3qKTJRp
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) July 11, 2024
While she hadn’t considered herself superstitious, she was leaving nothing to chance. The Newport native warned her mother not to book any flights - "of course she did it behind my back anyways" - and purposefully avoided talking to her coach Gary Ryan about his presence in Paris.
Even the scheduling of events isn’t something she has reeled off just yet, but that is likely to change.
The calendar of events in the French capital will come under the microscope over the coming weeks with Mawdsley, Sophie Becker and Rhasidat Adeleke all potentially available for the mixed relay, women’s relay and the individual 400m.
Adeleke was to the fore in the Bahamas as Ireland secured Olympic qualification in both the women’s and mixed 4x400m, but what path she follows remains to be seen.
The athletics schedule is bookended by the mixed relay and women’s relay - the women's relay final on 10 August falls on Mawdsley's 26th birthday - so what that means for Adeleke in her quest for silverware in the individual event has been the subject of much discussion.
Having run five times in six days at the European Championships in Rome to collect silver (women’s relay) and gold in the mixed relay, Mawdsley’s outlook is pretty straight forward.
"I will go out on the track as many times as I can," she insists, "either before my individual event or after.
"To be an Olympian means everything, and I’m a big team player, I love the relays. So I don’t see why I wouldn’t do it."
With Ireland now firmly established as a relay force, how would she feel if Adeleke decided to skip an event to boost her own chances of success in a tight schedule?
"I think Rhasidat has to make the decision that’s best for her. And I would have no hard feelings at all.
"I don’t think I’m going to be challenging for a gold medal, not this year anyway, so I’m not in that position to be able to say what I would do.
"But I respect her decision regardless of what she does, of course we would absolutely love to have her on the team, that's no secret, but whatever she does is what's best for her."
Mawdsley is looking to bring a little more of her relay fight to the individual party next month, with Rome a reminder of her capabilities with the bit between her teeth.
With gold in the bag from the mixed relay, Mawdsley ran a superb anchor leg (49.76) to power Ireland into the women's final as heat winners just a day after her exploits in the 400m individual final (51.59).
In the final she ran a blistering leg (49.84) and looked capable of overtaking winner Femke Bol before the Netherlands athlete kept her cool on the home stretch.
"That heat of the women’s relay, I was like cruising along and it was 49. I was like, 'if only I could do that in my individual’.
"A rolling start makes your start faster automatically, but I just seem to have that extra edge when I go to a relay. That little hunger, I see the finish line a lot sooner than in the individual."
Can she bring that steely determination into individual?
"That’s what we have been working on the past few weeks, the past few months. There are some races where I’m coming out, ‘yes, I did that’, and other races where I’m like, ‘ooops, I forgot to do that today’. It’s exciting that there are always things to improve on."
Next week she departs on a camp, the last gruelling hard block of training before Paris. With no races between now and then, everything will be put into these few weeks to sharpen up before competing on the biggest stage.
"I’m going in knowing that I’m going to relish every moment, but I do know that I’m going to be bringing my A game," she says.
"I’ll be going in enjoying it but still I’m going to be competitive. I’m not going in to make up the numbers.
"It’s a championships so anything can really happen. I’ll have the relay at the start to hopefully calm my nerves, but I want to be going in running 50.5 (individual), I think that’s kind of in and around where I’m at so I would be disappointed to not show my capabilities that I’m showing in training, in the competition.
"It is an Olympic Games at the end of the day, things will happen but I think the excitement of it all is really going to push me on."
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