Sprint star Israel Olatunde takes nothing for granted ahead of National Indoor Championships

Consistency like that’s usually a precursor to one thing huge, and it might emerge at this weekend’s Nationwide Indoor Championships in Abbotstown, the place Olatunde is favorite for gold within the males’s 60m. However the Dundalk native has been round this scene lengthy sufficient to know that the tiniest error might be deadly to his possibilities.

“When you have a look at the season, I’m the favorite,” he admits. “But when I make any mistake there’s going to be dozens of men lined up able to take benefit.”

Olatunde is aware of all in regards to the calibre of his rivals as he’s lengthy been a pupil of the game. He research the world’s finest sprinters, how they emerge from the blocks, their arm and foot positioning, their shin angles — the difficult method that generates essentially the most environment friendly ahead propulsion.

In current weeks he’s been learning Noah Lyles, the world 200m champion who opened his season with a 6.62 60m final month. Lyles has since hacked that down to six.55, that latter race in Birmingham being one Olatunde has pored over again and again.

“Seeing the best way he comes up within the 60 and has tailored his operating type is inspiring for me to observe,” he says. “That’s one thing I’m attempting to emulate.” 

Olatunde was at all times quick, however wouldn’t have been most individuals’s concept of the subsequent nice Irish male sprinter, which is what his 2021 season started to point. He took up athletics in his first yr at St Mary’s Dundalk, however regardless of knocking on the door a number of instances he by no means received an Irish faculties’ title. Gerry McArdle steered his profession in his youth and Daniel Kilgallon took over as soon as Olatunde enrolled at UCD in 2019.

That summer season, Olatunde had damaged the Irish U18 100m document, clocking 10.63, and final summer season he lowered his finest to 10.41, additionally profitable the Irish senior 100m title on the age of simply 19. Now in his third yr of a pc science diploma at UCD, Olatunde commutes forwards and backwards from Dundalk through the week and zig-zags round Dublin to coach with Kilgallon’s group.

It was there that he grew to become good mates with Rhasidat Adeleke, the reigning European U20 champion at 100m and 200m who, like Olatunde, was born and raised in Eire to folks who emigrated from Nigeria. Since transferring to the College of Texas final yr, Adeleke has taken her huge expertise to a fair larger airplane, setting Irish indoor data at 60m, 200m and 300m in current weeks.

“Even forgetting about athletics, it’s nice to only see your good friend doing nicely and actually chasing the dream,” says Olatunde. “I’m actually blissful for her and I do know she’s going to maintain going all through the season and break extra data.” 

At school, Olatunde solely ever deliberate to pursue a house base for school, however his performances final yr generated curiosity from US recruiters, and he’s nonetheless weighing up a transfer stateside.

The qualifying commonplace for the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade subsequent month is 6.63, and Olatunde has the slimmest margin to search out to attain that. However he received’t be fascinated with the clock on Sunday. “If I am going for the win, every thing else will fall in place,” he says.

Outside, he’s hoping to qualify for the European Championships in Munich, which might require him to interrupt Hession’s Irish document of 10.18 and hit the automated A-standard of 10.16, or else obtain the B-standard of 10.30 and earn a sufficiently excessive world rating. It’s up to now been a bullet begin to the yr. Now it’s about carrying this momentum by means of.

“I’m operating down a dream and simply going the place it leads,” he says. “It’s led me up to now, and the subsequent step is that nationwide title. That will be the cherry on high.”