CITY TRIBUNE
All-rounder Brassil aims for Tokyo after European team silver medal
Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon
After securing a silver medal with the Irish women’s pentathlon team at the European Senior Championships in Hungary recently, Sive Brassil’s dream of representing Ireland at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo is increasingly looking like it can become a reality.
Since winning the Spanish Open in 2015, the Ballinasloe native has steadily been climbing the world rankings but she says the silver medal at the recent European Championships, which she claimed alongside team-mates Natalya Coyle and Eilidh Prise, is one of her finest achievements yet.
“It was really good. The three of us were delighted,” recounts Irish modern pentathlete Brassil, who is home in her native town on a well-earned summer break.
“What was even better was the next day we saw Michael D. Higgins had tweeted about us. That just put the cherry on the top of the cake. We were over the moon with that.”
Overall, Coyle had finished fifth in the individual standings with Prise 11th and Brassil 21st. For all three, it was their highest-ever finish at senior European level, resulting in Ireland finishing just behind team gold medallists Hungary and ahead of third-placed France.
For Brassil, it was the perfect tonic in a year disrupted by injuries. “I could tell my fitness was fully back after the injuries. I qualified really easily for the final, which I was delighted with, and then in the final, the first half of my fencing went really well and I was really excited.
“However, then the second half (of the fencing), I lost almost every single hit so I ended up with a very average fence which put me out of the place I would have liked to have been in. But, my swim was very strong, I had a good ride and then I had a really good run-shoot at the end. So, I finished 21st overall which wasn’t what I was hoping for but considering how poorly the day started, it was okay.”
In any event, the competition will surely stand to her ahead of her next challenge, the World Championships in Mexico in September. On the back of her European silver medal, Brassil will be hoping she can drive on from this and replicate – and maybe even surpass – her results in World Cup events earlier this year.
In February, she finished 14th at the first of four World Cup qualifiers in Los Angeles before securing the exact same placing – 14th – in the second qualifier in Cairo, Egypt the following month.
“Both of those were my first top 15 finishes (at senior elite level). So, I was delighted,” she continues. “It meant I had now qualified for the World Cup final after doing just two rounds, which was great, because it gave me a chance to take a breather.
“I was planning on going to the fourth event but I then had a couple of injury problems. I ended up getting a calf tear and then just when it was better I sprained by ankle so I didn’t end up going to the fourth.”
She returned to full health though just before the World Cup final in Kazakhstan in June but without the stable diet of full-on training behind her, it proved difficult. “It was a bit of a disappointment even though, obviously, I had been injured and I hadn’t a good block of training done before it.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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