This week, the Thoughts for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster consider the theme of ‘Hope’. My contribution reflects on Ciara Mageean’s stunning summer on the track.
You can listen here, or read the full text below.
Ciara Mageean: Hope is a Habit
Laura Muir of Scotland was expected to run away with 1500-metres gold at this summer’s European championships. But as the bell rang out for the last lap, Portaferry’s own Ciara Mageean latched onto her heels. Ciara stalked Laura like a shadow around the bend and along the back straight.
Muir, an Olympic and World championship medallist, was already a five-time European champion. As Ciara matched her step for step, the announcer exclaimed, ‘Muir’s never been challenged like this before!’
If you saw the race, you know that Muir won gold. Ciara followed a few strides behind, claiming silver. Both women lay down on the track, smiling and holding hands.
Ciara also won silver at the Commonwealth Games this summer. And she shattered Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish record for 1500 metres.
Athletes like Ciara Mageean hope for days like these, for those moments when body, mind, and spirit unite, producing peak performances.
But Ciara has had plenty of reasons to lose hope. At 30-years-old, injuries had already cost her other opportunities to win medals.
She might have lost hope after Achilles surgery in 2013. But her coach Jerry Kiernan encouraged her, turning up to watch her training when all she could do was jog for five minutes.
She might have lost hope after the Tokyo Olympics, when she tore her calf days before she was due to compete. Kiernan also died that year.
The author of Hebrews wrote that ‘faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’
A similar sort of faith kept Ciara going. A faith that it was worth it to keep training, day after day, year after year, with little evidence of the medals that she would one day see draped around her neck.
American theologian Stanley Hauerwas was once asked how best to teach children to be Christian disciples. He replied: ‘Teach them to play baseball’.
What Hauerwas meant was that sport teaches us how to hope. Not how to hope in the sense of simply wishing for success. But rather to understand that hope is a long-term habit, patiently built by the same sort of persistence that finally put Ciara Mageean on the podium.
(Image: Ciara Mageean chases Laura Muir at the 2022 European championships. Sourced on Mageean’s Facebook page.)