KATE O’CONNOR’S Masters dissertation is on how to boost audiences for major championships.
When it comes to Ireland at least, she may well be the answer as well as the one posing the question.
With a European bronze and world silver in pentathlon, the Newry woman has already made her mark on the indoor season.
Now she is gearing up to do likewise outdoors in heptathlon and almost casually mentions she expects to break her own national record of 6,297 points at the World University Games in Germany this month.
O’Connor – speaking from her training camp in Portugal – said: “At the start of the year, I gave myself a couple of goals.
“And I broke them multiple times during indoors, but my obvious goal at World University’s is to break the national record.
“If I finish, that should definitely happen. I’m not really putting a limit on the score I could do, just go out and have a bit of fun, see where I am.
“My first barrier is to break 6500, I’d like to do that at World University Games and then build on it.
“I think I will put together a pretty big score, but I obviously have to go out and do it.”
It will be her last such championship with her dissertation for her post-grad course in Communications and Public Relations due in September.
she said: “It ‘s actually an athletics based dissertation. I’m looking at visibility of the world champs in 2023 and how to kind of boost the audience for other championships in the future.
“It’s been very interesting, looking at it from a different perspective but I can’t wait to get it done to be honest. I’ve it about half done.”
Her exploits, along with others such as Rhasidat Adeleke, Sarah Healy and Mark English, have gone some way to raising the profile of track and field here.
And she admitted she was underprepared for the fallout for her two podium finishes earlier in the year.
She said: “I was probably very naive. I took like three weeks off after World Indoors – ‘I’ll just deal with all the media stuff then, I’ll get all that stuff out of the way and then I’ll just go back into training’.
“And it hasn’t really been like that. It’s kind of like now every week there’s something where people are kind of wanting me to do different things.
“So it’s been busy and I’ve had to change things around a little bit and trying to work out when to say yes to stuff and no to other stuff.”
In the absence of an agent, her father, and coach, Michael has assumed additional responsibilities to deal with the extra demands on her time.
But the impact of her achievements has largely been positive, attracting increased sponsorship to deal with the significant outlay that comes with being a multi-disciplinary athlete.
BIG DEAL
She recently signed a contract with Adidas and the plan is to be a full-time athlete for at least a few years, although she is honest enough to admit that her studies were in a distant second place of late.
After the World University Games, she plans to compete in some individual events, including at the National Championships in a month’s time as she gears up for the World Championships in Tokyo in September.
Javelin is earmarked for improvement, with her personal best dating back to 2025. And world silver medalist Anna Hall’s 800m time of 2:01.23 – a heptathlon world record – as part of a PB of 7032 in Austria last month served as a reminder of how standards are rising.
She said: “Her performance was amazing to watch. I think what she’s done in the 800m has changed everyone’s perspective on what multi-eventers should be running.
“It used to be that if you were running a sub 2:10, you were a great 800m runner. Now it’s going to shift towards having to run 2:05 to be at the races.
“I think that it’ll take another couple of years to be challenging for the top spot. And that’s ultimately my goal.”
O’Connor was speaking as it was announced 123.ie was extending its partnership with Athletics Ireland to 2030 in a multi-annual six figure deal.
