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IRISH OLYMPIAN CILLÍN Greene was on the verge of completing his best-ever season in athletics when the clouds started forming in his life.
He had just returned home from a camp in Spain where the PBs were rolling in. It was a year on from the Tokyo Olympics where he was part of a mixed 4x400m relay who made history for Ireland. Along with Phil Healy, Sophie Becker and Christopher O’Donnell, the team delivered a first-ever appearance in an Olympic final in that event. It was a feat that surpassed the expectations of what they could achieve on the biggest stage of all.
Greene bagged a national 400m indoor title the following February. And with a successful trip to Spain just put down, another hot summer on the track was in the offing for the Galway native.
Maybe his best yet.
But then he fell off his bike, breaking his elbow and wrist while also tearing a tendon in his ankle. A nasty collection of injuries that would take longer than usual to recover from. But this would only be the beginning.
“At the start, we didn’t think it was going to be as bad as it was, and then it just dragged on for so long, and there were a lot more complications with that than we originally thought.
“The tendon took over a year to heal and the wrist break was a lot worse than we originally thought. And we didn’t realise it was broken for a few weeks as well. The whole thing derailed my whole summer and then I started asking, ‘Where am I going with this?’ I had to sit on the sideline last summer; that was really difficult given that I had a good indoor season and had such a successful camp.
“My coach kept telling me that it was all about the bigger picture of Paris, but when you’re being told that so far away from the Olympics, it’s really hard to sit there and be like, ‘Yeah, I want to play the long game’. You just feel like you’re waiting around for these injuries to go away. It feels never-ending.”
The months came and went, as they do with any long-term injury, but another major setback was on the way for Greene: one that would put his life in peril, and push all thoughts of running way out of his mind.
“I was just getting over the worst of the bike accident,” Greene recalls, “and then my lung collapsed. And then it collapsed again about a month later.
“I spent about a month in hospital and I had a few surgeries. That was my lowest point. When I was in hospital, I wasn’t even able to walk and I was completely bed bound. The thought of running seemed so foreign to me and I was asking the doctors when I could run, but they were telling that that was so far down the line, and that I needed to let this heal.
“That was really frustrating because I felt like I’d just sat on the sidelines for so long after the broken bones, and then this was the next thing.”
The two collapsed lungs, along with the surgeries, took an obvious toll on Greene. The simplest of physical tasks wiped him out. Even getting out of bed required the help of three nurses just to get him on his feet.
Returning to the rigours of hardcore middle-distance running wasn’t even a consideration at this point. The goalposts had shifted, his mindset completely rewired to focus on only the basic movements. Walking before running.
But then he got out of hospital. And then he progressed to a point where he could do some fast walking. A few weeks later, he had permission to push on to light jogging. Every degree of forward motion brought some reassurance.
Perhaps this wasn’t the end at all?
“It was a really slow build,” says Greene, “but once I started making real progress and doing actual sessions, that was a few months after the incident, I started to think, ‘Maybe this can actually work?’
“The breaking point where I realised that I might be able to get back to full health again was a camp in Portugal with my training group. That was the first consistent block of training I had for over a year. And while it wasn’t that intense, I got through the whole camp healthy and I made a lot of progress. I think after that, I thought that if I could keep this trajectory going, hopefully I could get back to where I used to be.”
Athletics is an unmerciful sport. Unlike contact sports where strategies can influence the outcome of a game, running is a simpler formula. The training is the tactic. And being a quality runner at international level requires constant upkeep. At searing speed. So, while Greene was trying to retune his body, he was also trying to catch up on the rest who carried on training while he was sick. Important talks about his next move were had.
The option to cash in his chips and call time on an already successful career was there for him. Nobody would have questioned him if this was how he wanted to end things.
“That was definitely a huge conversation that we had multiple times,” Greene recalls.
“While I was sitting out, everyone else was progressing. It was great to see everyone running so well but it’s also really difficult because you want to be there as well. And even when I did get back healthy, for me, it was great because I could run. But everyone else already had over a year under their belt. That was difficult for me and it was hard to find the appropriate mindset because I didn’t want to be bitter about the sport.
“I did have conversations with my coaches a few times where they said that I had achieved a lot in my career and that I could easily pack it in and walk away satisfied with everything. And I definitely did think about it. But after a while, I felt there were too many stones left unturned and a lot of things I still wanted to achieve.”
As Greene started training and racing again, the light started to get in. He went to Belgium this summer where he set a PB over 200m and clocked season’s best times in Sweden and Norway too. At home, he ran at the Morton Games and the National Athletic Championships and came through it all with a clean bill of health. He was always improving but the rebuild wasn’t quite complete yet.
“In the last 50m, the legs just kept falling off,” says Greene. He might not be at the right pitch yet, but he’s back at a stage where he’s enjoying his athletics again.
The indoor season is coming quickly down the tracks and 2024 is where he will start to open his lungs and lengthen his strides. There are lots of little wins to tick off along the way, but the overall goal is clear: Paris Olympics.
“The focus at the moment is getting a really strong winter season under my belt and being able to have a really successful indoor season to set myself up for the Olympics next summer. That’s the golden ticket to getting points to qualify.”
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Written by Sinead Farrell and posted on the42.ie
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