Sharlene Mawdsley on embracing her femininity on the track

Olympic athlete Sharlene Mawdsley is on a mission to get the Irish public running.

Teaming up with SPAR* ahead of the European Athletics Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn in March, she hopes to encourage the nation to embrace the benefits of her sport.

"You can do it anywhere," she insists, "you don't have to be at a track, you don't have to be on grass, you can just put on your runners and go."

"You'll never come home feeling worse. I'll always feel tired but I'll always feel so happy that I've got it done. It doesn't even have to be a run, go for a walk - it's not a competition... except, maybe, for me," she laughs.

"Starting off, it's about getting step one done and enjoying the process and tracking your own progression," she says, adding that a good running playlist on Spotify will help the time fly.

While running clubs and Strava stats certainly seem to be popular with the over 30s these days, Mawdley hopes to see an uptick of young girls lacing up their runners.

According to research from Sport Ireland in 2023, the drop-out rate for teenage girls participating in sports continues to be of "significant concern", with 30% fewer girls involved in sports at secondary school level than in primary school.

As a sporting icon working towards the 2028 Summer Olympics in LA, the Tipperary woman says that it has been encouraging to see female athletes finally garnering some of the attention they deserve from the media.

"I think female athletes have been pushed a little bit more over the past couple of years to try and keep young girls in sport," she says.

"You can see the drop out rate as girls become teenagers, so it's really great to see that, you know, the likes of Rhasidat [Adeleke], Ciara Mageean, Katie Taylor, Kellie Harrington - they're just creating this great image for Ireland and for sport."

"Even with the Irish relay, we go out with our hair and our make-up done," she continues. "We're kind of glamourising sport in a way. I think it's nice to see that you can do both. You can show of that girly side and also be really competitive and agressive in your sport as well."

Sharlene Mawdsley, Rhasidat Adeleke, Sha'Carri Richardson, Jordan Chiles, Stacey Flood, Mona McSharry, and Ilona Maher are just a handful of world-renowned athletes who have brought a touch of glamour to their fields in recent years.

Whether it be intricate nails, colourful hair accessories, or eye-catching jewellery, it's clear that these sporting stars are embracing their femininity, allowing it to fuel them for competition.

"It's our going out," she explains. "Before we go out for a race, we're doing our hair, we're doing our make-up. That probably takes two hours before our race but, at the same time, that distracts us from thinking about what we have to do that day."

"I think it's showing off our personalities as well," she adds. "We do like to look nice and we do like to feel our best so why not do that when we're on the running track?

"I don't think it was a conscious decision that we wanted to do that but I feel like: 'look good, feel good, run fast'.

Despite her undeniable success as a sprinter (she smashed the national record in the women's 4x400m relay with Sophie Becker, Rhasidat Adeleke, and Phil Healy at the Paris Olympics in 2024) she admits that she will still get comments criticising her looks.

"Of course we get comments like, 'If they spent less time doing their make-up maybe they'd run faster'," she says.

"You're always going to have people like that but I think the reality is that if you see me on a random Saturday, you're going to see me with my hair and make-up done, so why not see it when I've put in all this hard work?

"I'm going to look my best when I've put all that work in."

*To be in with a chance to jet off to Apeldoorn with a friend on a VIP 4-day trip, simply go for a run or jog of any distance, take a screenshot on their running app of choice, and post it to Instagram using #TeamSPAR.