ELLEN KEANE WAS still smiling. She had just finished fourth, having set out to defend her Paralympic title. She kept a brave face until her media duties were coming to a close.
“I’m probably going to cry now,” Keane, who is retiring after these Games, concluded.
In all, she appeared at peace with the gut-wrenching SB8 100m Breaststroke final result.
But as she confronted the end of her swimming career, her voice broke and the tears came.
“I have had a great career. I love the Paralympic Games and everything that it is, so I just want to enjoy being here, and the fact that my family and friends are here is really special.”
She will swim again on Tuesday, but here, Keane was 0.19 of a second off a fairytale podium ending at her fifth and final Games.
16 years on from her debut as a wide-eyed 13-year-old in Beijing, Keane is ready for the next chapter. She has been for some time.
“When you win the gold medal and you reach the top, it is hard to kind of find the motivation,” the 29-year-old Dubliner admitted.
“In Ireland, swimming is very much a young person’s sport. There are only five or six us overall who are over the age of 26, so it can be quite lonely. I do get on really well with the girls on the team, but I have kind of been missing that the past three years.
“It was a long three years. Longer than I thought it would be.”
Those words resonate further with 19-year-old Róisín Ní Riain winning her first Paralympic medal just befforehand. Ní Riain is in the infancy of a career full of potential, while Keane calls time on one in which she achieved it all.
The circle of life, and sport. The torch passed on a night of agony and ecstasy at La Défense Arena.
Keane watched Ní Riain’s race in the call room, screaming at the TV. “I’m really glad she was able to get the medal for Ireland,” she smiled amidst her own heartache.
Keane had pulled her headphones back to hear the crowd before her successful heat, but they were firmly in place with her hood up as she walked out for the final.
She was blocking out the noise and emotion, but a huge Irish cheer greeted her at La Défense Arena. Keane’s parents wore green suits among a big congregation of family, while Irish Olympic pentathletes Natalya Coyle and Arthur Lanigan O’Keeffe were among others supporting. Several shouts of ‘Gwan Ellen!’ broke the pre-race silence.
Keane started well and soared into contention. She was third at the turn, and for most of the race, although generally, she had no sense of her positioning. She was neck-and-neck with Viktoriia Ishchiulova, a Russian competing under the neutral banner.
30 metres or so to go, Keane began to fade. The tank was emptying. Her legs going.
She knew.
“Oh my God, I could feel it.”
She tried to push through, stretch out her stroke, but the finish just wasn’t there.
Ishchiulova touched the wall first for a somewhat unlikely bronze.
Agony.
Spain’s 16-year-old world champion Anastasiya Dmytriv stormed to gold in 1:19.75, while Great Britain’s Brock Whiston had to settle for silver.
Keane, in physical and emotional pain, looked at the board.
1:24.69.
Slightly slower than her heat. Well below her personal best. But she had nothing more to give. Like her career outright.
“If I got out of the water and I still had energy and still was able to walk, I think I would be annoyed at myself but there is nothing more I could have done there,” she reflected minutes later.
“I gave it my all and really tried. I obviously would have loved to have made the podium on my last Games but it just wasn’t to be.
“That’s sport.”
How cruel it can be.
