KATE O’CONNOR DESCRIBED the feeling as “madness” as she became only the third Irishwoman ever to medal at the World Indoor Championships on Tuesday.

O’Connor’s pentathlon silver in Nanjing, China, on Friday afternoon was Ireland’s first medal at the tournament since Derval O’Rourke struck gold in Moscow in 2006, while Sonia O’Sullivan’s got her country off the mark with silver in Paris in 1997.

Friday’s slice of history marked a magnificent fortnight for Dundalk woman O’Connor, with the 24-year-old having earned bronze in the same multi-discipline event at the European Indoors in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, only 12 days ago.

And reflecting on a career-changing couple of weeks following her World Silver in Nanjing, the St Gerard’s athlete said that she hoped her recent success would encourage younger sportspeople to explore more field and multi-sport events.

“It’s madness,” O’Connor said. “I’ve just been on a little bit of a run since the European Championships.

“I really wanted to come in here with a bit of confidence and just go out there and enjoy myself. I’ve been training really hard and I wanted to go out there and make my country proud.

“It was really tough to come here from Apeldoorn”, O’Connor added. “I’ve never done it so close. There was also a huge time zone difference, so it was definitely a challenge. But there are a lot of European girls here today so we’re all in the same boat.

“Winning this medal and the medal a couple of weeks ago will really push multi events forward in the country and let younger athletes see what the options are in athletics. [I] just want to make more people do field events and multi events.”

Former underage star O’Connor became the first ever Irish Olympic heptathlete last summer, finishing 14th in Paris.

O’Connor had finished 13th at the Worlds a year earlier, but 2025 has seen her break new ground at indoor championships which, by her own admission, are not her favourite as they don’t include one of her favourite legs, the javelin.

The Dundalk woman set a new Irish indoor pentathlon record of 4,683 points at the Tallinn Combined Events meeting in Estonia last month before sealing European bronze with a career-best all-round performance in Apeldoorn, winning the 800m (PB) and setting three other personal bests in the long jump, high jump and 60m Hurdles.

In Nanjing on Friday, O’Connor jumped back-to-back PBs in the long jump to put herself in medal contention. She also ran a new PB of 8.30 seconds in the 60m hurdles, all of which left her just three points behind the silver-medal position going into the 800m race.

That meant that O’Connor needed to beat America’s Taliyah Brooks by 0.3 seconds in order to seal second place overall, which she did with relative ease.

Kate O'Connor greets her father and trainer, Michael O'Connor, after winning silver. Nikola Krstic / INPHO Nikola Krstic / INPHO / INPHO

“After the Olympics, I had a bit of a mental reset,” O’Connor said afterwards. “I decided that I’ve already put in a lot of work. We put in the work day in, day out, and I made the decision that if I was going to do it, I was going to do it 100%.

“I was training really well but it’s one thing to train well and [another] to come out and actually do it. I just kind of built on that.

“Indoors have never been a strong-suit for me. The javelin is where I come back with a bang. It’s good that my weaker events have gotten a bit stronger.”

O’Connor vowed to take some time off to “just chill” and “get healthy” after Friday’s momentous achievement, admitting that she was unsure as to which competitions were next up in the calendar.

She is only the seventh Irish athlete to medal individually at a World Indoor Championships, following Marcus O’Sullivan, Paul Donovan, Frank O’Mara, Paul McKee, and the aforementioned Sonia O’Sullivan and Derval O’Rourke.

When asked what her World silver would mean to her father and trainer, Michael O’Connor, who coaches Kate along with Tom Reynolds, the St Gerard’s clubwoman replied: “There are not many father-daughters who get to experience this. This medal is mine and also partly his.”