Rhasidat Adeleke’s first appearance on The Late Late Show left a very strong impression with the RTÉ viewers watching from home. The Tallaght flyer capped a momentous year by paying a visit to the studio in Dublin 4 for a chat with host Patrick Kielty. Aside from discussing her relationship with pop music icon Rihanna , Adeleke looked back over a successful but difficult season that saw her finish fourth in her 400m final at the Olympics.
That came coupled with the 4x400m women’s relay team also coming fourth; meaning the budding superstar missed out on two medals in the most heartbreaking fashion possible. Adeleke, nevertheless, ‘oozed class’ according to viewers as she took to the Late Late lights on Friday night. The 22-year-old described the back-to-back setbacks of finishing fourth as a form of ‘PTSD’ in the weeks following the Paris Games.
‘I’m very hard on myself as an athlete, I saw that fourth place as defeat,’ Adeleke said. ‘I couldn’t get over it I had literally PTSD the following weeks. The fact my dreams didn’t come true and I have to wait another four years.
‘Seeing the reception I got and seeing how many people were so proud of me took the weight off my shoulders a bit.’ ‘If I didn’t make myself proud I made other people proud and that’s something for me to look upon and I still achieved something.’ Over on social media, viewers had nothing but praise for the woman helping put Ireland back on the athletics global stage.
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