My Greatest Race
Author: Ciara Mageean
ISBN-13: 9781804585474
Publisher: Gill Books
Guideline Price: €21.99
My Greatest Race tells two stories, parallel; in one, we follow the rise of Ciara Mageean, one of Ireland’s greatest middle-distance runners, the first individual European champion since Sonia O’Sullivan, someone who has actually been smashing O’Sullivan’s records since the tender age of 19.
In the other, we’re given glimpses into the life of a woman reckoning with a stage-four bowel cancer diagnosis. We sit with her through the shock of the diagnosis, the gruelling treatments, the ceaseless pain and the unique, numb sort of grief that comes along with reckoning with your own mortality. But even in these darkest of moments, Mageean always finds a speck of light.
Ciara Mageean interview: ‘I probably won’t make my 40th birthday’
Ciara Mageean. Photograph: Evanna Devine for The Irish Times (Evanna Devine/Evanna Devine) We’re sitting in Mageean’s livingroom in Dunmurry, a quiet suburb just south of Belfast. This is the house she and her fiance Thomas Moran moved to when she came home heartbroken after the 2024 Olympics.
That was the plan. Before.
Before cancer. Before stage four. Before chemotherapy. Before immunotherapy. Before the sickness and the tiredness and the lakes of tears.
Before ever giving a second’s thought to death or survival, fear or hope.
Read Malachy Clerkin’s interview with Ciara Mageean.
Every now and again, someone is born to be a star. Not just through raw talent (which is always a help), but sheer, dogged determination. Ciara Mageean is that someone. In My Greatest Race, Mageean tracks her career from the very first run; a primary school cross-country race in her beloved hometown of Portaferry, Co Down. She came away from the race irritated that she hadn’t done her “absolute best”, despite it being pretty much the first time she’d ever tried it. This is the attitude that creates an Olympian.
Following the timeline of her athletics career is a joyride, veering from record to record. Mageean has ambition in droves, and perseveres through multiple injuries that would have ended the careers of others. But she isn’t going out like that. Every setback just makes her more determined to rise again, stronger and faster.
Making the decision to withdraw from what would have been her third Olympics in Paris in 2024 due to a long-standing Achilles injury would seem like the nadir of her career, but it’s not hard to believe she would have brought the gold back to Portaferry in 2028. She’s just that determined.
Mageean at times questions her identity as “Ciara the runner”, noting that running was never a calling, having preferred camogie as a youth with dreams of All Ireland Finals instead of Olympic podiums. Eventually though, the ability to wear the Ireland vest and represent her home country at international level is her driving force and greatest pride.
It isn’t until running is taken away from her that she realises how much of herself is tied into it. This is a memoir about identity as much as it is about athletics, or cancer.
[ Ciara Mageean: ‘You do have to be selfish as an athlete, it’s the part I find least enjoyable… But no regrets’Opens in new window ]
In 2025, she was handed a grave cancer diagnosis. Quickly, life becomes a series of hospital appointments, chemotherapy and isolation. This part of the story is told in separate chapters to her career trajectory; there is a jarring moment at the beginning of these segments. We’ve gone from running at top speed to sitting still in a hospital ward. The dichotomy between the two timelines creates an emotional whiplash. This cannot be the story of the same person. This cannot be her fate.
Of course, there are tender moments in these chapters, too; the community of Portaferry, who have championed her since the early days of her career, are a continued source of comfort and support. Her partner Tommy (Thomas Moran, an Irish middle-distance runner) and her family, who are the heartbeat of this memoir, rally around her, buoy her. Her friends keep reaching out, a constant hand extended to steady her.
Cancer is an incredibly isolating experience; being too sick to attend events, not wanting to risk picking up an illness, or sometimes simply being an uncomfortable reminder of mortality means that social circles can disappear. Not so in this case. Mageean’s loyalty and love for her community and her family shine through, especially in the worst of times.
There is a unique frustration that comes with a cancer diagnosis, one that, to those on the outside, maybe seems insignificant in the face of such illness; the question of identity. Mageean mentions that she does not want to be known as “Ciara the cancer patient”.
A European champion, two-time Olympian, hometown heroine and the inspiration for so many athletes, she is also a beloved daughter, partner, sister, auntie and friend. This book is her opportunity to tell us who she is, before another headline reduces her to a race won, or a title lost, or a cancer diagnosis.
Never once does Mageean allow herself to be consumed by the lows, even though it would be so easy to slip into a cycle of self-pity. Instead, she gets up and goes again.
Caragh Maxwell’s debut novel Sugartown was shortlisted for an Irish Book Award in 2025
