‘My father said this would be the land where his children would prosper’

Athletics Ireland launched their partnership with Irish Life Health at the National Indoor Arena in Abbotstown on Tuesday and in a small media room in the corner of the building Patience Jumbo-Gula sat beside her father Paul.

Paul is a constant presence in Patience's life and routinely drives her up and down from Dundalk to Tallaght twice a week for training and is here for her in Abbotstown as his daughter prepares to face the national media after a whirlwind 2018 where she broke a European Under-18 Athletics Championships record in the girls’ 100m with a time of 11.59 seconds. Jumbo-Gula was also part of a brilliant silver medal at the World Under-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, and the attention she's received since her heroics last summer have been a bit overwhelming at times.

"It's overwhelming but I remember after we came second we got a load of congratulations but then I didn't get to enjoy it because I got called for doping so I had to go down to doping while the other girls were enjoying it because I didn't need to use the toilet so it took me a while to produce the sample," she told SportsJOE. "It took so long. But by the time I got home to the hotel everyone had a shower and were getting ready to go out and I hadn't had a shower and I was like 'wow'."

It took a while for Jumbo-Gula to gauge the level of her success but her father Paul has been a constant encouragement throughout her blossoming time on the track. Paul took his family from Lagos to Ireland when Patience was just three-years-old but he made it clear to Patience and her siblings that this would be the land where his children would prosper.

"I was 10 at a sports day and I had won my race at school," Jumbo-Gula added. "This coach said 'wow, she's really fast' but he didn't know my dad was standing right beside him. He said 'that's my daughter' and then he gave us the contact for the club I run for now. "I was really competitive and I just wanted to win. When I first ran for Ireland I think I was 14 and it was at Celtics, just a mini-international competition, but then 2017 was my international and that was a youth meet Olympics and I won bronze in the 100m and I started to realise I can do something special then. "It's great because when my dad first came to Ireland he said 'this is the land where my children are going to prosper'. He meant it as well.

"Not just for me with my sport but academic wise he didn't want us to miss what he missed in Nigeria so that's why he's really motivated and takes us to competitions and anything so he doesn't want us to lose hope."

Jumbo-Gula will look to target the 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Glasgow in March should she meet the qualifying times but at the moment it's the Leaving Cert mock exams that are her primary focus with double French, double Maths and double biology as draining as anything she's experiencing on the track. She finds time to sleep in the car, with her father Paul serving as both a driver and a nap facilitator, and although she doesn't exactly know what she wants to study after she finishes school this summer, she does want to go to UCD and has resisted the temptations of moving abroad to America where she would be highly sought after by a number of colleges there. Jumbo-Gula admitted that she was heartbroken after missing out on the podium in the final of the 100m at the  European Under-18 Athletics Championships but the smile was soon back up on her face and in front of a gaggle of journalists and media members, it's still there. Beaming for all to see.

Irish Life Health backs Athletics, a Sport that Delivers on Health, Wellness and Lifelong Activity

• Irish Life Health was today announced as an official partner to Athletics Ireland
• Athletics develops Fundamental Movement Skills, which research has shown to increase the probability of a long-term active life by 20%
• Research shows that runners can live three years longer than non-runners.
• 300,000 adults in Ireland run regularly, more than those who play Soccer and GAA combined.
• Athletics Ireland offers a range of programmes reaching 100,000 people daily aged 8 to 80.