August 2025. Photo by SamBarnes/Sportsfile.
Voices 2025 - Olympic Glory with Sophie Becker
Sophie has represented Ireland at both the Olympic Games and the World Championships, and in 2024 she and her teammates won silver at the European Athletics Championships in the women’s 4x400m relay. She describes her first Olympic Games in Tokyo as the beginning of something special.
“Tokyo was unique – my first games, I was only 23 and because it was a Covid Olympics there were no spectators in the stands. That probably helped with the nerves in a way, but now having Paris to compare it with, I can see now how unusual Tokyo was; and how important it was as the stepping stone for what has come since.
She continues: “The Paris Olympics was probably the pinnacle of my life, my career, everything. It was everything I had imagined a proper Olympic Games to be, and more. It really was the start of something special, not just for me personally but also for the culture of relays and 400m running in Ireland.” She and her teammates finished an impressive fourth in the Olympic 4x400m relay final.
Pushing through
Like all athletes, Sophie has also faced setbacks, but she draws motivation from her successes.
“Sometimes nothing drives me through. Sometimes it’s just a bad day and I think: ‘I hate this, I want to go home’. But when I really need to dig in, I think back on moments like Paris, moments of success and how I felt when I won a medal or when I set a personal best and I know I want to feel that again.”
Despite her success, she knows athletics can be a very physically demanding career, which is why she values her degree from DCU as much as her medals.
“I never wanted to just have athletics. Number one, I enjoyed working; and number two, I always wanted to make sure that if something happened, if I got a really bad injury, I’d have something solid to fall back on. I really enjoyed getting my degree,” says Sophie of her Genetics and Cell Biology Degree from DCU.
“I also think it’s important as an athlete not to sit around all day just waiting for training. Having a job or something else in your life means you’re not solely focused on athletics, which is healthy up until a certain level.”
The DCU journey
Sophie grew up in a small rural community in County Wexford before moving to Dublin in 2016 to begin her career.
“I can say, without a doubt, I would not be where I am today if I hadn’t gone to DCU: the people, the facilities, the experiences, just all of it,” she recalls.
“When I started, I was sporty but I wasn’t extremely good or anything… more of a good national-level athlete. That helped me get a scholarship into DCU. I picked DCU based on the course I wanted rather than athletics, which feels funny to say now because athletics ended up becoming my whole college experience.”
Through her scholarship, Becker stayed in the athletes’ house.
“Living in the athlete’s house gave me a base and helped me settle in so much quicker than friends who were just in normal student houses,” she says.
“Looking back, I think living in House 14 really moulded me. I had role models around me, and it gave me stability during such a time of change.”
Finding her coach
Soon after her arrival at DCU, Sophie met coach, Jeremy Lyons. He prepared her for her historic run to the Olympic final in the women’s 4x400m relay. Sophie describes meeting Jeremy as pure luck.
“Honestly, I think a lot of my story comes down to luck. I was lucky to get the points for my course in DCU, lucky to get the athletics scholarship and live in the athletes’ house, and then lucky again to find Jeremy. We just clicked and that’s pure luck, because I know people who have gone through three or four coaches, always searching for the right fit,” she tells us.
She describes training with Jeremy as a huge step up. “I went into six days a week compared to just twice a week with my old coach in Wexford. The facilities made such a difference too. Back home I’d only see a track maybe once a month. Suddenly, I was on the track five or six times a week, and that high-performance environment really spiralled my whole career forward.”
Between science and sports
While athletics was always part of her journey, Sophie was also very much committed to her science career.
“I stayed away from sport academically and went fully down the science route,” she says.
Her four-year degree included a work placement, after which she split her final year into two to allow space for Olympic training ahead of Tokyo 2020. Her career led to roles with Murphy Engineering and later Pfizer.
Most recently, she has committed to being a full-time athlete. “I’ve always studied and worked alongside training, so this past year has been my first time just focusing on athletics as my job. I’ve really enjoyed it and I think I’ve earned it after all these years.”
A role model
Sophie says she never really considered herself a role model until very recently.
“There’s been such an outpouring of love for our relay team,” she says. “Parents, young boys and girls, schools. It has been so heartwarming, and it’s something I don’t take for granted at all. When I was 15 or 16, I clung to role models myself. If a kid comes up to me, I’ll always take my time and ask them how their athletics is going, chat with them, take pictures, sign whatever they want. Those small gestures make such an impact and kids will remember them for years.”
She feels especially strongly about encouraging girls to stay in sport.
“Girls drop out of sport at a really high rate; to try and keep girls engaged, I think our relay team has been really important. It shows girls that you can play sport and also enjoy things like your hair and makeup!
"So often, girls are told you’re either sporty and a ‘tomboy’ or you’re a ‘girly’ girl: you can’t be both. That’s not true. We’re trying to show that you can be whatever you want, look however you want, and still compete at a really high level.” For Becker, in the end, it all comes down to having a competitive spirit.
“What also fuels me is simply being better than the person I was yesterday. Whatever my personal best is, I want to go faster than that. So, I carry that mindset: to be better than the me who raced last week, or the me who did that same session two days ago,” she concludes.