Ciara Mageean is unique. She is among the few who can maintain a sense of humor in the face of death. Doctors diagnosed the Irish middle-distance champion with Stage Four bowel cancer last year and concluded she has little time left. However, Mageean has been downplaying the seriousness of the situation, focusing on a few important life events about to occur.

“I’ll be sitting on the couch, and I’ll be like, ‘F**k. I might be dead in two years.’ I certainly won’t… well, I don’t want to say certainly, but I probably won’t make my 40th birthday.” Mageean said, taking things lightly during her interview with the Irish Times. “Like, that’s f**king rough.”

However, Mageean had other things on her mind besides her cancer: her plans to marry her longtime partner, Thomas Moran, soon. “But we’re planning this wedding and I can’t help but think, ‘The poor lad’s going to be left a widower in his 30s.’ And then I’m like, ‘Sure then he’s going to be a bit old! It’s going to be hard for him to find a new partner!’ I say to him, ‘Here, you can’t move on from me too fast …'” she added.

In May 2025, Mageean learned she had Stage Four bowel cancer, something from which people seldom come back. She did not lose hope as she took up the challenge of a grueling course of chemotherapy. After completing 18 rounds of chemotherapy, she tackled the situation with humor.

Mageean isn’t the first athlete to face this, but few have faced it as she has. While the likes of Lance Armstrong survived the scare, young prodigies like Mia Hamant have succumbed to this terrible ailment. One hopes Mageean is among those who can brave this adversity with the same spirit she showed on track, a journey she has cataloged in her book “My Greatest Race,” slated for release on June 18.

While her race in life is in jeopardy, her on-track performances were an inspiration to an entire country, as Mageean set the standard in middle-distance running in Ireland and around the world.

Ciara Mageean was a prominent face of Irish athletics on the global stage

In 2010, Mageean clinched a silver medal at the World Junior Championships at 18, showcasing her raw potential as a 1500m runner. She developed her skills, and the 1500 became her primary discipline on the track.

From 2016 to 2024, Mageean earned podium finishes at the European Championships with remarkable consistency, clinching gold in Rome in 2024. During this stretch, she also won a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, another feather in her cap. Even though she has no medals to show for at the Olympics and at the World Championships, she was a regular feature in the later stages of the tournaments, often improving her personal best times.

Mageean dominated beyond 1500m; she holds the Irish 800m record, having first broken two minutes. In a highly competitive field at the Diamond League in Brussels in 2022, Mageean set a personal best, bringing her 1500 m time under four minutes for the first time, which saw her win the race.