Ciara Mageean, the 34-year-old Irish runner who won European 1500m gold in Rome in 2024, has opened up about living with stage four bowel cancer in a new book and a candid radio interview. She told listeners she has been given a prognosis of two to three years and has chosen to spend that time travelling, writing, and being honest about what she is going through.
In an interview on the Brendan O’Connor show on RTÉ Radio this past weekend, Mageean spoke at length about her new book, My Greatest Race, co-written with journalist Clíona Foley. The book traces her running career and the diagnosis she received last summer at age 33.
Mageean said the signs of illness crept in slowly, and at first she chalked them up to the realities of being a hard-training distance runner.
“As an athlete, you’re used to having an unsettled bowel. You train a lot, you’re working really hard. Sometimes you’ll go out on a run and you’ll think, ‘oh for goodness sake, I need the bathroom.’ And you have to nip into a bush. Very much used to that.”
That kind of bathroom urgency on a run is something most runners recognise and many shrug off as ordinary runner’s stomach or runner’s trots. For Mageean, the symptoms began to shift.
“I would get up in the morning and I would need the toilet four times. I thought, ‘that’s not normal.’ I was feeling kind of crampy and was wondering if I had eaten something that upset my stomach. I kept finding logical reasons for it, which many people would.“
The diagnosis
Her partner, Tommy Moran, urged her to get checked. The Institute of Sport medical team referred her to a specialist at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin. She went in for what she expected to be a routine scope on the 20th of May.
“I’ll never forget that day,” she said in the RTÉ interview. “Instead, on that very day, I found out that I had cancer. Because I’m so young and healthy, I thought I’ll be at an early stage. Not that any stage of cancer is okay.”
Mageean chose to continue her treatment closer to home in Northern Ireland. It was there, sitting with Tommy and her older sister Máire, that her colorectal surgeon told her the cancer was in her bowel, had spread significantly to her liver, and that traces had reached her lungs.
“Whenever he told me that, as silly as it sounds, my words were ‘this isn’t good, is it?’ And he just shook and said, ‘no, it’s not great. This is not a good diagnosis, Ciara.‘”
She and Tommy sat in the car afterward in silence and cried. In the days that followed, she searched the survival rate for stage four bowel cancer.
“I saw that it was 10 to 15% of the people who have stage four survive. I thought, ‘okay, that’s not good odds. I’m not a betting woman but I wouldn’t have taken those odds for living.’ But I did think, why can’t I be in that 10 to 15%? That research is based on maybe an older population. I’m young and fit and healthy. I have no comorbidities. I can fight this.“
Christmas Eve and Costa Rica
On Christmas Eve last year, after twelve rounds of chemotherapy, Mageean asked her oncologist directly about timelines. He told her surgery and radiotherapy were not viable options and gave her a prognosis of two to three years.
She walked out of that appointment and made a decision. She contacted producers at RTÉ and signed on for an episode of Uncharted with Ray Goggins, trekking across the wilds of Costa Rica alongside former Dublin GAA footballer Michael Darragh Macauley.
“I walked out of that hospital appointment on the 24th December and I said, an expletive, I’m going to Costa Rica and I’m having fun. Because if I’m going to die, I’m going to fit as much living into the years that I have left.“
She has now completed eighteen rounds of chemotherapy. The side effects show in her hands and feet, where neuropathy has caused the skin to peel.
“I’m very conscious I’m going to be doing book launches and shaking people’s hands and hoping they’re not going to be grossed out by the fact that my hands are in bits. But I’m feeling healthy. I’m hopeful that my prognosis can be good.”
Her resilience echoes other elite endurance athletes who have spoken openly about cancer, including ultrarunner Tommy Rivers Puzey, whose long road back to running has become one of the sport’s most-followed comeback stories.
Hope from a support group
A turning point came when Mageean joined her first online cancer support call. She heard from a woman in Scotland who was diagnosed with stage four bowel cancer in 2016, ten years ago, and is still living.
“I had tears in my eyes listening to her because, though she’s still going through the toughness of monitoring and treating cancer, that was 10 years, not two or three.“
Sadness, she said, is the feeling that lingers most. She spoke about the future she had pictured with Tommy, the move down the peninsula to her hometown of Portaferry, having children, watching them grow up, becoming a grandmother.
“I get emotional thinking that I don’t really have the luxury of thinking that anymore. It might be a reality if this treatment works. I’m hopeful that I get to live into old age but the odds are stacked against me and that’s really, really hard.”
A career remembered, and a runner still fighting
Mageean’s European 1500m gold in Rome stood as the peak of a long career spent battling injury and self-doubt. She raced for years against the deepest field in women’s middle distance history, an era defined by athletes like Faith Kipyegon and Sifan Hassan. Mageean was the European who could go toe-to-toe with them on the right day.
She remains a household name in Irish athletics, a runner whose toughness on the track is matched by the toughness she is showing now.
“I am so grateful for the support of the Irish nation. It’s been there for me throughout my entire career. But I feel supported and loved throughout this journey.“
My Greatest Race, written with Clíona Foley, is out now.
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