What do you think?
Rate this book
My Greatest Race
'A harrowing, heartbreaking and yet heartwarming story.' MARY McALEESE
'We all know Ciara as a warrior on the athletics track. Now she faces the race of her life with the same grit and determination we have come to expect from her.' SONIA O'SULLIVAN
'This book is devastatingly brilliant. Ciara's life on the track has been world class and contrasting that with her cancer fight is compelling reading … I genuinely couldn't stop reading this book.' DERVAL O'ROURKE
'A raw account from the peak of athletic success to the devastating life-altering blow of cancer, Ciara's journey is both powerful and unflinchingly honest – one that forces you to pause and reflect on what truly matters.' DAVID GILLICK
'An honest, raw, and heartbreaking account of what it takes to fulfil your dreams and endure the pain of having them taken away. Ciara Mageean is a national treasure.' JACQUI HURLEY
Few Irish track athletes are as universally loved as Ciara Mageean, who has remained endearingly down-to-earth, candid and optimistic despite the dramatic twists and turns of her world-class career.
In 2024 she finally won a European title, crossing the line to secure that gold medal in a moment of pure euphoria. Two months later, at the peak of her power, an excruciating injury derailed her once again, forcing an eleventh-hour withdrawal from the Paris Olympics. In the City of Love she went, overnight, from competitor to heartbroken tourist. Nothing, she thought, will ever be as bad as this … and then she got the worst news of her life.
My Greatest Race is a sports memoir like no other, a devastating contrast between the elite-athlete road that so few get to travel and the all-too-familiar cancer journey that so many do.
'We all know Ciara as a warrior on the athletics track. Now she faces the race of her life with the same grit and determination we have come to expect from her.' SONIA O'SULLIVAN
'This book is devastatingly brilliant. Ciara's life on the track has been world class and contrasting that with her cancer fight is compelling reading … I genuinely couldn't stop reading this book.' DERVAL O'ROURKE
'A raw account from the peak of athletic success to the devastating life-altering blow of cancer, Ciara's journey is both powerful and unflinchingly honest – one that forces you to pause and reflect on what truly matters.' DAVID GILLICK
'An honest, raw, and heartbreaking account of what it takes to fulfil your dreams and endure the pain of having them taken away. Ciara Mageean is a national treasure.' JACQUI HURLEY
Few Irish track athletes are as universally loved as Ciara Mageean, who has remained endearingly down-to-earth, candid and optimistic despite the dramatic twists and turns of her world-class career.
In 2024 she finally won a European title, crossing the line to secure that gold medal in a moment of pure euphoria. Two months later, at the peak of her power, an excruciating injury derailed her once again, forcing an eleventh-hour withdrawal from the Paris Olympics. In the City of Love she went, overnight, from competitor to heartbroken tourist. Nothing, she thought, will ever be as bad as this … and then she got the worst news of her life.
My Greatest Race is a sports memoir like no other, a devastating contrast between the elite-athlete road that so few get to travel and the all-too-familiar cancer journey that so many do.
- GenresBiography
315 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 18, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
June 29, 2026
FANTASTIC AND INSPIRING
Ciara is an athlete I truly adore and look up to, not only is her career so impressive as an Irish Athlete but her attitude towards global issues and life.
Can’t recommend this enough, even to non athletics fans 💕💕💕🫶🫶
Ciara is an athlete I truly adore and look up to, not only is her career so impressive as an Irish Athlete but her attitude towards global issues and life.
Can’t recommend this enough, even to non athletics fans 💕💕💕🫶🫶
Review of advance copy
Within the genre of celebrity/athlete memoirs, Ciara's story stands out because of her devastating cancer diagnosis at such a young age. It is incredibly poignant that after a lifetime of looking after her body and honing it to be at its most elite best, a freak mutation unravelled all her hard work despite her not having any of the risk factors. She is young and healthy, with no family history of bowel cancer. Not only that, but it remained undetected until it had metastasized and developed to Stage 4. Cancer is never fair, but it feels particularly unjust that it struck Ciara at the time and in the manner that it did.
It is unusual to read a memoir of someone younger than me. Ciara is two years younger than me, our experience of college in Dublin overlapped by a few years, though we were in different universities. I feel a kind of proximity to her, after cheering for her at the Olympics and the record-breaking European Championships in Rome in 2024, where the Irish athletes all performed phenomenally well. I was delighted she won gold. Little did anyone imagine what the next two years had in store for her, or that the cancer could well have been present in her body even at that stage, during the Rome championships.
Her story, like herself, is very relatable. She was the second of four children in a sport-mad household in Portaferry, where she thrived playing Camogie, playing several age brackets above her age as a teenager. Her decision to quit her first love and focus on international athletics was driven by the ceiling being higher and the travel opportunities being greater than if she remained as an amateur Camogie player in County Down. She excelled at Junior level middle distance, but as she made the step up to the Senior level she started being dogged by injuries and post-operative rehabilitation which kept her out for multiple seasons when she should have been competing at elite U23 level. She charts her comeback as a Senior athlete and the challenges of rising to the top of the sport.
Not all childhood dreams come true, and Ciara's dreams of winning an Olympic medal never came to fruition. She didn't qualify for London 2012, missed out on the 1500m final in Rio 2016 and was knocked out in her heat in Tokyo 2021. Then in Paris 2024 a heel injury flared up with days to go to her race forcing her withdrawal. These are crushing experiences for an athlete who has sacrificed their life to their sport, though they pale in comparison to a cancer diagnosis that gives her 10-15% chance of surviving five years. It feels like an extraordinary amount of bad luck for one person, and my heart breaks for her.
I became aware of Ciara's cancer diagnosis earlier this year when she was doing radio interviews in advance of the release of the book. It seems a necessary component of any memoir of a public figure that they air some beef, which can be picked up and used as headlines. So I heard of the book first in an article talking about the breakdown of Ciara's relationship with her coach Helen Clitheroe. She also dishes some dirt on the British athlete James West, with whom she had personality clashes. The negative tone around these issues seemed calculated for marketing purposes and didn't really fit the poignant tone of the rest of the memoir.
I learned a lot about the life of a professional athlete. It is not glamorous or lucrative. It requires constant vigilance of your body - what you consume, how you train - and apparently a never-ending battle with some chronic injury or other. There is lots of travel to far-flung locations, which sounds fun, but it is travel for work, not leisure. There is the constant pressure of performing well, and living up to the expectations people have of you, and the investment they have made in your career. There is the need to be constantly available for drug testing, which can be sprung on you even at the most inopportune moments. Your personal life is essentially on hold until your form expires as you get older, making it a real dilemma especially for female athletes who might want to have a family of their own.
Ciara was fortunate to have grants from Athletics Ireland and a professional contract with New Balance, which put her in a more comfortable financial position than her team-mates who represented Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The team setup was interesting - it was not based on nationality, but by affiliation to New Balance, the shoe company. The team members lived and trained together in Manchester, a great setup if everyone gets on and you're in your twenties, but less so as you get older.
The book alternates between an account of a period in her career and a snapshot of her harrowing chemo journey. One gets a sense of the community of support around Ciara, but also the shared grief at what has transpired. It brings up a lot of the same emotions as The Fault in Our Stars, a heart-breaking story of a child with cancer.
I wish Ciara and her loved ones well. I hope she pulls through and beats the cancer. She is a remarkable athlete and a very likeable person.
It is unusual to read a memoir of someone younger than me. Ciara is two years younger than me, our experience of college in Dublin overlapped by a few years, though we were in different universities. I feel a kind of proximity to her, after cheering for her at the Olympics and the record-breaking European Championships in Rome in 2024, where the Irish athletes all performed phenomenally well. I was delighted she won gold. Little did anyone imagine what the next two years had in store for her, or that the cancer could well have been present in her body even at that stage, during the Rome championships.
Her story, like herself, is very relatable. She was the second of four children in a sport-mad household in Portaferry, where she thrived playing Camogie, playing several age brackets above her age as a teenager. Her decision to quit her first love and focus on international athletics was driven by the ceiling being higher and the travel opportunities being greater than if she remained as an amateur Camogie player in County Down. She excelled at Junior level middle distance, but as she made the step up to the Senior level she started being dogged by injuries and post-operative rehabilitation which kept her out for multiple seasons when she should have been competing at elite U23 level. She charts her comeback as a Senior athlete and the challenges of rising to the top of the sport.
Not all childhood dreams come true, and Ciara's dreams of winning an Olympic medal never came to fruition. She didn't qualify for London 2012, missed out on the 1500m final in Rio 2016 and was knocked out in her heat in Tokyo 2021. Then in Paris 2024 a heel injury flared up with days to go to her race forcing her withdrawal. These are crushing experiences for an athlete who has sacrificed their life to their sport, though they pale in comparison to a cancer diagnosis that gives her 10-15% chance of surviving five years. It feels like an extraordinary amount of bad luck for one person, and my heart breaks for her.
I became aware of Ciara's cancer diagnosis earlier this year when she was doing radio interviews in advance of the release of the book. It seems a necessary component of any memoir of a public figure that they air some beef, which can be picked up and used as headlines. So I heard of the book first in an article talking about the breakdown of Ciara's relationship with her coach Helen Clitheroe. She also dishes some dirt on the British athlete James West, with whom she had personality clashes. The negative tone around these issues seemed calculated for marketing purposes and didn't really fit the poignant tone of the rest of the memoir.
I learned a lot about the life of a professional athlete. It is not glamorous or lucrative. It requires constant vigilance of your body - what you consume, how you train - and apparently a never-ending battle with some chronic injury or other. There is lots of travel to far-flung locations, which sounds fun, but it is travel for work, not leisure. There is the constant pressure of performing well, and living up to the expectations people have of you, and the investment they have made in your career. There is the need to be constantly available for drug testing, which can be sprung on you even at the most inopportune moments. Your personal life is essentially on hold until your form expires as you get older, making it a real dilemma especially for female athletes who might want to have a family of their own.
Ciara was fortunate to have grants from Athletics Ireland and a professional contract with New Balance, which put her in a more comfortable financial position than her team-mates who represented Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden. The team setup was interesting - it was not based on nationality, but by affiliation to New Balance, the shoe company. The team members lived and trained together in Manchester, a great setup if everyone gets on and you're in your twenties, but less so as you get older.
The book alternates between an account of a period in her career and a snapshot of her harrowing chemo journey. One gets a sense of the community of support around Ciara, but also the shared grief at what has transpired. It brings up a lot of the same emotions as The Fault in Our Stars, a heart-breaking story of a child with cancer.
I wish Ciara and her loved ones well. I hope she pulls through and beats the cancer. She is a remarkable athlete and a very likeable person.
Review of advance copy received from Otros
Words simply cannot describe the emotions you feel while reading this book. Christmas 2024, I remember writing to Ciara on the back of an incredible European gold and heartbreaking Olympics. Her running had always inspired me, but it was how she spoke in interviews, with honesty, and care for things beyond sport itself, which really shone through. I felt compelled to write a message of support to one of my sporting idols. To my surprise, she not only responded, but wrote a beautiful message, where we both wished each other the very best with our training and races in 2025. As anyone can imagine, that lift was unbelievable and it truly made an impact on my training and subsequent races. When I first heard of the diagnosis, like everyone, I was in complete disbelief and shock. It was hard to know how to react to news like that. This book will make you shed a few tears, but it will also make you laugh, and focus on what's important in life - community. We come from similar rural Irish backgrounds, and her story in many ways is very similar to mine. It would be wrong for me to try and describe someone who I have never met, but those messages from Ciara will always mean so much to me! I wish her and Tommy many happy years together with the dogs, and send her family and friends my best wishes. A legend, pure and simple!
Review of advance copy
I've loosely followed Ciara for a good few years and always been drawn to her unbelievable personality.
This book is just brilliant, it's so sad but also has so many good moments, it just highlights how cruel life can be. But you get to see what a brilliant person Ciara is and you cannot but be inspired by her. It's so well worth a read and would recommend it to anybody.
I love how gutsy she is and am in awe of her!
This book is just brilliant, it's so sad but also has so many good moments, it just highlights how cruel life can be. But you get to see what a brilliant person Ciara is and you cannot but be inspired by her. It's so well worth a read and would recommend it to anybody.
I love how gutsy she is and am in awe of her!
July 14, 2026
Absolutely brilliant, page turner. A fascinating look into the life of an elite athlete as well as the parallel story of her unexpected illness. Inspiring and emotional without being over sentimental. Highly recommend!
Review of advance copy
Loved it. But cried my way through most chapters.
Found it a very fast read. I have been following Ciara for the last 10 years so I thought I knew her story, but this book showed me I didn’t. So raw and utterly heartbreaking.
Found it a very fast read. I have been following Ciara for the last 10 years so I thought I knew her story, but this book showed me I didn’t. So raw and utterly heartbreaking.
Review of advance copy received from Author
Outstanding beautiful inspiring yet harrowing read of the high and lows life can throw at you but yet an incredible celebration of a career that will inspire generations to come - so much love and awe of this legend!!!!
June 23, 2026
Bravery courage and resilience, despite a poor diagnosis Ciara tells her story in an inspiring way
Read
August 23, 2026I can't rate this - I don't usually read autobiographies as they aren't my thing.
Review of advance copy
What a legend. Completely unbiased 5 stars.
Review of advance copy
I don't really follow athletics outside the big events, but watching an Irish athlete coming through to win a race always makes me very emotional in the moment for some reason, more so than team sports that I follow more closely. So, I was drawn to this book to learn more about Ciara outside of the post race interviews.
It was very well written, and once i started, I couldn't put it down. Given the context, it's very upsetting in places, but her strength of character and attitude throughout has left me inspired rather than downbeat.
She displays all the expected traits of someone who reaches the top of their sport, but her good nature, directness, wit, and sense of family/community really stand out. Her parents, family, and village must be very proud to have raised such a wonderful woman.
I can only imagine how her determination would have shown on the camogie field, I'd say it would have been some sight to behold.
Best of luck in the future Ciara, one thing is for sure, you will never give up!!
It was very well written, and once i started, I couldn't put it down. Given the context, it's very upsetting in places, but her strength of character and attitude throughout has left me inspired rather than downbeat.
She displays all the expected traits of someone who reaches the top of their sport, but her good nature, directness, wit, and sense of family/community really stand out. Her parents, family, and village must be very proud to have raised such a wonderful woman.
I can only imagine how her determination would have shown on the camogie field, I'd say it would have been some sight to behold.
Best of luck in the future Ciara, one thing is for sure, you will never give up!!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews