FINN Michelle

General
TRAINING IN AUSTRALIA
In late 2019 she put her job as a teacher in Ireland on hold and moved to Melbourne, VIC, Australia, to train with Melbourne Track Club ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. In February 2020 she set a personal best [9:38.04] in the 3000m steeplechase at a competition in Sydney, NSW, Australia, taking three seconds off her previous personal best. "I was putting absolutely everything I had into this year [2020], putting everything into qualifying for the Olympics and then doing as well as I possibly could at the Olympics. I had made a lot of changes, left my job. I had basically saved enough to sustain me as far as the Olympics." She returned to Ireland after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she had mixed feelings about the postponing of the Games by a year. "I might not have necessarily retired after Tokyo, but I definitely would have stepped back, gone back to work, got a life. I put so much into this year [2020] already and I feel the benefits so much that an extra year for me athletics-wise, I'll actually be fitter and more ready for Tokyo next year [2021], even though it is the exact opposite of what I had wanted." (irishexaminer.com, 04 Jun 2020; worldathletics.org, 03 Oct 2020)

EDUCATION
After completing a master's degree in nutrition at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY, United States of America, she returned to Ireland to study physical education at the University of Limerick. (independent.ie, 08 Aug 2013; ul.ie, 15 Dec 2015)