page_title: Susan Smith-Walsh
section_title: College career
hierarchical_section_title: Susan Smith-Walsh / College career
caption_attribution_description: English: Susan Smith and Yuri Anisimov at a training session in Limerick, 1988
context_page_description: Susan Smith-Walsh Height 1.64m Weight 53 kg is a retired international Irish hurdler and sportsperson. In her senior career she competed in two Olympic Games, two World Championships and one European championship. At the 1997 Athletics World Championships she became the first Irish athlete to ever reach a sprint final at a major event.
  Because of her blonde hair and good looks, Smith had been described as the 'Anna Kournikova' of the track.
context_section_description: When Susan was still a junior she met with top USSR coach, Yuri Anisimov who had coached his wife, Tatiana, to an Olympic 100mH silver medal in 1976 and who was in Ireland delivering coaching sessions in various locations. He expressed great interest in her and asked her to travel to all those sessions where he could give her in-depth coaching. When he had to return to Russia he asked Susan to consider moving to Leningrad to train under his guidance. He believed that by doing so she would win a European Junior championship gold medal. This placed her in a terrible dilemma because her Leaving Certificate results had gained her a place as a law student in University College Dublin, and she was being recruited by Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, (one of the top Ivy League Universities). She opted for a University career in the USA.
  Her career at Brown went well, although she was disqualified in her first race for a false-start and also lost her first championship race. Her four years there were encapsulated in an article by the associate editor of Brown Alumni Monthly, James Reinbold who wrote "In four years at Brown, Smith won fifteen individual titles – more than any athlete, female or male, in the history of the Heps [Ivy League Colleges plus Army and Navy]. She was named Hep MVP three times and was Brown's female athlete of the year as both a junior and senior. She holds three University records: 55-metre hurdles (indoors), 100-metre hurdles (outdoors), and 400-metre hurdles (outdoors) and she has run on two relay teams that have set school records: the 4x400 (indoors) and the 4x100 (outdoors)."  In her final year the track team elected her as captain. Susan graduated in 1993 with two Business degrees. In her last race for the University she finished third in the 400mH at the Eastern Collegiate championship where she recorded 58.31secs, which was then one of the fastest times ever by an Irishwoman and the then sixth fastest time ever achieved on the USA college circuit.
  Smith had been remarkably free from injury in her four years at Brown despite competing in a number of events – 100m dash/200m dash/100mH/400mH/4 × 100 m relay/4 × 400 m relay and the Pentathlon – but in her very first race after graduation she broke her foot while competing in the 400mH for Ireland at the Westathletic Games in Sittard, the Netherlands. The injury was to disrupt her senior career and it would be a full three years before she again set foot on a running track to run a competitive race. Susan returned to the US to have an operation on her foot and then to take up a job with Coopers & Lybrand in Boston as a financial analyst/auditor.
caption: Susan Smith and Yuri Anisimov at a training session in Limerick, 1988
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