Brendan Doyle on the day his life changed
Traumatised after a knife attack, Brendan Doyle was on the verge of ending it all until a chance train station encounter saved his life
WHEN Brendan Doyle holds up his right hand, the eye is immediately drawn to his little finger which is turned down at an angle of 90 degrees. An operation, which involves taking a piece of ligament from his hamstring, would ensure the finger works again.
‘As a 34-year-old athlete, I don’t really want to donate a bit of ligament from my hamstring to my finger. I’m protecting them at all costs, so I’ve put the surgery on hold, which is not great because my finger has been locked like this for more than 10 years. The arthritis will be bad and it’s going to take a lot of work to get it functioning again. But I will address it after Beijing.’
The finger is a reminder of the start of a journey that Doyle hopes will eventually lead to the skeleton track at the 2022 Winter Olympics. In the summer of 2009, Doyle was a young Garda, barely a year out of Templemore and stationed in Crumlin. He was in a patrol car one evening that received a call to investigate a domestic dispute.
‘They are a regular occurrence, something Gardaí face every single day. But they can be the most volatile calls because they are so personal. You’re an outsider, stepping in to mediate and it can be very daunting,’ Doyle explained in a Swords coffee shop last Wednesday morning, just ahead of another afternoon in the gym.
Doyle and his colleague checked for priStarbucks ors, to see if there were red flags. ‘When we arrived, the suspect met me with a wooden bat in his hand. He was angry. I tried verbal reasoning to calm him down.
‘Unfortunately, it fell on deaf ears. He had armed himself with a knife and it was during the arrest, that I was injured.’
Corrective surgery followed. A nerve in his thumb was removed after it was lacerated. However, it was on leaving hospital that his problems started.
‘It was a tough period. Began with night terrors. I had dreams that would wake me up, thinking the suspect was standing over me with a knife. Or I’d wake, grabbing my hand, thinking it was still bleeding. It was impossible to get back to sleep. And if you knew that every time you went to bed that you would be woken up this traumatically, eventually you stop going to bed.’
Insomnia took a grip. Unable to sleep, Doyle would spend his nights, driving around Dublin. Circling the city on the M50. ‘And when that wouldn’t do the trick, I would start driving to Cork and back, Galway and back. Then come home and maybe have a broken hour’s sleep,’ he remembers.
A talented sprinter in his teens, Doyle tried to apply his sporting background as a way of dealing with his issues. ‘The athlete in me was telling me to get back on the horse. Sport teaches you that setbacks happen and you just have to keep pushing.
‘Mental health is different. It doesn’t respond if you keep pushing. You will just hit a brick wall.
I tried to go back to work, moved stations in an attempt to change my environment. But I was only running from my problems and those were problems I was still carrying around in my head. I had panic attacks in the patrol car, would hide in the bathroom of the station to avoid doing the job.
‘I was suffering with insomnia for five years and when you are not sleeping, you lose that ability to start afresh. My social circle fell apart because I had no energy and had no interest in going out. I went out with my girlfriend for three and a half years, that ended. I stopped going to the gym and anyone who knows me will tell you that I live in the gym and love my training. I lost who I was without knowing it. That’s the thing with depression, it is a slow burner.’
Doyle had done everything to deal with the post-traumatic stress and depression. He went to counselling, tried medication. ‘One morning, I just decided I was going to take control. I was sick of the anxiety, the panic attacks, no sleep. I had tried everything to no avail, so I decided I was going to take my own life. I remember that it was as blasé as going up there and ordering a coffee,’ he says, pointing to the counter at the where we’re sitting. ‘It was a completely rational decision in my own mind. I suppose that’s hard for people to understand that train of thought and it’s so foreign to me now, because I am in such a great spot. But where I was then, it was the only answer.
‘I got extremely lucky. I went to a [train] station, had set out how I was going to do it. I saw a mother and a child and just heard the child say to her mother that she was so excited about their day out, they were going somewhere on a day trip. Something hit me when I heard the child say that and I stepped back from the platform, went back to my car and cried. I called my friend and told him what I had tried to do.’
His friend Donal, while taken aback by Doyle’s revelation, told him he needed to get back to the gym. And that’s what he did. Initially a couple of hours a week, then building it up to almost every day.
‘It gave me stepping stones and put me back in an environment where I was able to put in a plan, set some goals and tackle a decision of whether or not I wanted to stay in the job that I loved. ‘The Gardaí was my dream job. I got great job satisfaction
out of helping people, worked hard to get into the Guards but part of my depression was that I felt that was slipping away. To make up for that, I got back into track and field, went back running 60m and 100m with Raheny Shamrocks. And from getting back into that sport, it put me in a position to meet the president of the Irish Bobsleigh and Skeleton Association [Sean Greenwood].’
Doyle had gone to skeleton school in the Austrian Alps in 2003. ‘It’s very rudimentary. They walk you down the track, show you left and right. The first time on the sled, I was put on the top of the run. Some guy pushed me off, saying “goodbye Ireland”. I hadn’t a clue what was happening, hit every wall, skidded. I was terrified but I just wanted to go back up again. It was an incredible feeling and I loved it.’
Skeleton school only lasted a week, though, and Doyle went back to regular life. Joined the Guards. ‘Every single day, I was in Templemore or in work, I was thinking about being on that sled. I bought myself a Kawasaki Ninja to emulate the flow of going through corners.’
When Doyle renewed his athletic ambition, he rediscovered the urge to get back on the skeleton. ‘When I was going through that dark period, I didn’t think about the skeleton, didn’t think about much. But when I got back into the gym and started pumping, I just wanted to get back on the skeleton.’
He reached out to Greenwood, whose fine finish at the Sochi Winter Olympics put Ireland among the top seeded of the small nations.
‘Sean was my point of contact and that’s why I spent so much time in North America when I started back on the skeleton. He has built up a huge range of contacts over there.
‘I would stay in his house in Whistler, he would give me track notes, help me find a coach for cheap. He has done great work, building skeleton in Ireland and I feel I am taking the torch now, trying to build on his legacy.’
Doyle just missed out on the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang by a single point. There had been some confusion initially as he was told he’d earned a place, which simply compounded his disappointment.
‘One point is as close as it gets, right?’ Doyle sighs. ‘It was only my second season in the sport. I was out in Whistler when I got a call saying I was going. Then I got another call to say I wasn’t going. I went home to Ireland and couldn’t watch the games. Didn’t watch the opening ceremony.
‘As time went on, and it was closer to the skeleton event, I started to log on and look at the time-sheets of the competitors, just to see who is going well.
‘And when race-day happened, I thought I’d watch a few to see who was doing well. Of course, I ended up watching every moment. I love it, absolutely love it.
‘But I was convinced that I was never going to compete again. Being at home, sitting back and watching the event, it was tough going. And it could have went one way or the other. But here I am,
‘I FEEL I’M TAKING THE TORCH, TRYING TO BUILD ON HIS LEGACY’
competing again and more focused than ever.’
Doyle has just completed his season. He spent the past six months, touring the European circuit, figuring out what tracks that suited him best ahead of the Olympic qualification season where he will need to finish inside the top 60 to get to Beijing. The whole winter has been spent crisscrossing the continent, alone in his car. Driving for more than 20 hours, listening to podcasts. Sometimes, he slept in his car, so he had enough money to pay for training on a track.
Last week, the Olympic Federation of Ireland presented the Beaumont native with a solidarity grant to ease the burden slightly as he tries to qualify for Beijing. And it was badly needed because this is an expensive sport. A set of runners can set a skeleton racer back €700, and you need four sets to get you through the season.
‘The helmet is €600. The race suit is akin to a suit in cycling, waferthin, and that’s €1,000. Once it takes a touch off the wall, it is going to rip because you are hitting a wall at 100 mph. So, you need to buy multiple suits. Shoes are €400 and they don’t last a season because we drag our toes to change direction.’
And then there’s the transport of the equipment. While Doyle benefited from a vehicle from Harris’s on the Naas Road to drive around Europe this winter, any long-haul flights are expensive.
‘I travel with four or five bags, and each of those bags are over 30 kgs. It’s easily another €600 on top of your actual flight. Sometimes, airlines might be in a good mood and they might wink it off. And that’s a lottery win because the stress is unbelievable.’
But he believes it will be worth it when he is standing at the top of the track at the Beijing Winter Olympics. ‘This is definitely a sport of experience. You have to get used to being in the middle of the storm, going down at 100 mph. I am 34 now and you have a lot of guys peaking in their late 30s, early 40s.
‘I can never say never again because there has been plenty of points in my life where I thought things were over. I was convinced my only option was to kill myself, convinced I would never get back on the skeleton, convinced after missing out on the Olympics by a point, that I would never do this sport again. But here I am, more focused than ever,’ said Doyle enthusiastically.
‘And it’s the guys who keep coming back and don’t quit, who go through years of pain and torture, disappointment and financial stress, that get the rewards. I am a little tapped but I love it.’
And if Doyle does make the Olympics in two years’ time, he will spare a thought for the little girl in the train station who changed the course of his life.
‘It was complete and utter chance. I don’t have any spiritual beliefs, but that was massively situational,’ Doyle reflects. ‘I was at the station at that time, that particular moment when she was telling her mother how excited she was about their day trip. If there had been a red light or anything, I wouldn’t be here.
‘To this day, it blows my mind. Something kept me here and I’m forever grateful. And the whole situation is a silver lining now because I have learnt a lot about myself and that I can handle anything thrown at me.
‘And missing out on the last Olympics has made me hungrier than ever. Maybe whoever sent that kid that way that fateful day was also saying to me to wait until Beijing 2022 because I will be ready then.’