ADRIAN HAS FOND MEMORIES DESPITE OLYMPIC STRUGGLE
compete at the highest level.
“My natural weight would be 95 kilos if I wasn’t training and didn’t have muscle mass,’’ he said.
“But I had to go 15 kilos below that. And that was very difficult for me. That was more challenging than any of the training or any of the competitions. That was tough on my body.
Competitions
“When I was cutting weight for competitions, I did starve myself. I had anorexia, I had bulimia, I’d make myself sick after meals.
“I was getting headaches, suffering from mood swings. Had one per cent body fat.
“The day I retired, I actually threw away my scales. I didn’t need it anymore.”
O’Dwyer looks at athletics now with a more detached view. It’s clear to him that there are plenty in the sport who are going down a dangerous road.
“People seem to forget that professional athletics isn’t healthy. It’s not supposed to be,’’ he said.
“You look at the Olympic Games and think you’re looking at athletes in peak physical condition. In some ways, they are but they’re also harming themselves.
“Anything extreme is bad and sport at the highest level is a collection of extreme athletes. It is bad for you, in the long run, it really is.
“I don’t think enough information is given to younger athletes about the dietary needs. There’s a lot of athletes who don’t know what to do and end up harming themselves.’’
Many Olympians get a tattoo of the five rings as a sign that they’ve joined a special club.
Cringe
O’Dwyer is a fan of body art but, even if he gets a second shot at the Games, he won’t be going down that road.
“No way, that’s a bit cringe. I get asked about my tattoos and what they mean,’’ he said.
“It’s funny. Like I have a tattoo of the gingerbread man from Shrek. It was my first one.
“People were thinking I’d get something Satanic. Nah, give me the gingerbread man.’’
ADRIAN O’Dwyer was all energy, all attitude.
He’d plant his biker boots far apart and stare you right in the eye. Tattoos. Piercings. Studded belts. Chains. Silver rings. Bowie knife in his belt. He wasn’t your average athlete. He’d talk of watching The Exorcist or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the night before competitions.
In the morning, he’d stick on something like Slipknot to get in the mood to wreak havoc. Death metal meets the high jump.
He is the last Irishman to compete in a field event at the Olympics.
And there was a serious buzz about him ahead of Athens 2004. Just 20 years old, he’d qualified eight days out from the deadline with a stunning leap of 2.30m in Algiers – which had him ranked fifth in the world.
Niggles
But niggles in his ankle and Achilles derailed him on the biggest stage.
The opening height at the Olympics was 2.10m, something he’d normally clear in warm ups.
In three attempts, though, he couldn’t make it.
The Press Association ran a feature with the headline ‘Olympic Gaffes’ after the Games. This was he entrance on the big man from Kilkenny.
“Irish (it would be, wouldn’t it?) high jumper Adrian O’Dwyer failed to register a jump – taking out the support pole with one jump, and hitting the bar with his hand on another.” Charming. Athletes had to stay in the field, stay in the stadium, even after they went out. That was the cruelty of it. So O’Dwyer sat there alone, all alone. The longest two hours of his life. Kyle was 2400 miles away in Kilkenny. His teammates were in the stand. O’Dwyer only had his scrambled thoughts for company.
O’Dwyer had created a buzz in the Olympic village. Standing out in a place where it’s hard to stand out.
But, when he got back there that night, he didn’t want to see anyone.
“I went for a walk to be on my own. There was a tree and I climbed on to a branch and sat there for a while. Reflected on what happened and how I could deal with it.”
The injuries never really cleared up. O’Dwyer estimates he spent e40,000 on treatments and surgeries. Eventually, he gave up the ghost.
He makes it clear that he has no time for regrets: “I loved high jumping, then I lost the love for it, but I don’t look back on it and go ‘what if?’”
O’Dwyer was a special talent, though. His qualifying jump of 2.30m for Athens would have been good enough for Olympic bronze in London eight years later.
“It was tough, but it was my job at the time. If I didn’t do well in a high jump competition, I was devastated, it was a disaster, everything like that. Now I just go ‘OK, I’ll go and do the next one,” he said.
“But I do look back on athletics fondly. I retired early because of injuries so I never got to perform at my absolute best. So be it. At least I go to that level with what I did.
“In the sport that I’m doing now, I’m still at my early phase. My bones and tendons still have to harden for this particular sport.
“What’s great about arm wrestling is that I can do it well into my 50s, even my 60s.”