MEMOIR Bend Don’t Break by Frank O’mara

(The O’brien Press) Reviewer: Donal O’donoghue

Frank O’mara was one of Ireland’s greatest runners. Back in the 1980s, in the wake of the great Eamon Coughlan, the Limerick man (based at the University of Arkansas) together with Cork man Marcus O’sullivan (at the rival University of Villanova), regularly set national and international track records. Then, at the age of 48, he was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s disease. The backdrop to this diagnosis is chronicled in the prologue of this memoir, but it doesn’t define who he was and who he is. “Such is the all-consuming nature of this odious disease that it tries to define your life,” writes O’mara at the beginning, but all that follows reveals a life lived to the full as a champion athlete, as well as a successful businessman and a loving father and husband. As a runner, his dream was “racing around a track for four laps as quickly as possible”, something he did better than most (he clocked a 3.51.06 mile in 1986 and won two World Championships), but he also knows, looking back, that perhaps he wasn’t 100% committed, that he didn’t dedicate every waking moment to his sport. Business was “in his DNA” (his father had been “a serial entrepreneur”) and when injuries and time took their toll on his body, that’s where he carved out the next chapter of his life. This memoir, moving and inspiring (a letter written to his seriously sick father, when he was 15, reveals a son’s love as well as his desire to win), is a story of achievement, fortitude and belief.