Noble art of competing with best in world

There has always been a sense of perpetual motion about Ireland’s Olympic Chef de Mission for Paris

Less than 100 days from the start of the Paris Olympics, Ireland’s Chef de Mission Gavin Noble should be feeling the pressure. He is about to lead Ireland’s biggest ever team at the greatest sporting show on the planet. And the buck stops with him.

“Actually I’m not stressed at all. I have been an athlete who didn’t qualify, that’s stressful. I competed at the Games which is stressful. I have no stress now compared to that, though I am busy.”

It might be Halloween before he winds down. The 43-year-old Enniskillen native doesn’t really do downtime. There has always been a sense of perpetual motion about his life.

He comes from an atypical Northern Ireland family. His late father, Tom, was a Protestant, his mother Mary Cafferty, who is from Arva in neighbouring Cavan, is a Catholic.

“Mixed marriages weren’t the norm in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. Religion wasn’t a factor in the house. I didn’t really know what it was. It was never in my consciousness.”

In the wake of the Remembrance Day Enniskillen bombing in 1987 which killed 12 and injured dozens, his father — who had captained Trinity College’s rowing club during his students days — became the founding principal of Erne Integrated College, Fermanagh’s first public integrated primary school.

Gavin, one of five siblings, later discovered how sectarianism has the potential to poison community relations.

One Christmas he asked for a Tottenham Hotspur kit. Paul Gascoigne was then a White Hart Lane legend. Gavin’s mother bought him a Gascoigne England strip from Italia ’90.

“I put it on because I didn’t want her to be disappointed and I went down to Enniskillen town. I went from being one of the first picks to being last. A guy came up to me at the end and said: ‘I think you’re on the wrong pitch’.”

The town’s other soccer club, Enniskillen Rangers, played on the other side of the road.

During his teenage years, his sporting prowess enabled him to be provocative. “I used to wear tri-coloured shorts to Portora [Royal School] just to piss people off. I was their friend,

but when you put on a different coloured t-shirt, it changed them and I would play on it.

“I tested them, but I never had any trouble. I had friends who didn’t judge people on where they came from. You were either cool or you weren’t.”

He was always into sport, his father refereed rugby games on Saturday mornings before heading to Enniskillen Royal Boat Club where he coached. Gavin tagged along. Swimming was the sport he excelled in.

Portora hosted the All-Ireland schools triathlon championships when he was a student there. “One year they needed a swimmer for the relay team. By the time the competition came around the other two guys dropped out and I just did the whole thing.”

He was offered sports scholarships by Loughborough College and Sterling University. “My mum thought the Scottish psyche would be better for me than the English one and it was easier to travel to Sterling so I went there.”

He ended up spending a decade in Sterling where Scotland’s Institute of Sport and triathlon programme are based. Though he focused on his burgeoning triathlon career, he did secure a degree in sports marketing.

During Pat Hickey’s reign as President of the Olympic Council of Ireland, the role of Chef de Mission was largely ceremonial.

Sonia O’Sullivan filled the role at the London Olympics in 2008 which coincidentally marked the high point of Noble’s career. He finished a credible

This is not good enough for me anymore. The Americans will not be getting on that bus.

23rd in the Olympic triathlon after becoming the first Irish male to qualify for the event, which was introduced at the 2000 Sydney Games.

His Olympic journey was far from linear though. In the two years leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Noble was ranked high enough to be selected. He had received the kit for the opening ceremony, his parents had booked the tickets, and he was tipped as an Irish athlete to watch.

But he never made it to China after being squeezed out of the final qualification spot as a result of a shock result at the European championships.

“It was hard to take. It changed my personality. It changed everything. I had four years to qualify for London. It was do or die. It made me harder, and tougher mentally.

“I became sort of hyper-focused. I had to make London in order to justify the other 15 years which had gone before.”

Having fulfilled his Olympic dream in London he opened a new chapter in his life. But before taking up a role with California-based bike company Specialized in late 2013, he had one final fling at the triathlon.

He won the 70.3 Zell am See-Kaprun in Austria in 3:50.23 “I think I was the first and only Irishman to win a pro Half Ironman [1.9km swim, 90.1km cycle, 21.1km run]. So, I am unbeaten. It’s great.”

Initially he was head of the Specialized triathlon brand before becoming their global sports marketing director.

Specialized HQ is in Morgan Hill near San Jose. “I didn’t like America and I never to live there. I stayed in a hotel while I was there but spent the minimum amount of time there.”

He fluffed his green card application on two occasions because he knew once he had a green card he would have to live permanently in the US.

By a happy coincidence he met his future wife Siobhan just as he finished up in California. The couple live in Wicklow and have two children, Izzy (8) and Ted (4).

Having worked for a couple of years as head of Digital Content with Ogilvy WH, he applied for the job as Ireland’s Chef de Mission for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Tricia Heberle (now a consultant with the IABA High Performance Unit) got the job and brought Noble in as her deputy.

As a member of the Athletes Commission, he knew his way around having done some work for the then Olympic Council of Ireland when they were in crisis-management mode following the arrest of Pat Hickey during the Rio Olympics.

Noble succeeded Heberle as Chef de Mission after the Tokyo Games. Essentially he is head of performance and branding in the Olympic Federation of Ireland (OFI).

“We can’t have performance without the brand and you can’t have a brand without performance. It is sort of circular.”

His work is not exclusively focused on the summer Olympics. The OFI nurture emerging talent who have yet to secure funding from Sport Ireland.

“It is easy to see talented people. They do need backing. Sometimes you are keeping people in the sport.”

He cites the case of sprinter Rhasidat Adeleke.

“We helped her out a couple of years ago. She wasn’t on funding at the time and we gave her €15,000,” he added.

Another example was rower Alison Bergin who needed funding to come onto the High Performance programme. Now she is almost certain to compete in the women’s double with Zoe Hyde in Paris.

Ultimately Noble and the OFI will be judged on how many medals Ireland bring home from Paris.

“Everybody has a view on that depending on how accountable they want to be to it. The medal target set out in the Sport Ireland strategy was between four and seven and I think we should hold it to that.

“My own view is that we should look to improve. We won four medals in Tokyo so to improve on that would be great. In order to win four, five or six medals you actually need to go in with 12 to 16 chances of doing it,” he says.

“Part of our role is to make sure that those 12 to 16 chances are still chances by the times they get to the Games.

“Then it is up to them. If Ireland won four to six medals, I don’t think the world would be surprised.

“There is a big difference between expectation and reality sometimes. The success of the whole team will ultimately come down to six or seven moments.”

Size wise Ireland can never compete against the bigger countries but Noble is determined that the Irish team — which is likely to be in the region of 120 — are as professionally prepared as any other country.

“Our job is to support ambition and to ensure that when an Irish athlete rocks up to a venue they don’t feel any less than anybody else based on sports science or what they are wearing.

“I start meetings with no budget because if I came in with a block then I am already limiting myself. So I say ‘What is the best plan. Where is the best hotel’ and I will find a way,” he added.

“I am very up front in saying that if you are a medal potential sport you will be treated differently. It has to be like that.”

In Paris the Irish rowers, track cyclists, golfers, equestrian team members and sailors (whose event takes place in Marseilles) will not be staying in the Olympic village.

“Rowing is a high potential medal sport for Ireland. If they were staying in the village, it would involve a two-hour round trip to the course. This is not good enough for me anymore. The Americans will not be getting on that bus.”

Noble sourced a hotel where the Swiss and New Zealand crews are staying. It is 15 minutes away from the Nautical Stadium of Ile-de-France in Vaires-sur-Marne which hosts the Olympic regatta.

“If we continue to go with an attitude [that] we are only Ireland, we will never compete at the highest level,” stressed Noble.

He has resigned himself to the possibility that he will probably not see much of the action in Paris.

“I have a privileged job. My pass gets me everywhere. As a former sportsman, to know that I can rock down trackside and watch the 100m, go and to see Daniel Wiffen and then head to the rowing, it is real privilege. But it is not my focus.”

But Noble’s work is done by the time the starting pistol sounds.

PTSB is proud to be the first-ever title sponsor to partner with both the Irish Olympic Team and the Irish Paralympic Team during an Olympic and Paralympic cycle.