Derval O’Rourke Athletics

DERVAL O’Rourke says she would be ‘delighted’ with this year’s more subdued Olympics setup if she was still competing.

The former sprint hurdler represented Ireland in three Olympic Games and knows all about the ‘circus’ that surrounds it.

‘I actually think the fact that it’s more restricted will really suit some athletes — there’s less of that Olympic party-festival vibe,’ she tells Magazine.

‘When I went into the Olympic village it was like going into the biggest sports party in the world. You had people who were finished competing who were just having a laugh, and loads of people hanging around. It was this mad carnival atmosphere all the time.

‘I think we’re going to get a lot of really fast results, to be honest. You often see really fast results in smaller meets, because it’s such a low-pressure environment. I think I personally would have responded well to this year’s scenario, where it feels almost like a dulled down version of the Olympics.’

While Corkonian O’Rourke thrived on the intensity of big championships during her career, ‘for the Olympics it’s elevated so much more. And that brought a lot of stress and pressure.’ She adds: ‘A European or World Championships is every two years. I had some really good performances at those in my career, but I also had some really terrible ones.

‘It’s just that after a terrible one I had another opportunity two years later to rectify it. Whereas with the Olympics, you’re waiting four years and anything can happen in a fouryear cycle. It’s a lot more difficult to peak on a day once every four years.’

The many peaks of O’Rourke’s career would never coincide with an Olympics, and she says she has ‘had to come to terms with the fact that I didn’t win an Olympic medal’.

She recalls: ‘I look at Beijing 2008 [O’Rourke didn’t qualify from her heat, having torn her groin four weeks previously], and then the times I ran at the Worlds one year later, which would have got me a medal in Beijing. I definitely had to work through a process of saying the Olympics didn’t define my career, and that I had all these other great performances on other days. Particularly since I retired, I can see the Olympics as part of the overall journey of my career. I actually think not getting a medal in Beijing probably made me a better athlete. I was certainly a far superior athlete the next year. I took a long hard look at my life after Beijing, going ‘Where do I want to be? What do I want to be doing?’ And maybe if I’d got a medal I wouldn’t have done that. I take the lessons from it.’

Derval runs her own health and fitness platform, Derval.ie, and mentors on TV’s Ireland’s Fittest Family, and the mother-of-two will provide analysis on all athletics events for RTÉ. ‘I always try to consider my non-athletics friends watching. So if my pals are watching who don’t have a breeze about athletics, will they understand what I’m talking about? You have to make it interesting for the casual viewer.’