CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD
SEAMUS O’CONNOR smiles when the subject of his age is broached. He’s a young man, having just turned 24 in October. There is no environment where he would be considered old except in the world of snowboarding. ‘I suppose 24 isn’t old and would be considered relatively young in life but in snowboarding terms, I am getting on a bit,’ he laughs.
‘You tend to hit your peak in this sport around 17 or 18.’
This week in Beijing, O’Connor will become Ireland’s most experienced Winter Olympian ever when he competes in the half-pipe snowboarding event for the third successive Games. He narrowly missed out on the final on both previous occasions, so he’s hoping age and experience ensure that the third time is a charm.
But, whatever happens, he is viewing this time as a bonus. When he left Pyeongchang in 2018, having just missed out on the final 15, he didn’t think he would be part of the whole jamboree again.
‘I probably thought that was it,’ he recalls. ‘I had so many injuries in the two years before Pyeongchang that I thought that would be my final time at an Olympics. But you know, as time went on, I started to think if my body was staying fit and healthy, I should try to qualify for a third Games. And here I am, representing my country for a third time at an Olympic Games.’
O’Connor’s preparations have been hampered by a knee injury picked up in a competition in Austria back in November while also trying to keep pace with the new, fearless generation of halfpipe snowboarders who are making 1440s (quadruple spins) seem routine. But he’s determined to enjoy every moment in Beijing.,
‘The dream would be to make the top 15, after coming so close the previous two times, but at the moment, I am just concentrating on staying healthy and enjoying the journey. I doubt I will make another Olympics so I just want to soak everything in, as this could be my last competitive season.’
It has been quite a journey to this point for O’Connor, whose paternal grandparents came from Dublin and Drogheda. Having grown up in the Californian mountains, his father
Kevin, took him skiing as a
toddler. By the age of three, though, he was on a snowboard and soon displayed a prodigious mix of balance and courage that made the sport sit up and take notice.
Shaun White, who is from the same part of California, had just become the sport’s first breakout star, while giant sportswear brands such as Nike, Adidas
and Reebok were moving into the market. Having won his first national title at eight, O’Connor was touted as one of the next big things in snowboarding and, by the time he was 13, he was snapped up by Nike, who wanted to make him a poster boy.
‘Yeah, that was a bit crazy, being signed by Nike to a professional contract at 13. Crazy,’ he reflects. ‘Nike, Adidas and all these brands had just come into the sport, sponsoring athletes. Snowboarding was seen as very fashionable at the time, and things just took off from there.
‘The sport just went from something I loved to do, had a passion for, to something which I could do for a living. ‘And I was thrown into this fully-professional lifestyle at 13. I was hanging out with all these famous people, who had been idols of mine, had just seen them on telly or in magazines and now I was sitting down to dinner with them. But I was very young, and there was a lot of travelling around to competitions and photoshoots. I was away from my parents at that young age.
‘It made me grow up very quickly, which can be a good and bad thing, but it was tough at the time.’
Three years later, he was walking out in the opening ceremony at the Sochi Olympics. ‘That was a massive moment for me, and I was only 16 at the time. It was a bit overwhelming.
‘My Irish heritage was very important to me. I would spend every summer over in Ireland, so I had long established the connection to it. And it was great that I could compete in Ireland on the international stage because snowboarding was a new sport at the time and not one that you can practise in Ireland.’
He missed out on a final spot by three places, but banked the Sochi experience as character-building.
Within a couple of years, his resolve would be examined even more. Firstly, the sportswear giants lost interest in the sport and decided to withdraw. O’Connor discovered he would be losing his Nike sponsorship with the competitive season still in full flow.
‘They all got out of the sport as quickly as they got into it,’ O’Connor remembers with a sigh. ‘And they left the athletes without any sponsorship. It was the middle of the season when it was announced that they weren’t renewing contracts and getting out of the sport. We were left in the lurch.’
To compound matters, O’Connor suffered a serious injury that threatened his career after he ruptured every ligament in his knee during a World Cup event in New Zealand in 2016.
‘I completely blew my knee out,’ he says. ‘I knew straight away that it was bad. A serious knee injury is a rite of passage in this sport, every snowboarder knows they are going to get one at some stage, but I did everything. Tore my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), MCL (medial collateral ligament) and meniscus.
‘I have had a lot of injuries in my career, broken arms and hands, shattered my collarbone. But this was definitely the worst. I didn’t know if I would ever get on a snowboard again.’
The damage to his knee was so severe that doctors in Queenstown wouldn’t let him fly back to California for a few weeks as they feared a clot during the flight.
Six weeks after the injury, he underwent surgery to completely reconstruct his right knee, followed by a long and painful rehabilitation process. Initially, getting back on the slopes didn’t even enter his mind as he first had to walk again.
‘I thought it was the end of my career. Doctors had told me that I would have to take at least a year off the snow.
‘I wasn’t able to walk for six weeks
after the surgery. So, it was all very slow and tedious but eventually, things started to get better. And I was back on my board after eight months.
‘At the time, I still had youth on my side and I believed that I could get back to my best if I put the work in. But it was a tough time.’
Less than 18 months later, O’Connor was carrying the Tricolour at the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang. No Olympic flag-bearer deserved it more. And now, he’s back for a third Games and facing a young generation who are even more fearless than those who came before.
‘The level of competition has gone up another level or two. All these young athletes are pulling off these high-danger, high-risk tricks that we haven’t seen before, seeing triple corks with three flips in the move. So it is going to be a spectacular event at these Olympics.’
He has viewed every season since his horrific knee injury as a bonus but it also made him acknowledge that he has to plan for a life away
from the sport. He’s into his fourth year of a degree course at university in Salt Lake City, where he is majoring in psychology and sports management. The plan is to do a masters in sports psychology, possibly in Ireland.
‘I’ve wanted to move to Europe for a while because of my family ties there (O’Connor’s mother is Russian). Having an Irish passport makes it easier to do that, so I think this would be a great opportunity for me.’
And, given that he has been a professional athlete since he was 13, he reckons that he has something to contribute as a sports psychologist.
‘I wanted to do a career where I could use all my experiences that I have gone through since starting out in professional sports at 13.
‘I have had plenty of highs and lows, a lot of disappointment, come back from an injury that could have ended my career. Going through all of that should be a help to others.
‘I know all about the stress and pressure that goes with being a professional athlete, having expectation on you at such a young age, so I might be able to help younger athletes with that. And both of my parents work in the mental health industry, so it just seems like the natural fit for me.’
And he feels that he would have benefited from having a sports psychologist by his side when he started competing on the snowboarding tour as a youngster.
‘It’s a scary sport. Injury is always in the back of your mind but I only worked with a sports psychologist on one occasion. I think that if I did that more, it might have helped me. When I was young, I was setting all these goals in my head, some of them were probably a little unrealistic, but when I fell short of those expectations, I started to feel like I was letting people down, my family, my sponsors.
‘I think it is more important for athletes to enjoy it and realise that they are doing it for themselves.’
As a seasoned Olympian, O’Connor will be on hand to offer pointers to any of his five Ireland team-mates who might be finding the whole experience a little daunting or difficult to process.
‘If they ask me for advice, I will just tell them to try and stay in the moment as much as they can.
‘The Olympics are overwhelming. They are the biggest event that you will ever compete in. It is eye-opening, just the scale of it and totally different from anything you will ever do in sport. So, it is important to remember to enjoy it as much as you can, and represent yourself, your family and Ireland as best you can.’
From the teenage prodigy who was a poster boy for Nike to a horrific knee injury that almost derailed his career, Seamus O’Connor is now in the third and final phase of his career – a wise old head among all the fearless new generation of snowboarders in Beijing. He’s hoping that maturity might be all he needs to make it to an Olympic final.
‘BEING SIGNED TO A PRO CONTRACT AT 13 WITH NIKE WAS CRAZY’