Derval O’Rourke reveals her fuel for body and mind

THE 2004 Greek Olympics was a “wake-up call” for Derval O’Rourke. A bout of severe food poisoning and appendicitus meant she was in hospital for six days just four weeks before the games. Doctors’ advice was to remove her appendix, skip the games, and recover.

She refused (“No athlete ever knows for sure if they will make an Olympics”), lined up and “trailed” home in seventh place. Sitting slumped outside the stadium after the race, she knew her stint in hospital had wiped out any chance of her competing well.

“I started to think about how everything in my life had a connecton to my health and fitness. Everthing is intertwined. If Iwanted to achieve my ultimate performance goals, then I needed to make sure that I was paying attention to lots of things in my life.” Her realisation that, in order to be one of the best in the world, she had to be holisitically healthy led her to a phalanx of psychologists and physiotherapists and (via an email to Sonia O’Sullivan) to Limerick-based nutritritionist and pharmacist Andrea Cullin. After one hour with Andrea, the then UCD student had changed the way she thought about food forever.