Podcast Corner: An athletics podcast worth catching up on ahead of Paris Olympics
Rob Heffernan, Derval O'Rourke, and David Gillick recording Medals & Mics at Take Nine Studio, Cork. Picture: Larry Cummins
What a start to the sporting summer in Rome last week, with Ireland’s record medal haul at the European Athletics Championship. Everybody was raving about Greg Allen’s commentary - especially on the final straight of that 4x400m mixed relay - but back in the RTÉ studio, Derval O’Rourke and Rob Heffernan were part of a panel, alongside Sonia O’Sullivan, offering superb insight and analysis. David Gillick conducted some brilliant interviews with the Irish athletes at Stadio Olimpico over the course of the week too. Alongside O’Rourke and Heffernan, Gillick is part of , a new podcast from Cork’s Take Nine Studios which has just wrapped its first six-part series. The titles of each episode provide an indication of their journeys: The Dream, The Reality, The Aftermath, The Revelation, The Setbacks, The Retirement.
O’Rourke, a columnist with Irish Examiner Weekend, is always such a compelling, honest listen and here is no different. With all eyes now turning towards Paris and the Olympic Games next month, she recalls her own experience at the Summer Games in 2008 and 2012. “When we were in the heights of our careers and when we were winning medals, we were so obsessed with the medals that anybody who wasn’t trying to win a medal, I think for us, we struggled with that… If you’re going there just to be there, it’s a completely different experience.” Like with all the best podcasts, it’s just so rewarding to hear experts in their field not talking down to the audience but rather just conversing with their peers.
Take Gillick explaining why he had to call time on his career. He was 30 and had hurt his achilles. People might think that’s still young in athletic and sprinting terms, he says - but it’s not. He had a meltdown on the track one day because he was injured. O’Rourke says it takes six or seven years to process retirement. Gillick explains that by the time September - training season - rolled around, “I hated athletics. I resented it… I was hurt from the sport.” Heffernan asks: “Do you feel, if you weren’t injured, that you still had the motivation and the drive and the talent to be at the top, that your body was still capable of being quick?” Gillick simply replies: “I hated my body because it was failing me.”
has arrived at the perfect time, with Irish athletes feeling on top of the world and with eyes turning to Paris. You have plenty time to listen back to the series before the starting gun on July 26.
