My childhood with Sonia O'Sullivan: The daily run to school sparked my champion mindset

“Those four daily trips taught me it was faster to run”.

Sonia O'Sullivan after receiving the Irish Life Health Hall of Fame award on the occasion of her 50th birthday Picture: INPHO/Morgan Treacy

The celebrated long-distance runner Sonia O’Sullivan remembers a time when she struggled to keep up with her mother. Theirs was a one-car family, and her father would drive it to work every day, which meant everyone else had to use their own two feet to get around.

“We’d get the train from Cobh into Cork to go shopping, and it seemed to me that Mam walked so fast,” says O’Sullivan. “It was like she was on a mission.”