A BLIND businessman who travels the world seeking out extreme sport challenges yesterday lavished praise on his award-winning guide dog and declared: “He’s transformed my life.”

NECESSITY is the mother of invention, goes the old adage. It held true when Colette Swift arrived in London some years ago and walked straight into he middle of a tube train strike and had no option but to buy a bike to commute across the city to work.

Some of the world's great ironmen and women will travel to Kenmare this weekend for the last big race of the Irish triathlon season.

Once the preserve of endurance junkies, the gruelling sport of triathlon is enjoying a surge of popularity across the world. Ireland’s very own ironwoman tells all to Mark Gallagher.

FOR someone whose sporting career had been brought to a sudden and traumatic halt by a horrific cycling accident 12 years previously, it took a huge amount of grit, determination and soul-searching for Ger Hartmann to get back on a bike not just once but twice in order to compete in the 25th Anniversary Ironman triathlon.

A VETERAN soldier who lost his legs to a mortar round in Vietnam finished the Los Angeles Marathon on Saturday, a week after he began, to the cheers of supporters and passers-by.