‘Couldn’t have happened to a better person’

Coaches and teachers who have helped Rob Heffernan since he was a boy paid tribute to an athlete who started out in Togher and went all the way to the top of the world.

You have to go right back to Eamon Coghlan in 1983 in Helsinki to find the last Irishman to win a gold medal at a World Championships.

One of his first coaches from Togher Athletic Club, John D Hayes, remembered Rob as a 12-year-old setting off on his athletic journey with Togher AC.