Striking the right balance between life and world-class athletic performance
Kelly Murphy competes with fellow Irish cyclists at the UEC European Track Cycling Championships in the Netherlands earlier this year. Photograph: John Thys/AFP via Getty Images
When Team Ireland takes to the Seine in the Olympic Games opening ceremony on July 26th it will be all too easy amid the noise and the pageantry to forget that this group of young men and women have had to balance the demands of busy academic and working lives with gruelling training and competitive regimes to reach the pinnacle of athletic endeavour.
One Irish competitor who’ll be quite at home during the unique waterborne ceremony is Emily Hegarty, the history-making rower who was part of the coxless four team that took home Ireland’s first ever women’s rowing medal from the Tokyo Games. Since then, she’s managed to fit in a degree in physiology at UCC and recover from a back injury to take her place in the boat in Paris.
