Ireland star Cliodhna Sargent still haunted by Olympic heartbreak

“When you lose out on an Olympics, you tend to cry quite often.”

Few know those tormenting tears quite like Cliodhna Sargent. Even on her best days, when receiving a Cork Southside Sports Award for July, they can creep up from the depths.

Eight years of time and toil have been poured into an Olympic effort and after narrowly falling short, the next 12 months will be full of painful reminders of missing out on the greatest goal.

“This is my third time trying to qualify for an Olympics, so I’ve been through it before,” says Sargent.

“I know what it feels like but it doesn’t make it any easier. You still go into the Olympic year knowing that, in that August, you’re going to miss out on something that you’ve worked for so long to achieve, and that you’re not going to get.

“Then you either decide that you’re going to go for another four or five years and try to achieve it again or you bow out without having achieved your ultimate goal.”

For all the success that bookended their season, winning the second tiers of the World League and EuroHockey Championships, that marathon penalty-shootout loss to China cast a shadow over four years of preparation.

The loss to China will define Sargent’s year but need not define her career. There is time yet for this to be a story of resilience and persistence.

Those qualities were evident as Ireland emerged the comfortable winners of the EuroHockey Championships 2 at the end of July, a mere month after their Olympic suffering.

“It was a strange one to go into because it’s very hard to pick yourself back up after having such an important tournament go against you, to come back into a tournament that you know you need to win. We all went into it knowing the tournament was going to be mentally tough but that we, as a team,were actually physically and skilfully better than the teams that were there.

“Winning it was absolutely brilliant and it’s great for Irish hockey.”

The 2018 World Cup and 2020 Olympics are a distance away but, once 2016 passes, they are the major goals. However Sargent, after eight years wearing green, has the 200-cap milestone to look forward to in the interim.