Rob Heffernan Olympic medal proof you can win without doping

When Rob Heffernan talks about high performance, it’s worth listening, because the newly-minted Olympic bronze medallist has a message for Irish athletes: You can win, and win clean.

Almost 16 years have passed since Heffernan made his Olympic debut in Sydney as a scrawny 22-year-old, finishing over seven minutes behind the winner, in 28th place. Since then, he’s learned, step by painful step, just what it takes to reach the summit.

“It can be done here,” he said. “If you look at what Olive [Loughnane] and Gillian [O’Sullivan] and myself achieved, the common denominator has been our unofficial system: Training really hard 11 months of the year.”