One step at a time for Pat O’Leary, but Paralympic one his mightiest

When it was over, Pat O’Leary strapped back on his left leg and walked off down the pontoon in Rio de Janeiro’s spectacular Lagoa Stadium to find his family.

As he headed for the grandstand, the magnificent panorama of the Paralympic’s first ever canoeing venue, a lake close to the ocean, overlooked by forested mountains and crowned by Christ The Redeemer, opened up before him.

In the shimmering haze of another sweltering Brazilian day, it must surely have looked like a mirage. Less than five years ago the 43-year-old NUIG chemistry lecturer, originally from the Lee Road in Cork, had to make the horrific decision of telling a surgeon to go ahead and amputate his leg.