Aidan O'Mahony biography out in October

Aidan O'Mahony

Kerry football star Aidan O’Mahony’s forthcoming biography is expected to describe in detail the highs and lows of a long and successful career at the peak of Gaelic football.

Unbroken: A Story of Mental Strength, Physical Fitness and the Power of Adversity will be in the shops in October and deals with episodes such as O’Mahony’s positive drugs test in 2008, his involvement in getting Cork’s Donncha O’Connor sent off in a high-profile game in Croke Park, and his victory in Dancing With The Stars.

O’Mahony won five All-Ireland senior football titles with Kerry, and in 2008 he became the first Gaelic footballer to test positive for a banned steroid, salbutamol.

An asthmatic, O'Mahony attributed the abnormally high level of salbutamol to the use of an inhaler before the All-Ireland final against Tyrone and was subsequently cleared by the GAA’s anti-doping panel.

In the same year O'Mahony was in the headlines for a theatrical over-reaction in an entanglement with Cork's Donncha O'Connor, when the Kerryman threw himself to the ground during the 2008 All-Ireland semi-final against Cork.

The year after he retired from the intercounty game O'Mahony was a contestant on the RTÉ television show Dancing With The Stars, which he won outright with dancing partner Valeria Milova, and the book details the experience of appearing on the popular show. Since retiring from interounty football O’Mahony, a Garda, has taken up another career in personal fitness - aomfitness1.com - while the book also describes in detail the experience of playing a club game with Rathmore on a broken leg in 2011.

Unbroken: A Story of Mental Strength, Physical Fitness and the Power of Adversity, co-written with Michael Moynihan of the Irish Examiner, is published by Hachette Ireland on October 16.