Missing London Olympics was a blessing, says maturer Fiona Doyle

Fiona Doyle probably wouldn’t have taken kindly to the suggestion at the time but the Limerick swimmer knows now that failure to make the Olympics four years ago may be one of the best things to have happened to her.

It seems intuitively odd, a discordant note to sound for a woman who first voiced her ambition to make the Games as a 12-year-old and one who will finally achieve her ambition in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, having missed out on London by 0.48 of a second.

“As nice as it would have been to qualify for 2012, I am fortunate to maybe not have gone and having had the opportunity to get over that hardship and try and improve myself as a person,” she explains.