John Treacy on the hardest thing in Irish sport: ‘I had to wear a back brace 23 hours a day’
John Treacy is one of Ireland’s most successful athletes of all time, but he also grappled with the stress and doubt caused by serious injury.
Dealing with uncertainty, particularly when injured, is a challenge for any sports-person.
John Treacy, now chief executive of the Irish Sports Council but an Olympic silver medallist and (twice) World Cross Country champion, goes back to his own career to reinforce this as his nomination for the hardest thing in Irish sport.
The Waterford native is one of Ireland’s most successful athletes of all time, but he also grappled with the stress and doubt caused by serious injury.
“At the end of 1980, I was coming off a seventh-place finish in the Olympics 5,000m and had won the Memorial Van Damme 5,000m race, so I was at the height of my career.
“But then I got a back injury and I really couldn’t run at all. It was the first injury I’d ever had and it was a very difficult time. My whole existence was about training and running, but I couldn’t do either.
“I got some physio and I went to a hospital, but I was told to come back two weeks later for treatment.
“I left the hospital and got home to Villierstown, got on the phone and booked a flight to America. Two days later I was in Boston and was in front of a doctor in a sports medicine department of a hospital there.
“He diagnosed me immediately with a stress fracture and, after an MRI, I was told I’d have to wear a back brace for six months.”
Within a week, Treacy was in the back brace.
“I drove from Boston back to Providence, put on my runners and went out for a two-mile run. It was the greatest gift anyone could have given me — probably one of the happiest days in my life.
“The next day my legs were in bits, of course. There were no stationary bikes for training, but that’s where we were in the ’80s.”
Treacy wore the back brace dutifully for six months — “I broke 14 minutes for 5km wearing it” — and the injury eventually healed itself.
“But it was a very hard period, which is the point I want to make.
“It was also my first injury, and I had been someone who was on the go all the time, who was great to plan everything a year ahead of time, and then all of a sudden it was all snatched away from me.
“It was hard to take. I didn’t run for two or three months, there was no sign of getting to the nub of the problem, and I was thinking that my running career was over.
“Meeting the doctor in Boston was brilliant in that sense, because he turned it all around.”
Treacy stresses that his transatlantic flight back in 1980 wouldn’t be necessary today.
“Irish athletes have the best care now. They have access to the best doctors, MRIs, strength and conditioning programmes.
“It’s always vital to treat issues like this straight away, compared to where we were back in the early ’80s. That support mechanism has transformed totally in the intervening time and all of those facilities are available here now.
“But that doesn’t stop the doubt coming into the minds of young athletes, in particular when they have injuries. Certainly when I look back on it now, that’s my strongest impression of the period — ‘that was a really hard time’ — because running was what I did. It wasn’t a time in my life I enjoyed, in all honesty.
“Because of all of that, we have a strong message we try to get out to athletes: if they have an injury, go about getting it sorted as soon as possible in order to get back training.
“People can now use stationary bikes and swimming pools to train as they recover from injury, and the development of strength and conditioning programmes to prevent injury, those have been very important developments.”
Treacy never forgot the back brace that changed his life, either.
“I still have it today,” he laughs.
“It’s a big huge thing. I kept it because I thought my career was over back then, but it wasn’t.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
