‘I have done some dangerous things. I enjoy the fear of, not dying, but getting seriously hurt’

The gymnast Dom Cunningham made the switch from GB to Ireland and has packed a lot into a life less ordinary. 

RENAISSANCE MAN: Dominick Cunningham of the Gymnastics Ireland Men's Senior team.
Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile

There isn’t a business card in the world that could capture Dom Cunningham. His CV, if he has one, must run for miles beyond the standard one or two pages. The modern term is ‘portfolio career’ but his is a life and an approach that could never sit contentedly in any one folder or filing cabinet anyway.

Where to start?

With a gymnastics career that has known success and frustration with Great Britain? His switch to Ireland? With his ambitions to work as a stuntman? Maybe the presenting stint he did for the recent Commonwealth Games in his native Birmingham. Or his passion for fixing cars and bikes and his love for wheelies and adrenalin in general.

“Everyone in Britain knew me as the crazy gymnast guy. You would see me doing a handstand on a 40ft cliff or something, just on the edge of it, so I have done some dangerous, scary things. I enjoy the fear of, well, not dying but getting seriously hurt.

“I like to push the boundaries but the motorbikes, they’re dangerous. You’re going into quarries and stuff. I went out three weeks ago and I was thinking, ‘right, don’t get injured cos you’ve got Europeans in three weeks and stuff’.” 

Just back from surgery on both ankles, Cunningham was nursing a collar bone in the build-up to this week’s European Championships but, hey, injuries come with the day job. Others, like a serious injury to his hand playing Gaelic football in Birmingham, or the circle burnt onto a ring finger fiddling around with a beach buggy, were more avoidable.

Or they would have been if this wasn’t simply how he is.

Sitting around is not his thing.

He had three or four hours to spare in his digs at Sports Campus Ireland a while back and it was all he could handle before the feet got itchy. So it was only natural that he looked into what else he might do during the recent Commonwealths after his transfer to Ireland prevented him from competing.

If this all seems very random then it comes from a singular piece of advice.

“A massive thing my dad taught me was that you need to create a future for yourself before it’s too late. That’s why I have so many different avenues. I didn’t have to do that Commonwealth thing but I can say now that I was a presenter at the Commonwealth Games.” 

He is also a two-time Commonwealth medallist and he can say something similar about his European Championship backstory. This is a 27-year old with serious pedigree. Half those successes have come in individual events and the other as part of a team. He is a major addition to an Irish men’s collective that takes to the gym in Munich tomorrow.

First things first, though. Why make the switch?

The Whyte Review into British Gymnastics, which found a ‘coach-led culture of fear’ and so much more, gets a mention but the nub of it was his omission from the men’s team for last year’s Olympic Games and his frustration with the manner in which it was ultimately selected.

He had returned from a brutal leg injury to excel at the World Championships in 2019, finishing fourth in the vault, but selection for Tokyo was based on a series of trials held behind closed doors. That didn’t suit his need to feed off a crowd and it left him annoyed about the “politics” and feeling as if he has been “pushed to the sidelines”.

A 12-minute video followed where he laid bare his heart and soul. Some of those who made the team weren’t impressed with it, but it made for raw and uncomfortable viewing as he shared how his mental state was in a worrying, scary and dangerous place. “It was just going to destroy me and I would end up going out of the sport angry,” he explained last week.

Ireland offered the chance of a fresh start – and so much more. His father and namesake is a Carlow man who worked in Land Rover in the English Midlands for 35 years and his uncles and some Irish teachers at his old Bishop Challoner school had been prodding him into wearing a green singlet for years.

The first feelers were actually put out to Gymnastics Ireland seven years ago but the Tokyo disappointment was the one that tipped the scales. A gymnast since the age of five, he felt he had achieved far too much in the sport to leave it on such bad terms, and the smile has returned to his face since the swap.

“Now I’ve been with Team Ireland I’ve just enjoyed every part of my gymnastics. People keep saying I look really happy in the gym and I am because I’ve got a focus now. I’m happy with these guys, the team, we’ve got so much potential. There’s a good few guys with us now. 

“I think everyone’s spirits have been lifted.” His dad’s too.

Dom Jnr paid for Dom Snr to join him at the Commonwealth’s on Australia’s Gold Coast four years ago but the old man was never exactly head over heels about his chosen profession. That has changed now, the parent’s eyes lighting up when he heard of the transfer and again when his son was making for Dublin for a pre-Euros training camp.

Dad won’t be in Munich, none of the family will. That’s the athlete’s own call. No distractions is the thinking. Now is not the time to be tinkering with his cars or his bikes, or the hoped-for career as a movie action man. The future still offers all sorts of possibilities but the priority now is gymnastics. And finishing on a high.