'It’s like somebody from the middle of Africa trying to become a GAA player' says Irish ski racer
COOL RUNNINGS: Alpine Skier Cormac Comerford. Photo by Harry Murphy/Sportsfile
Let's hold off with the wisecracks and pull back on the raised eyebrows.
Cormac Comerford, the 27-year old Alpine ski racer from Glenageary in Wicklow, has heard and seen them all and it doesn’t bother him a bit as he aims for the next Winter Olympics, in Italy, in 2026.
It’s 21 years since Lord Clifton Wrottesley came up one place shy of a medal for Ireland in the skeleton at the Salt Lake City Games and yet the sight of an athlete sporting green, white and orange on a slope or on a rink still prompts a second look.
That’s not just a local take.
Comerford once found himself sitting in fourth place after the first run of an international race in Austria that was dominated by the usual bluebloods of the sport when the fish-out-of-water nature of his very presence was made clear.
“At the time I didn’t understand German but my coach did and one of the coaches of the national team for Austria was saying - I’ll have to swear here - ‘what kind of shit race is this if an Irish guy is in fourth place?’
“That’s the kind of attitude that a lot of countries would have but when they meet people like me, and see the level that we can get to, they usually change their mind. There are a lot of things we have to deal with. I find it comical but I find it motivating and it is satisfying.”
There is a delight in him that he can stand out, that he can be the underdog and a trailblazer for his country. Comerford is acutely aware that, for many in the hermetically sealed world of winter sports, he is their first real point of contact with an Irish person.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re from,” he insisted, “it’s what you make of it.”
Ireland has actually been sending teams to the Winter Olympics for years now but the number of athletes involved wouldn’t half-fill a mini-bus and a fair chunk of them qualify by dint of their place in the nation’s diaspora.
Team members born and bred on these shores understandably have it even harder to reach the very top given the climate here, the lack of access to the required conditions and the absence of a snow sport culture.
Comerford’s story is even more remarkable given he wasn’t one of those kids born in Ireland who spent time at the continent’s skiing hot spots every year. Neither parent was in the circle before he tried his hand on the dry slopes in Kilternan as an eight-year old.
“Really, it’s like somebody from the middle of Africa trying to become a GAA player.”
It didn’t matter. He became “blindly obsessed” from the very first time he tried on a pair of skies. Watching Shane O’Connor, who he would see at Kilternan, competing at the Vancouver Games in 2010, made him dare to dream, but that obsession has been sorely tested in the two decades since.
Money is a constant headache. Comerford spent too many of his early years on the circuit sleeping in bus stations and carting a ski bag the weight of his own body to different events and different countries in order to shave pennies off his budget.
It takes a good €40,000 and more to keep his one-man show on the road for a single season so scholarships from Trinity, FBD and this latest contribution from the Olympic Federation of Ireland have been critical in allowing him to stay on track and in pursuit of his dream.
Off-seasons have been spent working as a sailing instructor and on construction sites and it took him six years to qualify for his engineering degree because of the time spent away from home. He could, as he joked himself, be a doctor by now.
“I remember actually after the World Championships in 2017, my first world championships, we were going home. We were at the airport hotel and I couldn’t go out to have a pint to celebrate. I was that broke. I had to save my, whatever it was, five quid, for the next camp.”
He would have been entitled to celebrate after a finish inside the top 50 but two years later and Comerford was listed 23rd at the same event. He is now at a point where he is ranked in the top 5% of Alpine skiers in the world.
The current season is only just beginning to stretch its legs and it will be next autumn before the qualification window officially opens for Milan-Cortina in 2026. His current standard in slalom and giant slalom would have him well within the parameters required.
There were times when he contemplated quitting, and his parents have fretted over this unlikely, blind ambition that will never pay the bills, but 19 years of toil and a singular devotion are on the verge of paying off.
Cormac Comerford is one of eight athletes to benefit from the Olympic Federation of Ireland's €200,000 Milan-Cortina Olympic Scholarship fund, which is designed to assist with preparations for the 2026 Winter Games in Italy
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