Two years ago, he struggled to walk. Corkman now ready to take on best in US
Diarmuid O'Connor during the 2021 European U20 Athletics Championship (left) and competing for the University of Connecticut during the 2024 Big East Track and Field Championships (right). Pictures: Sportsfile / Diarmuid O'Connor/Instagram
After the European U20 Championships in Tallinn three years ago, doors opened for Diarmuid O’Connor. He’d finished fourth in the decathlon, setting a new Irish U20 record. At just 19, he was already the third best Irish decathlete of all-time. His 7604 point total ranked behind Barry Walsh’s 7775 performance from 1992 and Carlos O’Connell’s 1988 national record of 7882.
It was an exciting moment for Irish athletics. We don’t produce many international class multi-discipline athletes, and here was one ready to take on the world. 100m, long jump, shot put, high jump, 400m, 110m hurdles, discus, pole vault, javelin, 1500m. O’Connor was good at all of them.
Scholarship offers from American colleges came flooding in to his home in Bandon. He accepted one from Texas Tech, one of the top track and field schools in the US. A career waiting on the platform was about to step on the train and leave the station. Derailed by injury, he never got the chance to board. Until early May, at the Big East Championships at Villanova, that July 2021 championships in Estonia was the last time he had competed in the decathlon.
O’Connor suffered a navicular stress fracture in his foot. It’s one which usually happens due to overtraining but the Corkman also has high arches in his feet which make him susceptible to bone injuries, and this was one of the worst he could suffer.
Initially, there was confusion about the injury. He first felt the pain in January 2022. It took seven months and several doctors for him to get a correct diagnosis. When he did, when it was outlined that there was a way back, it was a relief. He was like a wrongly convicted prisoner exonerated of a crime.
“Those years, being on the other side, it's hard to appreciate how hard they were when I'm in such a happy mood,” he says.
“But there was definitely a lot of difficulty during those times and a lack of self-belief and, I guess a lot of frustrations, like, why does this happen? You go from the best performance of your life to never being able to show your potential.
“There are parts where you were probably close to depression. It’s kind of like a sickness in ways that you're like, ‘I'm never going to give up because it is what makes me happy’.
“I became so dependent on track and field as a source of happiness, that there's also a sickness in that I need to get back. This is what I depend on for my own self-value. And that's something I definitely learned during the injury, how dependent I was on performance approvals in my life for what makes me happy.
“If your self-value is based on something that sometimes can be impossible to achieve, especially when you're injured, you’re automatically going to be in a depressed, angry, frustrated state as soon as those injuries do happen then.”
It was September 2022 when O’Connor went under the knife of Dr. Calder in London, the same month he was supposed to move to Texas Tech.
“I went over there, we chatted it out and they said, ‘come back next September, we'll take you next September, and you can start training us with us from then’.
“So summer [2023], I was returning, I was pretty healthy, and then I got, an email from Texas Tech saying that they could no longer take me. There was a lot of like, logistical things they kind of put up as to why they couldn't. They can say what they want on that. I guess they didn't really trust me after so long out injured.
“January 2022 till February 2023, I hadn't properly walked during that whole time. There was three months I couldn't walk at all there. There was two months I was literally strung up just doing rehab and I couldn't leave home. So, and I literally had to have my foot above my head for six weeks.
“That was five months of return to play after the surgery. From that point to May of 2023, I was struggling to run or do any simple exercises. The only time I could ever run was on an anti-gravity treadmill. They had one in the Mardyke in UCC. And luckily I was studying in UCC at the time and they helped me out big time.
“I was filling my time with aqua jogging in the pool, cycling and doing hours of rehab with my physio Sinead Murphy.”
After getting the Texas Tech cold shoulder, he reached out to a friend in Belgium and asked to train with his group.
“That was a huge step to go to Belgium. I feel like that was God looking out for me and that was why I shouldn't have gone to Texas Tech because when I went to Belgium, my coach was the coach of Dafne Schippers, the famous Dutch sprinter.
“What I learned from him in terms of creating programs, and just being overall efficient as a full-time decathlete, they were probably the foremost valuable months I could have ever got.”
Through the agency Scholarbook, he was offered a scholarship by the University of Connecticut. He moved there in January and has already given a soft landing to the leap of faith they took to make an offer to an athlete who’d been out injured for two years.
At the Big East Championships in Villanova, O’Connor claimed gold, finishing in the top three of all ten events, winning four of them. He also added six points to his total from those 2021 European U20 Championships for a new personal best.
Winning the Big East title was good but qualifying for next month’s NCAA Division 1 Championships in Oregon was even better. 24 decathletes will take part. The best of the best in US collegiate track and field. O’Connor thinks he’s capable of finishing in the top eight.
“The nationals I think is really what impresses them because it's a really hard thing to make nationals. I don't know how many others from UConn will qualify, but we might get three or four guys a year that will go out of a squad of 90.
“That was really nice for me as almost like a thank you for believing me because there's so many schools that didn't take me after this injury and didn't believe in me. For the head coach to actually give me that opportunity, and to just be able to say, ‘Look, you were right and believing in me’, that’s super nice.”
The 22-year-old looks back to all those monotonous hours he put in during his recovery – the ones which gave him a base fitness he’ll be standing on next month – and knows it was all worth it.
“To be back where I am now, it's nuts. I've had a dream since 10 years old to go to the Olympics. I'm always going to chase that. I'll do anything I guess to achieve that dream.”
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