How turning down Texas shaped Kate O'Connor's path to the top

At just 25, O'Connor is already one of Ireland's most successful athletes. This year, she could add Commonwealth Games and European Championship medals to an already impressive haul

Kate O'Connor has won four major championship medals in the last year. Pic: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile

There have been myriad turning points in Kate O'Connor's already stellar career, not least the post-Paris realisation that her presence there as Ireland’s first Olympic heptathlete was merely a stepping stone to future greatness.

With that, as she puts it, her commitment levels increased from 95% to the full 100.

Another sliding doors moment came far from the track almost five years earlier, when she walked away from a Stateside scholarship just weeks before she was due to leave for the University of Texas.

With four major championship medals collected in the past year and a Commonwealth Games and European Championships double in her sights this summer, that post-Leaving Cert decision quietly altered everything.

O’Connor had signed to join the Texas programme in 2019 and was ready to embark on the well-trodden route followed by elite Irish athletes into the American collegiate system.

Her prospective Longhorns coach was present for her European Under-20 silver in Sweden that same year and had even stayed in the O’Connor family home. “Like, I was going,” she says.

Then, a fortnight before departure, she changed her mind.

“It’s actually a funny story,” she recalls. “I met this girl I was supposed to room with and we had it all organised. Then they put me in with someone else.

“I thought, ‘I’m moving halfway across the world and the one request I had wasn’t met,’ so I decided I wasn’t going to go.” 

Allianz, title sponsor of the Olympic Federation of Ireland and Paralympics Ireland, is proud to announce a new brand ambassador partnership with record-breaking Irish heptathlete and Olympian, Kate O’Connor. Pic: ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan

O’Connor acknowledges the rooming issue merely crystallised doubts she already had. “You’re offered things over there and I can completely see why people do it. It works for some, doesn’t work for others,” she says.

“There were definitely points where I wondered, ‘Should I have gone to America?’, especially when things weren’t going well. I could have gone there and been great, maybe younger. I don’t know. But I’m happy with what I did.” 

Rather than Texas, she opted for Sheffield, where the opportunity to train under the coach of her childhood idol Jessica Ennis-Hill excited her.

It was a formative spell. “I thought, ‘Wow, this could be a really good opportunity’. It opened my eyes to how professional athletes train and the difference between what I was doing and what I should have been doing.” 

She was there only five months before Covid forced her home, but the lessons stayed. And home, as it turned out, was where the foundations of her success would truly be laid.

Working again under her father Michael’s guidance, the O’Connors built a support system around her that has transformed her into a serious podium contender.

At 25, she has become one of Ireland’s most successful athletes, adding world indoor pentathlon bronze last month to the silver she won last season while breaking national records almost at will.

“I’m very lucky because I had my dad in my corner the whole time,” she says. “He has set a standard for everybody I work with because he is in my corner 100%. It takes a lot of sacrifice and I’ve realised even more since last year how much time he puts into it. I’m really grateful.” 

Rhasidat Adeleke sought out O'Connor's advice before taking her own scholarship to Texas a year later - a move that worked brilliantly for the Irish sprint star.

“That’s what I mean - it works for some people and not for others,” O’Connor says. "When I was 18, I thought it was this huge life-defining decision.

“But in reality, even if I’d gone to America and come home at 22, you’re still so young. I don’t think going away or coming home should ever be the end of anyone’s career.” 

That decision was an early manifestation of the steely nature that has helped O'Connor become one of the world's best multi-event competitors.

“I always wanted to be a great athlete,” she says. “I always tried to make decisions I felt would make me the best athlete I could be. Whether they were the right decisions or not, I am where I am today.” 

That same mindset has helped her build on a spectacular 2025 season, with last month's podium finish fuelling excitement for the heptathlon this summer.

"It was definitely nerve wracking because I had done so well last year and like, how am I supposed to replicate winning like four medals? That's insane," she reflects.

"Now there's a lot of expectation from other people, but also for myself, because I've now pushed myself into this realm of, 'if you don't medal, then like it's a bad day'.

"I thrive under stress. I love that feeling of when people want me or don't want me to do something, and I do it anyway.

"Definitely a sense of relief when I won another medal because it was, 'right, last year wasn't just a one year thing, I'm actually an athlete that's here and here to stay'.

"I want to continue pushing on and to keep winning medals. It was definitely a really nice way to start the year."