Pictures: Don MacMonagle
FOSSA athlete Paul Griffin swapped life as an accomplished oarsman who competed in two Olympic Games to become an Olympic standard cross-country skier.
Cathal Moynihan, another Olympic rower, from Muckross, who played football and basketball at a high level, went on to become one of the top amateur cyclists in the country.
But Peter Maher made the greatest transition of all when he went from being a self-confessed “world class drinker,” getting through 20 pints and 60 cigarettes a day, to become a double Olympic marathon runner.
They shared their fascinating stories, along with another accomplished Killarney Olympic oarsman Sean Casey and local sporting heroine Gillian O’Sullivan, the latter via video link, at an engaging public talk in the Great Southern Hotel, Killarney on Monday night.
Organised by Killarney Chamber of Tourism and Commerce and sponsored by AIB, the Strategies for Life Performance event attracted a capacity attendance as lecturer and lifecoach Joe O’Connor – who works with the all-conquering Limerick hurlers and on RTÉ’s Ireland’s Fittest Family put the probing questions to the panel members.
They reflected on the high points and the lows in their sporting careers, what motivated them, what inspired them and what lessons they learned that they would be happy to pass on to their grandchildren.
The captivated audience heard their insightful individual stories and learned all about their approaches to success in life and in business. The big agreement on the night was that doing one’s best was the most rewarding accomplishment of all.
Two-time Olympian Griffin was a member of Ireland’s lightweight fours at the Athens and Beijing Games while Moynihan and Casey competed in Beijing in 2008. O’Sullivan represented Ireland at the European, World and Olympic Games in the 20km Race Walk, finishing 10th in Sydney in 2000, setting a new 5k world record in Dublin the same year and winning silver at the World Championships in Paris in 2003.
Born in Canada before his family moved to Killarney, the charismatic Maher, spent five years as a boarder in St Brendan’s College – an experience he described as akin to a prison sentence – and later repeated his Leaving Cert in Kenmare. In 1979, he was set to pursue an athletics scholarship to East Tennessee State University in the USA when he tore his Achilles’ tendon and was left on the wings.
He made some wrong choices at that stage, spending too much time on a high stool and gaining far too much weight, before he got his act together and returned, slowly but surely, to the athletics track. His started his comeback when struggling to complete half a lap in the Mardyke Arena in Cork, he competed a full lap the next night – and the rest is sporting history.
Maher, now a grandfather to three children, represented Canada at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics in Seoul and Barcelona and at the World Championships on four occasions. He went on to win Canadian titles, including the 1989 marathon, the 1999 Irish marathon team title and the Road Runners’ Club of America 25k title in 1990. He lists his greatest achievement as finishing fourth in the teak-tough New York Marathon.
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