My Heroes

When I hear the word hero, my immediate reaction is to think of a super-man like figure. Mercurial, strong, infallible. Rubbish. When I think about it some more, I realise some of the greatest heroes didn’t necessarily succeed. I’m going to tell you about two of them.

Ireland has a women’s bobsled team made up of two sisters, Siobhain and Aoife Hoey. They are extraordinarily talented athletes and have been so all their lives. They originally came from track and field, winning many national titles and holding various records along the way. I’ve seen large boxes overflowing with medals and trophies. And they are just the one’s they bothered bringing down from the attic. They didn’t just get there by gifted genetics, they worked hard for it.

Over the past eight years Siobhain has been involved in bobsled, representing Ireland in the brakewoman position. That’s the person at the back providing the main push when starting a bobsled. More recently Aoife has joined her as a driver. I don’t need to explain that one.

Through this, Siobhain has managed to juggle working as a teacher and being one of the best brakewomen in the world. She is also the Treasurer of the Irish Bobsled and Skeleton Association, as well as the person who got me involved in Skeleton.

Top-level sport is quite difficult. I don’t believe many people actually think about the work that goes on behind the scenes. The thousands and thousands of hours of preparation and training that are needed to compete on an international level. Support is a very important part of this preparation. An athlete needs to be able to concentrate on doing exactly what they need to do in order to win. Imagine how long it would take to fly anywhere in an aeroplane if the pilot had to check everyone’s luggage, load it on the plane, issue tickets, fill the plane with fuel, make sure all the other planes were cleared out of the way for takeoff, then actually fly the damn thing.

In an ideal world, Siobhain and Aoife would be able to concentrate on their training. If one got injured, she would have physio on hand to get her fixed up asap. They wouldn’t have to worry about booking flights, accommodation, entering competitions, insurance, arranging sled transport, van rental. They would have a team manager to organise all of that. The sled and its steel runners would be cared for and maintained perfectly by a sled technician. They would have a dedicated speed and strength coach to ensure that they are strong and fast in the crucial push start. They would have a track coach to teach Aoife how to steer the sled through the fastest lines down the track. They would have a good sled provided for them. They would have the support of a well-funded national organisation.

Instead, they must do all this by themselves. And when they’re done, they must try to compete against nations that live in an ideal world. And compete they did, against all the odds. They bought a new sled for this season. Paid the E10,000 out of their own pocket, despite promises of support from certain organisations that then later feigned ignorance. The sled was late being made, and turned out to be slower than their older one. During transport to a training week in Europe, it went missing for a few days, making them miss the training. During push training in Canada, Siobhain cut her ankle on the runners, requiring minor surgery and slowing down her push. Aoife has to make do with a shared small-nations coach and she still drives better than half the other nations on the World Cup circuit. Despite remaining drug-free they compete against women that are so manly, their beard growth is matched only by their girlfriend’s and their legs are thicker than most rugby players I’ve seen. And still they compete.

You might remember my explanation of how World Cup skeleton athletes accumulate points by winning races and how the top nations get to go to the Olympics. It’s the same for bobsled. Last night Siobhain and Aoife competed in the last World Cup race for Olympics qualifying. They were so close, only one place away from being able to walk into the Olympic stadium to represent their country. The single greatest honour an athlete can ever have. They didn’t make it.

I was there to watch and help with the sled. They knew as soon as the run was finished that it wasn’t good enough. The push wasn’t quite fast enough, the drive not quite quick enough. It was over. I could only watch helplessly as the adrenaline wore off them to make way for the inevitable realisation that they had not made it to the Olympics. Slowly the tears came and there was nothing else to do. They had given everything, strained every last muscle and sinew, given every last penny, sweated every last drop of blood, and it still hadn’t been enough.

But had they failed? There is a qualitative difference between someone who nearly climbs to the top of Mount Everest and someone who reads about it in a book. Just because they didn’t make it to the very top doesn’t mean they didn’t climb the other 8000 metres. A good friend of mine recently told me that people are defined by what they achieve, not what they don’t. Just because Siobhain and Aoife didn’t qualify for the Olympics doesn’t alter the fact that they are amongst the best athletes in the world. It doesn’t erase all those competitions where they represented Ireland. It doesn’t make all the friends they made on the way disappear. What’s more, their achievements are all the more spectacular because they did it by themselves with hardly any help from anyone. If anyone should to be in the Olympic stadium carrying the Irish flag, it’s them. When I’m there I’ll imagine they’re walking beside me, where they deserve to be in an ideal world.