"No job will ever be as all-consuming": Derval O'Rourke on being an Olympian - and what should be done about doping

FOR 12 YEARS, Derval O’Rourke’s world revolved around sport – and specifically, the Olympics.

As a professional athlete, the Corkonian – now aged 35 – was paid to spend her time in the gym or on the track, to eat well and look after her body.

The three-time Olympian retired in 2014 and gave birth to Dafne – the first child for her and husband Peter O’Leary – a year ago. She went on to work in player development with the Irish Rugby Union Players’ Association and has made a foray into the world of cookbooks, publishing her second book, The Fit Foodie, this month.

This year, for the first time in over a decade, O’Rourke can watch the Olympics in a totally different way to before. Now that she’s no longer an athlete, she can sit back and analyse the performers as an ordinary punter does – only she has the inside track on what it’s really like to be an Olympian.

She also knows what the impact of doping can have on the world of athletics, and believes there should be far more accountability when people are found to have been using banned substances.

“I think no job would probably ever be as all-consuming as trying to train for an Olympic games and win a medal,” said O’Rourke when she called into TheJournal.ie offices to talk to us about The Fit Foodie. As a result, she finds very few jobs daunting, so is able to take on the roles of cookbook author and rugby professional with ease.

“I find everything really interesting and fun – I probably don’t take anything as seriously as a lot of people do. I am quite blasé about stuff that I guess other people might be intimidated by.”

She loves watching people compete in the Olympics “because I think one of the hardest things in the world to do is to train for something like that”.

So seeing doping scandals hits her hard.

It’s sad because there is a really good side to athletics and track and field – that there are so many athletes that work really hard and have genuinely really inspiring stories.

So I see all that and find it inspiring but I think a lot of people don’t see that and just see the drugs stuff. I’m probably still quite jaded by all the drugs stuff.

She said she has no regrets about dedicating over 12 years to being an athlete, because it’s not a job many get to do. And as for the times she lost races, she’s pragmatic about it, saying she didn’t leave too many medals behind.

“I think the times people beat me, nine times out of 10 they were just better than me on the day,” she shrugged.

“When I walked away, I walked away going there’s parts of this sport I don’t believe in but I still love a lot of it so I’m ready to leave.”

Accountability

Doping in sports is a massive issue – just this week, the Russian Paralympic team was banned from this year’s Paralympics over doping.

Every time a doping report comes out “while it’s damning for the sport publicly, it’s positive for the long term”, said O’Rourke, who hopes that in 10 – 15 years time “it would be a difference place”.

But she adds:

I think the human condition is to cheat and try and get ahead. I think there’s always going to be a certain amount of people who will do that. You need a very strong governance because of that – you can’t expect individuals to govern themselves because they won’t.

O’Rourke feels that though there is more awareness about doping, “the accountability hasn’t caught up”.

“I think there needs to be accountability in a government sense, as in the people who run World Anti-doping Agency, the people who run international federations, I think they all need to be accountable from a top level,” she said.

“I don’t think just athletes should be punished – I think if an athlete is taking drugs, there’s generally a system behind that. Who’s the coach, who’s the doctor, who’s the agent, who’s the national federation; why didn’t they get tested more? Those are questions I would ask so for me just banning an athlete for two years isn’t enough. I think you need to look at the whole system and the structure that the athlete has come out of.”

Olympic misconceptions

Derval and the 2012 Irish Olympic team. Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland Laura Hutton / Photocall Ireland / Photocall Ireland

It might be tempting to think that Olympians are living charmed lives, what with being intimidatingly talented, but as O’Rourke pointed out, they are often working on little money and living incredibly focused lives.

“Most Olympians earn very little money and they are living on the breadline – it’s probably the job they get paid the worst [for] in their lives. When people criticise how people perform at the Olympics I’m always trying to point out that most of them did it on a shoestring with generally just a big passion for what they are doing.”

She remembers well what it’s like to have such pressure on you. “I don’t think anybody thinks it’s easy but I think maybe that intensity of that pressure to perform on one day that comes in a four-year cycle is absolutely massive,” she said.

O’Rourke remembers “very little” about the Olympics, but does remember how the difference between a medal and no medal can be absolutely minuscule.

The margins are so tiny as well – I missed the final in London by a couple of hundredths of a second… and that was my whole aim for a four-year Olympic cycle.

“It’s a funny world you live in, where something like that is such a big deal to you and then you leave it and realise that no one will really think of it again for four years but you probably think about it every day.”

As for this year, she was tempted “for about an hour” to head to Rio, but then realised that between her book launch, RTÉ punditry work, other commitments – and not to mention baby Dafne – she already has her hands quite full. Still, she said she will be glued to the games for the next few weeks.

She’ll watch most of the sports, but there’s one Irish female Olympian she has a particular eye on: “Hopefully Katie Taylor can repeat the gold – it would be phenomenal.”

Read Derval O’Rourke’s Fit Foodie tips for healthy living and eating this weekend on TheJournal.ie.

Read: Hotline Rings: The42′s Olympics Podcast – episode two>

Read: Annalise Murphy enjoyed the best possible start to her race week in Rio>