There’s a moment in every athlete’s career when the truth about motivation becomes painfully clear. For me, that moment of truth began on a main street in Kilkenny City, the day of my first All Ireland Senior Final. I was 20 years old - young, raw, talented, yes, but still carrying the belief that winning was something I did for other people. In the hours before that final, I walked through Kilkenny’s city centre completely locked into my own world. I had tunnel vision; a

For almost a decade, while my life was a head-spinning montage of departure gates, tournament brackets, travel, competition, pressure - there was one place that slowed everything down. Each year I travelled to Zambia to visit my uncle - a Catholic priest who had chosen to spend his entire adult life in Africa. He lived simply on the outskirts of the capital, Lusaka, in a small house amongst the people he served. There were no perimeter walls separating him from the community

I was twenty-one years old in the summer of 2001. A young Irish athlete in New York on a summer student visa, spending my days working, training and dreaming about what might be possible in sport and in life. I had just finished my undergraduate degree and, like most people at twenty-one, I imagined I had all the time in the world. On the morning of September 11th, my Uncle Michael and I were taking the A train towards Fulton Street. He ran a bar and restaurant called John St

It was February, 2004. I was lying in bed in a hotel room in the Washington Athletic Club, literally sleepless in Seattle. My body was exhausted and screaming out for rest but my brain wouldn’t let me switch off. In the corner of the room, beside my gear bag, was one of those over-sized cardboard cheques and the figure printed on it - $50,000, the largest purse in handball history – would soon be hitting my bank account. It was a life-changing sum for a 24-year-old not long