Thomas Barr looks back to 2016 with immense pride after finishing fourth in the Olympic 400m hurdles final.
Veterans of the Irish team had few good things to say about the Rio Games but for Barr, that first time will always be magical. “I was completely blown away by it,” he said. “It took a long time to come down off that high.”
One of the funnier moments for Barr was sitting in the dining hall in Rio with fellow athlete Alex Wright and team coach Ray Flynn when they were joined by tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, left.
“I am not a sports fanatic, I don’t really follow sports,” said Barr. “This tall, blond Danish girl comes up to the table and she said it was her last day in the village and that she didn’t have a Team Ireland badge yet, so would we mind swapping?
“We said we didn’t have any but we could go get some and she said ‘it’s okay, don’t worry.’ We asked her how she did, she said she got knocked out and that she had to get home now for the (US) Open. I had no idea who she was."
They shot the breeze over lunch and then, as she was leaving, Flynn joked to Wozniacki she should give her number to one of the Irish lads, an offer that was politely declined. “I dated a Northern Irish guy before,” she told them. “It didn’t work out.”
Wright had been the only one of the Irishmen to recognise Wozniacki and Barr could only laugh as he pulled up her Twitter account, realising she had two million followers.
Rio conjures up memories that have only been enhanced over time: getting wind of the mania back home as hundreds of people gathered around screens at his training base in UL or his home in Dunmore East, Waterford.
He came up short of a medal by five hundredths of a second but his fourth-place finish brought him everlasting pride.
“I’m in no way bitter at not having pushed on that little fraction of a second,” he said.
The first major medal of his career arrived two years later, finishing third in the European 400m hurdles final in Berlin. That night he was carried high by Irish fans outside the stadium and in these humdrum days of purgatory, it’s the thought of more moments like that which sustains him.
“There’s nothing like a major championships where anything can happen to anybody, the whole country gets behind it and that momentum, I thrive off,” he added. “That’s what I live for.”
