Olympic middle-distance runner Ciara Mageean has opened up about her love of Gaelic games and how GAA shaped her as an athlete and a person, speaking at the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final as she continues her battle with stage four bowel cancer.
Ciara Mageean has opened up about her passion for Gaelic games and their influence in moulding both her athletic career and character.
The Portaferry-born middle-distance runner attended Sunday’s All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship final between Galway and Limerick as a BBC guest, where she reflected on how her sporting journey started on GAA pitches.
“That was where my first love for sport began. It taught me how to channel that aggression into passion on a field,” Mageean revealed.
“It taught me so much about the athlete I was going to become but probably more importantly the person that I was going to become, the person that I am.
“Whenever you look around here today, as we spoke about the passion out there on that field, I had that when I put the Portaferry jersey on and then when I put the Irish vest on my back and I feel so fortunate to be from a community like this.”, reports the Irish Mirror.
Mageean has courageously discussed her fight following a stage four bowel cancer diagnosis.
“Stressing and worrying about it isn’t going to change it,” she told the Irish Times last month. “You’re so entitled to those emotions obviously. But you could lose yourself to it.
“I don’t know what this journey is going to look like. I don’t know at what point I’m going to get sick. As soon as I got that diagnosis, I felt like the grim reaper was on my shoulder and I didn’t know if I was going to be dead in a matter of months.
“[Her long term partner] Tommy and I are engaged but we’ve never had any rush on the wedding. But now I was like, ‘Do we need to get a move on here?’”.
“Because I don’t want to be that girl who looks like a skeleton on her wedding day. Or having to be in a hospital bed with Tommy beside me and me in a wedding dress in the hospital bed. I want it to be a normal day.”
The 34-year-old added: “I’ll be sitting on the couch and I’ll be like, ‘F**k. I might be dead in two years.’ I certainly won’t … well, I don’t want to say certainly but I probably won’t make my 40th birthday. Like, that’s f**king rough.
“But we’re planning this wedding and I can’t help but think, ‘The poor lad’s going to be left a widower in his 30s.’ And then I’m like, ‘Sure then he’s going to be a bit old! It’s going to be hard for him to find a new partner!’ I say to him, ‘Here, you can’t move on from me too fast …’”.
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