Finbarr Kirwan cut his teeth as the first high performance manager of what is now Sport Ireland and since moving to the USA has now become Chief of Olympic Sport
The Corkman cut his teeth as the first high performance manager of what is now Sport Ireland and in the USA rose in the sports administration ranks to become Chief of Olympic SportA US fan supporting the women's hockey team. The US have sent a team of 593 athletes to Paris. As Finbarr Kirwan expects, the medals have already started to flow. Photograph: Alex Pantling/Getty Images
In a real sense, it was a pioneering role. There was no culture in Ireland of high performance planning, or the thinking that underpins it. Most of the federations had an institutional tolerance for failure and were set in their ways. Very few of them welcomed the intrusion of an outsider effectively telling them how things should be done.Olympics, Day 3 as it happened: Mona McSharry wins bronze medal in 100m breaststroke finalFor the next ten years Kirwan’s mission was to change their minds.
“There’s absolutely no way I could have done the job without learning the skills because a lot of it is about human interaction and trying to problem solve in stressful situations. After Rio, he was promoted to the role of senior director, with responsibility for performance innovation. What did that mean?
“That was the thing I was most impressed with when I got over first. I thought there might be a lot of egos around the place and that’s not the case at all. If it’s there it gets eliminated immediately because people realise that they’ll get called out on their bullshit basically. Our job is to be behind the curtain supporting the athletes and putting them in a position to succeed.”
“We talked about Billy at length. They said, ‘Right, get on a plane, let’s try to get him over’. I met him in The Winding Stair in Dublin for dinner and we got the deal done. Billy’s still here. He has done incredible work with the boxers. He has changed the culture in the sport here in the US. Billy has been a brilliant part of the story.”
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