Paddy Costello was a shot putter, an international rugby player and an inspiration to his son, to whom he conveyed tips through his deeds, notes and pipe
‘If he had his pipe in his mouth, I was playing well’: Victor Costello on his father’s influence in his success
Everything that Paddy did, Victor wanted to do – except he wanted to do it better. Which is why his second Ireland cap meant more to him than any of the other 38 he won, because it meant that he’d eclipsed his father’s achievement. You don’t name your son Victor and expect him to settle for second best at anything.
“There was a time when I was unbeatable in Ireland. And I’m not saying that to sound big-headed or to disrespect the sport. My friend Gary Lavin would drop me off at Santry for the schools championships, the two of us having been out the night before. I’d just show up, win the thing, then go home to bed for a few hours and be back out that night.”
But it was still an amateur sport. There was no Leinster academy, no career track to take players from schools to senior rugby. “The idea was that you joined a club and played with their thirds,” he remembers, “then you played Leinster under-20s, then maybe Ireland under-21s. So there was this period between the ages of 19 and 21, where you were learning your rugby but you were also free to try your hand at something else.
But the Olympics turned out to be more about being there than being competitive. He admits that he felt like a day-tripper around the other track and field athletes for whom this was a full-time job as well as a lifetime dream. Victor hoped that a repeat of his throw in Tullamore might see him squeeze into the final. He remembers walking across the track towards the infield, hearing the roar from the crowd and thinking, ‘I’ve never heard a response like this before,’ before realising that it was for Linford Christie and Ben Johnson, warming up for the heats of the 100m.
He feels he acquired them during the course of his subsequent careers, first as a rugby player, then as an airline pilot for Ryanair, and more recently as an entrepreneur, operating a flight school out of Florida, as well as a storage hangar business for private jets.
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