Swinford star continues to shine

“TRY everything that’s out there.”
Heed those words, children.
They came from Michaela Walsh from Swinford, the woman currently making serious headway to become Mayo’s next Olympian.
Documenting her list of accolades on the hammer throw and shot putt would astound you as quick as they’d bore you.
Sixth at the World Youth Olympics in China in the shot putt; unbeaten at national level in her own age group right throughout juvenile level, top ten in both the hammer and shot putt at the Under-18 World Championships in Colombia…we could go on.
We haven’t even mentioned all the records she smashed along the way.
But this is nothing new to readers of this sport section.
We’ve come to chat with Michaela at Swinford AC, the place where it all began, because we want to know more about why it all got started with the throwing.
By complete and utter accident, as it happens.
From an early age, Michaela’s mother encouraged her to live an active lifestyle, which she did by partaking in soccer, Gaelic football, and - from the age of eight – athletics.
She excelled at all of them and played football for Mayo and Swinford right up until minor level.
Her first foray into athletics was on track, rather than field.
She was pretty good at that too.
“I would have won my first All-Ireland in the 500m and 300m at the age of ten,” the 26-year-old tells The Mayo News with zero airs or graces.
Even if she wanted to, children weren’t allowed throw anything until Under-12s back then.
When Michaela came of age, she still had no particular heed on it.
But that all changed in one bizarre moment down in Nenagh.
“I was in the 60m and the 800m and they were like, ‘you have to do another event’. And I was like, ‘I’m not doing another running event’.
“I was going through all the events like, ‘Which one do I not have to run around the track in?’ I was just like ‘I'll do the shot putt’.”
And that was it.
Off she then went to the Mayo championships, with no training or coaching done whatsoever.
She came second in the county.
Unsurprisingly, the 13-year-old was quickly spotted by local coach Paddy Kelly, who was officiating at the contest.
“He said, ‘you'd be good at this if you trained,’” recalled Michaela.
“He said, ‘we train in Castlebar’, and we swapped contact details. For a long time, I thought, ‘I might go there’ and I actually went to the Connacht’s a week few weeks later and went to the All-Irelands and came sixth.”
Even your man from that Elton John song wouldn’t have reached those heights so quickly.
For almost 15 years, she’s broken both records and hearts domestically and internationally with some jaw-dropping throws – like the shot putt throw which cleared the All-Ireland Schools Championships record by a full metre.
We caught up with her on a rare ‘active rest week’; a break from the usual routine of three throwing days, three gyms days and one plyometric day.
Although throwing may seem straightforward, the seven-day-a-week commitment is essential.
Even after three or four days, Michaela says: ‘your technique would be slightly off, your rhythm would be slightly off so it’s something that you kind of constantly have to be at all the time’.
She hasn’t kicked a Size 4 O’Neill’s since she was a Minor and can’t see herself doing so for Swinford or Mayo any time soon.
With her mantle glimmering with bronze, silver and gold plundered from thousands of miles away, her next target is the Olympic games.
But because she works full-time as a PE and Science teacher in St Joseph’s Secondary School in Foxford, Michaela reckons she is unlikely to get enough competitions under her belt to accumulate the points to qualify for Tokyo next year.
“My target for next year would be to see can I get close to the European senior qualification. The Olympics in 2028 would probably be more realistic,” she explained.
“As I said, for athletics the window is kind of the two-to three-year window that you’re qualifying for. I think you’d have to have to be more like a full-time athlete for longer.”
It’s never all about her though.
Michaela regularly refers to her own team of coaches and her mother as driving forces behind her stellar success.
She believes that role models like those are ‘really, really important’.
She also knows she has to be a role model for younger members of Swinford AC as the first club member to reach the upper echelons of European athletics.
Her biggest advice to young aspiring athletes?
“Just to try everything that's out there because I'm so grateful that I did it that day, because my life is totally changed for it.”
That’s coming from someone who’s been there and done it, and will continue to do a lot more.

Read part 2 of our interview with Michaela Walsh in next week’s Mayo News.