THERE IS no doubt that County Sligo has a special aura.
One of its great attractions is Benbulbin, one of a handful of Irish locations to feature in the popular book 1001 Natural Wonders You Must See Before You Die.
Located in the Dartry Mountains, it is described by Google as “a large flat-topped nunatak rock formation” in an area sometimes called Yeats Country, named after arguably Ireland’s greatest poet.
The village of Grange is an eight-minute drive from Benbulbin, just before you reach the Atlantic Ocean.
Remarkably, for a place with just 586 inhabitants according to the 2016 census, Grange will have two athletes competing at the 2024 Olympics — the track and field star Chris O’Donnell and the swimmer Mona McSharry.
Like Benbulbin, there has been a sense of something special about McSharry from an early age.
Akin to some superhero origin story, she took up swimming aged five having nearly drowned after falling into a pool during a family holiday in Austria.
Growing up by the sea in Sligo benefited Mona’s development and enabled her to hone the craft instinctively.
By 12, she dreamt of competing in the Olympics and three years later, she almost got there — missing out on the Rio Games, after finishing 0.9 seconds off the Olympic qualifying time.
But McSharry did not let that setback affect her unduly, becoming European junior champion at 16 and world junior champion a week after turning 17, Irish sport’s answer to Lamine Yamal almost.
Yet when The 42 went up to Sligo last week to meet her parents Aidan and Viola, her 21-year-old brother Mouric and 15-year-old sister Luca, there was a disarming humility about the family of the elite athlete.
Viola’s main hope is that Mona can “enjoy” the Olympics, irrespective of the results.
Moreover, if their names sound familiar, you might remember McSharry’s family from the seventh season of the RTÉ reality series Ireland’s Fittest Family in 2019. They competed under the guidance of their assigned mentor and former Ireland and Munster Rugby star Donncha O’Callaghan.
At the time, Mona and Mouric had only recently recovered having both come down with glandular fever. The illness meant the swimming star had missed out on qualifying for some competitions and was at a loose end.
Not that her lack of practice showed, as the McSharrys won the competition.
Yet Mona is regarded as the anomaly, with the rest of the family characterising themselves as more casual sports lovers.
Mouric is also a keen swimmer and was Mona’s training partner for several years. He grew up playing GAA, soccer and athletics, and is especially into CrossFit now. For years, the two of them would rise each day at 4.30am to get a swim in before school.
Luca swims too but has stayed away from the competitive side of the sport, and she also enjoys playing badminton.
But the habits instilled into the 23-year-old from an early age — Aidan and Viola regularly emphasised the importance of nutrition and exercise — contributed to her ascension.
Yet there was also a remarkable inner drive — Viola says she is unsure where it came from.
A self-professed introvert, there is a soft and hard side to Mona’s personality. That toughness, the unwillingness to accept second best or suffer fools gladly comes from Aidan, whereas Viola sees elements of herself in the love of animals and that “lovely smile” that “draws people in”.
Mona’s first Olympics in Tokyo was a hugely positive experience. She became the first Irish swimmer since Michelle Smith de Bruin to reach an Olympic final.
The only disappointing aspect was the lack of atmosphere there, with the pandemic ensuring strict regulations had to be observed.
This time, McSharry will have many family and friends cheering her on.
Yet getting to this point has not been easy.
In recent times, she has been studying and training at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, undertaking a degree in Kinesiology (the scientific study of human body movement), with her fifth academic year on the horizon.
The 23-year-old always wanted to live in America. The experience has made her a better swimmer, though being away from home can be isolating and she does get “a little bit homesick” at times.
McSharry had heard about the post-Games depression that Olympians can be vulnerable to but did not think she would fall into that category.
Yet on a Sunday morning in July 2022, 12 months after Tokyo, McSharry found herself in a bad place while alone in her apartment in Tennessee, as friends had gone home for the summer following the end of the academic year. A tension that existed subtly for months suddenly announced itself more overtly.
“I woke up and I just started crying,” she later told reporters. “I called my friends back home and I told them, ‘I am not happy, I am really upset, and I am not sure what is going on with me’.
“They were honestly amazing at calming me down and helping me figure out the start of what was going on.
“I was hiding from myself the fact that I wasn’t happy in swimming because this is something I have mapped out for my life and something that I felt I had to do.
“In my head, I was like, I am going until 2024, that’s my plan, that is the big year. I am not stopping.
“It is hard when you feel trapped in something. But I wasn’t trapped. I could stop at any time. But it doesn’t feel like that. That all came to a head that Sunday morning.”
McSharry had lost her love of swimming and admits she contemplated quitting.
In hindsight, one of the issues was not taking a proper break after Tokyo.
Time off is something Mona had invariably been reluctant to accept.
After the glandular fever diagnosis, Viola recalls her frustration at unexpectedly having to take two to three months off having built her life around training.
“[The doctor] rang me back the following day,” Viola remembers. “He said: ‘You have to take this very seriously because I saw in Mona’s face that she said: Let him tell me that I’m not training but I do what I want.’”
The compulsive drive in pursuit of greatness got McSharry to this level, but it was simultaneously threatening to scupper her dreams.
One person key to Mona’s recovery was Grace Meade, a former Donegal and Aodh Ruadh Gaelic footballer who was her head coach at the Marlins Swim Club.
Meade has not trained McSharry daily since the US move but remains a close confidante. She complements the work done by Tennessee coach Matt Kredich, who will accompany her to the Olympics.
“[Mona] needs to be handled with care,” says Viola. “Grace, she is an angel that’s walking on Earth, in a way, because she has that unbelievable connection with Mona, and they understand each other so well that it was perfect, while she was training here.
“I couldn’t imagine a better coach for her while she was here, looking after her, not only on the physical side but also on the mental side of things.
“They leave the training side to Matt, but they’re in contact, and they phone each other and just have a catch-up and talk about things.
“And if Mona needed to get something off her chest, Grace was 100% there for her all the time. She could ring her any hour of the day, which has happened before, she could get called. And it’s just like, more on a basically like a good friend support behind Mona, rather than a coach as such.”
Grace’s support helped her rediscover the love she had lost for swimming, as did a slight change of attitude. That relentless perfectionism needed to be tempered.
“I think she concluded that it doesn’t have to be all about swimming anymore,” adds Viola. “You still dedicate so much of your daily life to it. But if it doesn’t go 100% what you have visualised in your head, that’s not the end of the world. There are other things and life goes on, I suppose.
“That doesn’t mean she’s not putting the same dedication into it. It’s just a little bit more relaxed I feel.
“It’s a hard one — of course, we all want our athletes to be 100% dedicated to what they’re going to do at the Olympics. But really, they’re only people and have to be happy in themselves, that’s the main thing.”
In an attempt to avoid a repeat of the post-Tokyo experience, McSharry is taking an extended break from swimming after Paris.
Along with her dog Luna (a pit bull terrier mix) and a friend, McSharry will enjoy “a kind of normal life” as she plans on taking a three-month road trip around America.
Adapting to life after swimming when she does decide to retire will be a challenge, but the family are confident Mona will be okay.
She loves jigsaws and is no stranger to manual work — during the pandemic, Mona went on plumbing trips with Aidan among other ways to keep herself occupied.
“Over Covid, we did lots of things around the farm here [by their house]. There was always something to be done and all the kids chipped in and did something physical. So she’ll have no problem finding something to do, I think.
“It’s just a matter of what she really wants to do. But look, we all know, you don’t have to dedicate yourself to one job at the age of 21-24.
“[She can] try different things and say: ‘Okay, this wasn’t it,’ and then move on to something else.”
Wherever life takes Mona, Viola, born in Cologne, Germany herself before moving to Grange in 1994, is hopeful it will be closer to Ireland than America.
But wherever she ends up, there is one non-negotiable.
“I don’t think she live in America forever, but maybe that’s just my wishful thinking,” her mother says.
“So I’d say she’ll come closer again, whether it’s [somewhere else] in Europe or Ireland, I’m not sure. But she will definitely want to live beside the sea.”
