“IT’S GOING IN the right direction, touch wood,” Orla Comerford begins.
Everyone follows her lead as she taps the table with her quirky pink and green nails, before reflecting on a hellish few years.
The Paralympic medal hopeful has just been fully confirmed for her third Games in Paris. She spearheads Ireland’s five-strong athletics team alongside Greta Streimikyte, Mary Fitzgerald, Shauna Bocquet and Aaron Shorten.
Comerford is enjoying a rich vein of form after an unfortunate run of injuries. The Raheny Shamrocks sprinter recently broke the 12-second barrier, clocking 11.90 in the star-studded 100m race Rhasidat Adeleke won at national seniors.
It was a major relief and she has been told it’s like opening a packet of Pringles.
Once you pop…
These heady days are a stark contrast to that string of long-term injuries: mainly recurring hamstring tears, which ultimately forced her to take a break from the track. She missed the 2022 season, a decision made with this summer in mind.
“I came off the track completely for eight months and loaded up the hamstrings for months and months in the gym,” Comerford — who has Stargardt’s disease, a degenerative condition that affects her central vision — recalls.
“It was grim. I spent so much time injured I was just like. ‘This is the way it goes.’ It’s much worse to be actively injured as opposed to be at least working towards something.”
She remembers bumping into Olympic sprinter Marcus Lawler on the Sport Ireland campus one day and explaining her situation. He had experienced similar issues in the past, and told her a break from the track and months of strengthening cleared all up.
“I don’t know if that was true or not but it was what I needed to hear,” she laughs. “To hear someone else say, ‘We did that, and it was shite while we did it, but I’m grateful for it now.’”
Comerford has since corrected her running mechanics and is reaping the rewards.
While there were “moments of doubt”, like when she strained her other hamstring just before the 2023 season opener, she never considered giving up.
“I just keep thinking, the time for quitting was so long ago. I have not come this far just to come this far. There is definitely a stubbornness in it. I have done all this work and it can’t be for nothing. I need it to pay off.
“Hard work doesn’t always pay off in this sport. The person who works the hardest isn’t always the person that reaps the reward unfortunately, but that’s the way sport is.
“It was definitely disheartening, like ‘What more can I do?’ All of those are in there to test you. I don’t think I would be the person, or athlete I am today, had I not been through all of that.”
While totally incomparable, the death of her coach Brian Corcoran in the build-up to the Tokyo Paralympics in 2021 was another extremely difficult period.
“I miss him,” Comerford says. “Sorry, I’m getting upset.
“I feel like Brian’s legacy is still… he’s in my ear all the time when I’m on the track.”
While a quad strain in camp also derailed her Tokyo challenge, she reflects on it all with mixed emotions.
“The Games were tough. Not that I didn’t want to be there, of course I wanted to be there, but when everything happened at home, you just want to be at home with everybody for all of that.”
“I was also like, ‘Well this is where Brian wants me to be’. He told me as much. He knew that we wouldn’t see each other again and he was like, ‘Off you go now and give it what you’ve got.’ I was like, ‘I’m now not in the position I thought I’d be in, but I’d be doing a disservice to myself and to him to not go out there and do what I can.’”
Sports psychologist Jessie Barr offered her advice. “Take each day and take something from it. Enjoy the moments.”
That she did. Comerford didn’t advance from her heat, but simply making the starting line was a minor miracle in itself given all she had been through.
Now, her sights are firmly set on the T13 100m in Paris.
Redemption.
What is the ambition?
Comerford — an art enthusiast who works part-time in the Irish Museum of Modern Art — wholeheartedly agrees she is in medal shape.
“I definitely want to be very competitive,” the 26-year-old says.
“I don’t want to make up numbers on the team, I don’t want to just make the final. Those were great achievements when I was younger, I think having had that experience and being in the position I’m in now, I definitely want to be pushing for the podium.”
“Even the mentality I have now of turning over every stone and not just wanting to be in a final or in the mix, but wanting to push up to that top end of the event,” she adds.
“I don’t think I would have had such a hunger for it if I hadn’t felt like I had been denied it for so long. I hadn’t, but that was how it felt.
“I’m not grateful I was injured because nobody loves that, but I can see that it has made me as hard-working and determined as I am… as stubborn as I am.”
One last thing. What about the nails?
“Look good, feel good, run good,” Comerford smiles.
Turns out she designs them herself, with a special set in the pipeline for Paris.
Keep touching wood.
