MANY ATHLETES WOULD be ecstatic with finishing eighth at the Olympics.
Yet Arthur Lanigan-O’Keeffe didn’t sound over the moon about it when he spoke to The42 in December 2016.
“I wasn’t there to come eighth, I was there to win,” he said at the time. “I’m not going to be delighted with it, but I’m still proud of what I achieved.”
On occasion in the past, Irish athletes have been criticised for celebrating ‘moral victories,’ essentially where they don’t win but perform better than expected.
Lanigan-O’Keeffe, who competes in modern pentathlon (more info on the sport is available here), certainly couldn’t be accused of this supposed flaw. Despite having improved significantly on his London 2012 display, where the then-20-year-old finished 25th out of 36 athletes, he was not altogether happy with how everything panned out in Rio.
It is that fierce drive to accept no less than unequivocal success that enabled his triumph last weekend, where he won a gold medal at World Cup 4 in Bulgaria.
Given his extremely competitive and perfectionist nature though, it’s no surprise that within seconds of the topic being brought up, Lanigan-O’Keeffe begins talking about the importance avoiding complacency ahead of the next event — the World Cup final in Astana, Kazakhstan, which takes place between 21 and 24 June.
That tournament sees the top 36-ranked athletes compete against one another, based on previous results from World Cups 1-4.
If I win this, I’ll top the world rankings, so that would be huge,” he says, before reiterating once again that he cannot be over-confident. “Look, I’m going to just stick to my own processes and see how it goes.”
Based on recent displays, however, Lanigan-O’Keeffe has to be considered one of the favourites.
Thereafter, he will travel to Hungary for the European Championships in mid-July, which will be the final competition of his season.
The Worlds are taking place in Mexico in September, but Lanigan-O’Keeffe will be giving that event a miss — a decision he took in conjunction with his colleagues at the Institute of Sport.
The competition will be taking place at 2,000m altitude, which he would not have had too much time to prepare for. It also allows him to finish his season earlier and consequently start preparations more rapidly for next year’s crucial campaign, when eight Olympic qualification spots will be up for grabs at the Europeans.
Lanigan-O’Keeffe is well aware of the importance of athletes being able to pace themselves and not take on too much. He has said previously that he considered quitting the sport in 2013, when he went full throttle into competing after the London 2012 Olympics, barely giving himself a break, and subsequently becoming “burnt out emotionally”.
This time around, he didn’t make the same mistake. After the 2016 Olympics, Lanigan-O’Keeffe made a conscious decision to distance himself from modern pentathlon for the ensuing 12 months. He finished a degree in Sport and Exercise Management in UCD, and only began competing towards the end of the season.
“I found it a really good course,” he adds. “Most of my friends that went through the course, they’ve all landed really good jobs now. I actually see quite a few of them around the National Sports Campus as well. I’ve obviously gone back to being an athlete and I haven’t been applying for jobs, and I won’t be until after Tokyo.”
Lanigan-O’Keeffe’s down year appears to have paid dividends. The World Cup triumph was his first gold medal since winning at the European Championships in 2015.
“That was a big boost for me,” he says. “I didn’t compete too much in 2016, because I was training a lot. In my head, I was almost sure I was going to win a medal in Rio. The fencing didn’t quite go the way I wanted it to, so that was disappointing.
“The year after, I had competed mostly in relays. So this year was the first year I was starting to do individuals again. And to be honest, I was quite worried I was going to start looking like being a one-hit wonder, because I couldn’t recreate that kind of performance.”
And the Saturday before last, Lanigan-O’Keeffe started the day knowing it was already a good weekend for Irish modern pentathletes. Natalya Coyle had claimed a silver medal in the equivalent women’s competition.
I was actually quite tired after I competed in the semi-finals. I felt quite battered. My back was a bit sore. I woke up the morning after the semi-finals saying: ‘Jesus, this is going to be tough in the final.’
“Anyway, I was watching Tal in the [women's] final and she just had the most amazing day. She ended up getting a silver medal — and that was the first medal we ever had in the World Cup before.
“So I was kind of on a high after watching that and feeling pretty inspired. I went back to my room after she competed and I was very happy about it and was thinking, whatever happens tomorrow, it’s quite a good result, because that was amazing today.
“I woke up in the morning, I didn’t think I was going to recreate that kind of performance. It was a really tough field out there. I started the day, the swim was good. I suddenly wasn’t feeling my niggles, my back wasn’t sore anymore. Then I started the fencing and I managed to get the same score that I did when I won the Europeans and that’s usually been my difficulty. I knew once I won the fencing, I’d be definitely in the running for it.
“So that’s when things change and I started to focus on the process. And I knew I was in with a shot. Once I got through the riding, the world number one was only two places behind me in the combined events. So I knew I’d either get first or second, but I didn’t know whether he was going to catch me or not. Basically, the shooting went really well, and yeah, I ended up winning. I was really happy that I managed to win another one and show that it wasn’t just a fluke in Europeans.”
It was an interesting reaction to Coyle’s success. Some Irish athletes in Lanigan O’Keeffe’s position might have felt intimidated by having such a tough act to follow. Yet the 26-year-old Kilkenny native managed to draw inspiration from his fellow Irish athlete’s success.
“I think going back to 2011, 2012 and 2013, I would have been very competitive with Tal. We would have been trying to better each other. ‘I want to finish higher,’ and that kind of stuff. Back in the day, I would have looked at that very differently.
“I remember [years ago], I was starting in a very good position in the combined and I fell down to fourth. One of my coaches came over to me and said: ‘Once one person wins a medal, it breaks a spell.’ So you start to believe that you’re able to win medals again.
“I never won a World Cup medal and I thought: ‘Do you know what? If [Natalya] can do it, I can as well.’
“So it kind of broke that whole: ‘This isn’t impossible. This is well within our grasp.’
After each event, I got closer and closer to it. I couldn’t believe it when I went over the line to be honest, but I felt a bit like ‘you couldn’t have done that in the next competition,’ because I didn’t want to take away anything from her achievement either.
“But it was really cool and we were really happy for each other that we both managed to perform in the same competition. It was awesome.”
The achievement was all the remarkable given the difficulties Coyle and Lanigan-O’Keeffe encountered during the winter months. Their programme is currently being run by the Institute of Sport, owing to ongoing issues with Pentathlon Ireland, which the Sports Council and all other parties involved are working to resolve.
Attracting sponsorship is another challenge. Considerable resources are needed to compete full-time in modern pentathlon and constantly flying around the world to various locations obviously isn’t cheap either.
Coyle and Lanigan-O’Keeffe are giving it their all in this regard too. Both are prolific social media users and were understandably not shy in highlighting one another’s achievements in Sofia.
“It’s really difficult, because pentathlon is a minority sport,” he explains. “So it’s important for us that we show people about the sport and involve them in our journey and what we’re doing.
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to pick up sponsorships and get to Tokyo in the best way possible. If Tal’s competing, I’ll be taking videos and stories and letting people know what’s going on.”
There was also an extra layer of poignancy to their dual successes last month owing to the fact that Coyle and Lanigan-O’Keeffe are currently in a relationship.
“Me and Tal have known each other for years and years and years. Back in 2012, 2013, we were very competitive with each other. We were trying to beat each other in competitions. There was a bit of rivalry there, but eventually, as training went on, we realised we were much more similar to each other and we’d get further if we worked together. We became really good team-mates. The relationship changed a lot in 2014 and 2015. We started to push each other a lot more and we were wanting each other to do better as well.
“When that relationship changed, we started to become closer and now that we’re a couple, it’s even better, because you have someone around you the whole time.
It’s very difficult. Our day-to-day would be very intense. We’d be doing four-to-five sessions a day. You don’t always have time to see your friends, and in previous relationships that I’ve been in, it’s very difficult to understand a kind of lifestyle like this.
“It’s very unusual and it requires you to be quite selfish with your time. It means you have someone to push you through training, day in, day out, and with someone who also understands your lifestyle and just kind of gets it.
“So it’s actually been really nice and without us pushing each other, I don’t think either of us would have medalled. And there are a few examples of people in pentathlon who coupled up, and they all seem to be doing very well. It’s been really good and it’s only going to help us moving forward.
“We both have each other’s back and are working really hard together. When one person’s complacent, the other isn’t.
“A lot of my friends would be saying: ‘Man, you’re spending a lot of time in work and when you go home, do you not get sick of it?’ I’m like: ‘Not really, no.’ I can’t say a bad thing about it really.”
And is it hard to switch off and avoid the temptation to constantly obsess over the perils of modern pentathlon at the dinner table?
“We don’t really have any rules, so some days, we chat about [pentathlon] a little bit. But generally, when we come home, we just relax, meet up with friends, have coffee and just try to stuff ourselves with as much food as possible in between the sessions.
“We try to keep the conversation light and not always focused on sport. But it does come into conversation every once in a while, and that’s fine as well. But usually, when we come home, we just unwind and try to forget about sport basically, because we do spend our whole day doing it.”
Sport, and in particular a sport that is primarily individual-based, can be notoriously lonely at times for the athletes involved. Lanigan-O’Keeffe agrees with the suggestion that his relationship with the Coyle and the ability to be able to place complete trust in a fellow competitor is hugely beneficial in quelling some of the more negative aspects of their profession.
Myself and Tal just train together. In our training sessions, there wouldn’t be anyone else. So without each other, it would be a very lonely pursuit. When Tal’s having a bad day, I know how to pick her up and same with the other way around. Even, for instance, if one of us is tired, the other can drive to morning swimming.
“We were in the pool at half seven. I could see Tal was tired, so I drove this morning. Later on, maybe she can take the load there. So there are loads of different ways where we can help each other get through the days essentially. We won’t obviously be doing the same sessions. She’ll be working on different things to what I am.
“But just being beside someone, working really hard, knowing that it’s not you on your own in the rain doing all this and your friends are off having a nice time, knowing that there’s someone else there with you working hard just makes you feel more positive about what you’re doing. It is really important, to have people like that working with you. It’s really good. We’re starting to get results now. It’s really nice to have someone there with you going through it all.”
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