THE PAST 12 months are as close as it gets to downtime for an elite athlete with Olympic aspirations.
In Jack Woolley’s case, this less hectic period has been badly needed.
These days, the Irish taekwondo star is based in Madrid, training in a club with a big group of international athletes. He moved there after finishing in seventh place at the 2024 Paris Games.
It was not the medal win he had hoped for, but it was an improvement on the disappointing round-of-16 exit at the Tokyo Olympics.
Not that he has been away long enough to feel homesick, however.
Woolley was back in Ireland for an extended period earlier this year to compete in the eighth season of RTÉ’s Dancing with the Stars.
“I wanted to enjoy the process for what it was,” he tells The 42. “I didn’t want to have another competitive environment. So I think after week three, I was easier on myself, I was allowing myself to make mistakes.”
Competing with pro partner Alex Vladimirov, Woolley lost out in the final to fellow Olympian Rhys McClenaghan and Laura Nolan.
Woolley calls the experience “the best thing I’ve ever done,” adding: “I had some time to myself. I never was able to do that, especially after Tokyo. Because it was put back a year [due to the pandemic], we only had a three-year gap between Tokyo and Paris, so that flew by.”
Previously, taekwondo required its athletes to put in four years of preparation ahead of the Olympics, but it has been shortened to two.
For the last 12 months at least, Woolley has been able to “have a life and look at things outside the sport a little bit more”.
He explains: “Since I was eight years old, my focus has been to get to the Olympics and perform. This was the first time I’m here for myself, and I’ve seen so much self-growth in the last six to 12 months.”
So after Paris, for once, the path ahead was not obvious.
“It was like: ‘Okay, if the sport ended tomorrow, what do I have?’ And that was the question that you have to start to ask yourself.”
Woolley turns 27 next month. He is a young man in most people’s eyes, but old for a taekwondo competitor.
“Unfortunately, in my sport, you never really see anybody go past 30,” he says.
Consequently, the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are set to be his last hurrah in the sport he has devoted his life to.
One aspect he is unlikely to miss is the inherent focus on weight required for an athlete of his calibre.
Jack Woolley is consoled by coach Robert Taaffe after the 58kg Repechage at the Paris Olympics. James Crombie / INPHO
James Crombie / INPHO / INPHO
Not every single weight class is in the Olympics — it is every second weight class. In Tokyo and Paris, he competed at 58 kilos.
He has moved up to 63 now, because “58 was impossible to make”.
He continues: “I haven’t made 58 kilos since the Games themselves last year. So I’ve moved up to 63 and I feel a lot healthier and more comfortable. And this is the path I’m going to take. But there’s no 63 in the Olympics, so it’s a 10 kilo jump to 68.”
This year, he will participate in a couple of events at 63, including the World Championships in October, and test a few at 68, although he has not made a final call on competing at 58 or 68 for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“I would be considered tall for 58 but not so much at 68, so we’re going to see if my game can hold up in the heavier weight class,” he adds.
“I walk around at 65, 66. It wouldn’t be necessary to cut weight. 63 is fine, I just eat a little bit cleaner and don’t eat after training the night before I make weight.
“But anything lower than 62, I struggle with.”
The need to cut weight in combat sports can often create an unhealthy mindset, which has affected Woolley in the past.
“I’ve spoken about being very self-conscious and struggling with eating disorders and body dysmorphia and stuff like that. I think, unfortunately, that’s what comes with weight making sports; we don’t fight at our natural weights, and that can be difficult.
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“Sometimes, for me, it was bringing in weighing scales to school. The first time I ever cut weight, I was eight years old. It’s kind of crazy.
“And now, in these last 12 months, knowing that I don’t need to go back to 58, and if I do, it’s not right now. So I’m trying to develop a healthier relationship with my body and my eating.
“Being here in Spain, I think it helps quite a lot, because we’re training twice a day. I need fuel for performance, not cutting weight so consistently like in previous years.
“Also, the eating times here are structured around training sessions. They eat dinner quite late, and I’ve just noticed a big shift in my energy. I’ve not gained a lot of weight. I’m not uncomfortable with how I look.
“Sometimes I can look in the mirror. I can be too heavy for myself, but five minutes later, I can look in the mirror and be skinny. It messes with your head, the sport.
“Sometimes I look at these heavier guys and think: ‘I wish I looked like that.’ Then, it’s a catch-22 because when I do put on the weight, I look at the 58s and I’m like: ‘I wish I looked like that.’
“But I’m adapting to it. And I’m in a much better position than I was this time last year.”
Being an elite athlete is a constant battle to evolve and improve. Documentaries and books, such as ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by W Timothy Gallwey, have helped the Dubliner better understand himself.
“It’s all about managing your mindset and not being so critical of yourself. It’s something I’ve needed, because when I make a mistake, I kind of shut down, whereas I need to see the positives of how to fix it, focus on myself and who’s in front of me. Because often, you can have exterior pressure. You look at the crowd, scoreboards, the refs and stuff like that. That’s something I have struggled with.
“So a lot of our training now is based on focus and staying in ourselves, in the moment, and not getting panicked when something doesn’t go our way.”
Woolley has been paying increasing attention to areas of psychology and mental health of late.
Not long after the Tokyo Olympics, he was the victim of a vicious, random assault in Dublin city centre that left him hospitalised.
Reaching Paris in 2024 was particularly taxing. The qualification system began before the Tokyo Games had even started.
You qualify through ranking and pick up points by medalling at various competitions along the way, and the top six advance automatically.
“So we were trying our best and going to every competition possible, travelling the world, trying to block this person from getting medals, even though I had got my points,” he recalls. “It was all very technical, mathematical, crazy.”
So in 2023, Woolley competed in no fewer than 22 competitions.
“And that was 19 weight cuts. And people see these mad weight cuts online with MMA fighters. And it’s like that in our sport.
“To do it 19 times, I was cutting seven kilos for every competition.
“And to do 19 of them in a year, two or three a month, sometimes, it just got very overwhelming.
“And then when I didn’t qualify automatically and had to go through the qualifiers, especially then with the assault that had happened, everything just kind of built up.”
As a top-level athlete, Woolley became proficient at “shutting things out”.
If something entered his mind that did not relate to competing and winning medals, he tried to push it aside.
“I think I did that way too much,” he says. “I never addressed a lot of the issues that I was having with the weight, with the assault, with losing at the Olympics in Tokyo, there was a lot of pressure on me, and then when I didn’t get in through ranking, it hit me like a wave. I was having panic attacks, suffering badly with my anxiety. I was waking up in the morning, not wanting to go to training.
“I had a habit of just dragging myself there, because if I wanted to go to Paris, then I needed to qualify through the event that was on in March 2024, so those treatments were very difficult, and I managed to qualify.
“It wasn’t like a switch that I flicked that I was able to be alright again. It was an ongoing process.
“I think after the Games in Paris, I was able to step back and deal with that. Unfortunately, it happened at a pretty bad time, six months out from the Olympics. But I’m one of those people who don’t want to have any regrets. I don’t want to think ‘what if’ or anything like that.”
Woolley is aiming to qualify for a third successive Olympics in Los Angeles. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
There is a video of the moment Woolley qualified for the Paris Olympics. He drops to the floor, and the sense of relief is palpable. He wanted to prove that reaching Tokyo was no fluke, having also narrowly missed out on Rio as a 17-year-old.
“I know it’s doable, but it did take a lot to get there, a lot of psych work, meeting with people to talk about how I’m feeling. I was checking in with somebody every day to make sure I was focused and not getting distracted by anything, and just solely on the game, and that’s what I did.
“Even in the lead up to Paris, once I had qualified, nothing changed. I still had the same focus to put in the best performance possible.
“Hopefully now, with a better environment and better headspace going into LA, I’m able to walk away with a medal.”
Nowadays, he can put more focus on the sport itself, rather than “having to train in a load of jackets to try to lose weight and sweat. Sometimes, you’re just so focused on what the scales say that you don’t pay too much attention to the tactical side of things. But the fact that I don’t need to stress about that, it’s been really good and [there have been] fewer competitions and just focusing more on training, which is something I’ve never really had before.”
****
“I can wear both my medals and my identity with pride.”
Outside of sport, too, Woolley feels happy. He recently got engaged to Dave, a personal trainer, whom he met in 2021, although the wedding will likely have to wait until after LA.
The Irish star also recently teamed up with the Olympics to produce a video (see above) in which Woolley declares he is “proud” to be a gay man.
Woolley came out when he was 15, and while he has not hidden his sexuality since becoming a public figure, he says “sometimes I find it uncomfortable to talk about” and often felt “there was no point in talking about it”.
He adds, “Sometimes the personal life isn’t well received by the sporting community.”
Earlier this year, when Woolley posted news of his engagement to Dave, the Tallaght native was taken aback by the ignorant responses he received.
“There was a big increase in homophobia online, just comments and DMs. I’ve seen messages from people before they knew. It was like: ‘You’re my role model, can you give me a shout out, blah, blah, blah, we love you and your style.’
“And then they see I’m in a same sex relationship, I get a load of abuse off them.
“One minute, you’re telling me I’m your role model. And now, I’m getting this abuse off you.
“I can just press block and that’s the end of it for me. But that’s just the way I was brought up. I’m a bit more thick-skinned. A lot of people might struggle with stuff like that, so if I’m able to raise awareness and put my name out there, and show the good and the negative side of being a gay athlete, it might help others in the future.”
Woolley says “nobody cared” when he came out in secondary school nearly 12 years ago, but he has had to deal with abuse in sport.
“I can say it doesn’t affect me, but sometimes it does. You never know who’s going to be at these competitions or who you’re going to bump into.
“I’ve seen competitors that are going to be at your competition commenting on stuff like this, telling me to get out of the sport, I’m not welcome in the sport and everything like that.
“In 2022, I was walking into the ring against an opponent, and his supporters were shouting slurs at me. That was the first time I had it in person.
“I could have gone one of two ways. I could have panicked and lost that match, or I could have done what I did, and I laughed at them. I won the match, and then I just laughed at them again and walked off.
“But it can be tough. I’m able to act one way, but as I’m sitting at home and thinking about it, it can be quite difficult, because nobody else has to experience that.”
In this climate, with homophobia particularly prominent on various social media platforms, Woolley can understand why some athletes and others might be reluctant to speak openly about their sexuality.
“I’ve had a good few DMs from people who are struggling, especially since being so open about it on national TV [during Dancing with the Stars].
“Even talking about how I met my fiancé and his struggles — because I came out at 15, he didn’t come out until he was 35. So that’s two completely different stories.
“I do have his permission, but we do talk about it. And if people are struggling, I have no problem chatting with them, seeing how it fits into their lives.
“I think everybody’s different. It’d be wrong of me to turn around and tell everybody: ‘Oh yeah, come out. It’s great.’ I don’t know other people’s situations.
“It’s not my job to do that, and I’m not going to sit around all day. But if I can help them on an individual basis — it’s not something I can say for everybody — but do what’s best for you is the most important thing, talk to somebody, find somebody you’re comfortable speaking to, whether they even understand, or it’s just to get it off your chest.”
Whether it’s dealing with homophobic hatred or coping with the intense pressure of a big taekwondo event, for Woolley, this past year has been all about being better equipped at handling his emotions in fraught circumstances.
“There was a saying my coach said to me the other day, and I’m trying to remember the exact words.
“‘You can’t control the storm, but you can control how you act within it,’ or something like that. It’s just stuck with me. I can’t control what’s going on, but I can control how I react.”
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‘The first time I ever cut weight, I was 8 years old’
THE PAST 12 months are as close as it gets to downtime for an elite athlete with Olympic aspirations.
In Jack Woolley’s case, this less hectic period has been badly needed.
These days, the Irish taekwondo star is based in Madrid, training in a club with a big group of international athletes. He moved there after finishing in seventh place at the 2024 Paris Games.
It was not the medal win he had hoped for, but it was an improvement on the disappointing round-of-16 exit at the Tokyo Olympics.
Not that he has been away long enough to feel homesick, however.
Woolley was back in Ireland for an extended period earlier this year to compete in the eighth season of RTÉ’s Dancing with the Stars.
“I wanted to enjoy the process for what it was,” he tells The 42. “I didn’t want to have another competitive environment. So I think after week three, I was easier on myself, I was allowing myself to make mistakes.”
Competing with pro partner Alex Vladimirov, Woolley lost out in the final to fellow Olympian Rhys McClenaghan and Laura Nolan.
Woolley calls the experience “the best thing I’ve ever done,” adding: “I had some time to myself. I never was able to do that, especially after Tokyo. Because it was put back a year [due to the pandemic], we only had a three-year gap between Tokyo and Paris, so that flew by.”
Previously, taekwondo required its athletes to put in four years of preparation ahead of the Olympics, but it has been shortened to two.
For the last 12 months at least, Woolley has been able to “have a life and look at things outside the sport a little bit more”.
He explains: “Since I was eight years old, my focus has been to get to the Olympics and perform. This was the first time I’m here for myself, and I’ve seen so much self-growth in the last six to 12 months.”
So after Paris, for once, the path ahead was not obvious.
“It was like: ‘Okay, if the sport ended tomorrow, what do I have?’ And that was the question that you have to start to ask yourself.”
Woolley turns 27 next month. He is a young man in most people’s eyes, but old for a taekwondo competitor.
“Unfortunately, in my sport, you never really see anybody go past 30,” he says.
Consequently, the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are set to be his last hurrah in the sport he has devoted his life to.
One aspect he is unlikely to miss is the inherent focus on weight required for an athlete of his calibre.
Not every single weight class is in the Olympics — it is every second weight class. In Tokyo and Paris, he competed at 58 kilos.
He has moved up to 63 now, because “58 was impossible to make”.
He continues: “I haven’t made 58 kilos since the Games themselves last year. So I’ve moved up to 63 and I feel a lot healthier and more comfortable. And this is the path I’m going to take. But there’s no 63 in the Olympics, so it’s a 10 kilo jump to 68.”
This year, he will participate in a couple of events at 63, including the World Championships in October, and test a few at 68, although he has not made a final call on competing at 58 or 68 for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
“I would be considered tall for 58 but not so much at 68, so we’re going to see if my game can hold up in the heavier weight class,” he adds.
“I walk around at 65, 66. It wouldn’t be necessary to cut weight. 63 is fine, I just eat a little bit cleaner and don’t eat after training the night before I make weight.
“But anything lower than 62, I struggle with.”
The need to cut weight in combat sports can often create an unhealthy mindset, which has affected Woolley in the past.
“I’ve spoken about being very self-conscious and struggling with eating disorders and body dysmorphia and stuff like that. I think, unfortunately, that’s what comes with weight making sports; we don’t fight at our natural weights, and that can be difficult.
“Sometimes, for me, it was bringing in weighing scales to school. The first time I ever cut weight, I was eight years old. It’s kind of crazy.
“And now, in these last 12 months, knowing that I don’t need to go back to 58, and if I do, it’s not right now. So I’m trying to develop a healthier relationship with my body and my eating.
“Being here in Spain, I think it helps quite a lot, because we’re training twice a day. I need fuel for performance, not cutting weight so consistently like in previous years.
“Also, the eating times here are structured around training sessions. They eat dinner quite late, and I’ve just noticed a big shift in my energy. I’ve not gained a lot of weight. I’m not uncomfortable with how I look.
“Sometimes I can look in the mirror. I can be too heavy for myself, but five minutes later, I can look in the mirror and be skinny. It messes with your head, the sport.
“Sometimes I look at these heavier guys and think: ‘I wish I looked like that.’ Then, it’s a catch-22 because when I do put on the weight, I look at the 58s and I’m like: ‘I wish I looked like that.’
“But I’m adapting to it. And I’m in a much better position than I was this time last year.”
Being an elite athlete is a constant battle to evolve and improve. Documentaries and books, such as ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ by W Timothy Gallwey, have helped the Dubliner better understand himself.
“It’s all about managing your mindset and not being so critical of yourself. It’s something I’ve needed, because when I make a mistake, I kind of shut down, whereas I need to see the positives of how to fix it, focus on myself and who’s in front of me. Because often, you can have exterior pressure. You look at the crowd, scoreboards, the refs and stuff like that. That’s something I have struggled with.
“So a lot of our training now is based on focus and staying in ourselves, in the moment, and not getting panicked when something doesn’t go our way.”
Woolley has been paying increasing attention to areas of psychology and mental health of late.
Not long after the Tokyo Olympics, he was the victim of a vicious, random assault in Dublin city centre that left him hospitalised.
Reaching Paris in 2024 was particularly taxing. The qualification system began before the Tokyo Games had even started.
You qualify through ranking and pick up points by medalling at various competitions along the way, and the top six advance automatically.
“So we were trying our best and going to every competition possible, travelling the world, trying to block this person from getting medals, even though I had got my points,” he recalls. “It was all very technical, mathematical, crazy.”
So in 2023, Woolley competed in no fewer than 22 competitions.
“And that was 19 weight cuts. And people see these mad weight cuts online with MMA fighters. And it’s like that in our sport.
“To do it 19 times, I was cutting seven kilos for every competition.
“And to do 19 of them in a year, two or three a month, sometimes, it just got very overwhelming.
“And then when I didn’t qualify automatically and had to go through the qualifiers, especially then with the assault that had happened, everything just kind of built up.”
As a top-level athlete, Woolley became proficient at “shutting things out”.
If something entered his mind that did not relate to competing and winning medals, he tried to push it aside.
“I think I did that way too much,” he says. “I never addressed a lot of the issues that I was having with the weight, with the assault, with losing at the Olympics in Tokyo, there was a lot of pressure on me, and then when I didn’t get in through ranking, it hit me like a wave. I was having panic attacks, suffering badly with my anxiety. I was waking up in the morning, not wanting to go to training.
“I had a habit of just dragging myself there, because if I wanted to go to Paris, then I needed to qualify through the event that was on in March 2024, so those treatments were very difficult, and I managed to qualify.
“It wasn’t like a switch that I flicked that I was able to be alright again. It was an ongoing process.
“I think after the Games in Paris, I was able to step back and deal with that. Unfortunately, it happened at a pretty bad time, six months out from the Olympics. But I’m one of those people who don’t want to have any regrets. I don’t want to think ‘what if’ or anything like that.”
There is a video of the moment Woolley qualified for the Paris Olympics. He drops to the floor, and the sense of relief is palpable. He wanted to prove that reaching Tokyo was no fluke, having also narrowly missed out on Rio as a 17-year-old.
“I know it’s doable, but it did take a lot to get there, a lot of psych work, meeting with people to talk about how I’m feeling. I was checking in with somebody every day to make sure I was focused and not getting distracted by anything, and just solely on the game, and that’s what I did.
“Even in the lead up to Paris, once I had qualified, nothing changed. I still had the same focus to put in the best performance possible.
“Hopefully now, with a better environment and better headspace going into LA, I’m able to walk away with a medal.”
Nowadays, he can put more focus on the sport itself, rather than “having to train in a load of jackets to try to lose weight and sweat. Sometimes, you’re just so focused on what the scales say that you don’t pay too much attention to the tactical side of things. But the fact that I don’t need to stress about that, it’s been really good and [there have been] fewer competitions and just focusing more on training, which is something I’ve never really had before.”
****
Outside of sport, too, Woolley feels happy. He recently got engaged to Dave, a personal trainer, whom he met in 2021, although the wedding will likely have to wait until after LA.
The Irish star also recently teamed up with the Olympics to produce a video (see above) in which Woolley declares he is “proud” to be a gay man.
Woolley came out when he was 15, and while he has not hidden his sexuality since becoming a public figure, he says “sometimes I find it uncomfortable to talk about” and often felt “there was no point in talking about it”.
He adds, “Sometimes the personal life isn’t well received by the sporting community.”
Earlier this year, when Woolley posted news of his engagement to Dave, the Tallaght native was taken aback by the ignorant responses he received.
“There was a big increase in homophobia online, just comments and DMs. I’ve seen messages from people before they knew. It was like: ‘You’re my role model, can you give me a shout out, blah, blah, blah, we love you and your style.’
“And then they see I’m in a same sex relationship, I get a load of abuse off them.
“One minute, you’re telling me I’m your role model. And now, I’m getting this abuse off you.
“I can just press block and that’s the end of it for me. But that’s just the way I was brought up. I’m a bit more thick-skinned. A lot of people might struggle with stuff like that, so if I’m able to raise awareness and put my name out there, and show the good and the negative side of being a gay athlete, it might help others in the future.”
Woolley says “nobody cared” when he came out in secondary school nearly 12 years ago, but he has had to deal with abuse in sport.
“I can say it doesn’t affect me, but sometimes it does. You never know who’s going to be at these competitions or who you’re going to bump into.
“I’ve seen competitors that are going to be at your competition commenting on stuff like this, telling me to get out of the sport, I’m not welcome in the sport and everything like that.
“In 2022, I was walking into the ring against an opponent, and his supporters were shouting slurs at me. That was the first time I had it in person.
“I could have gone one of two ways. I could have panicked and lost that match, or I could have done what I did, and I laughed at them. I won the match, and then I just laughed at them again and walked off.
“But it can be tough. I’m able to act one way, but as I’m sitting at home and thinking about it, it can be quite difficult, because nobody else has to experience that.”
In this climate, with homophobia particularly prominent on various social media platforms, Woolley can understand why some athletes and others might be reluctant to speak openly about their sexuality.
“I’ve had a good few DMs from people who are struggling, especially since being so open about it on national TV [during Dancing with the Stars].
“Even talking about how I met my fiancé and his struggles — because I came out at 15, he didn’t come out until he was 35. So that’s two completely different stories.
“I do have his permission, but we do talk about it. And if people are struggling, I have no problem chatting with them, seeing how it fits into their lives.
“I think everybody’s different. It’d be wrong of me to turn around and tell everybody: ‘Oh yeah, come out. It’s great.’ I don’t know other people’s situations.
“It’s not my job to do that, and I’m not going to sit around all day. But if I can help them on an individual basis — it’s not something I can say for everybody — but do what’s best for you is the most important thing, talk to somebody, find somebody you’re comfortable speaking to, whether they even understand, or it’s just to get it off your chest.”
Whether it’s dealing with homophobic hatred or coping with the intense pressure of a big taekwondo event, for Woolley, this past year has been all about being better equipped at handling his emotions in fraught circumstances.
“There was a saying my coach said to me the other day, and I’m trying to remember the exact words.
“‘You can’t control the storm, but you can control how you act within it,’ or something like that. It’s just stuck with me. I can’t control what’s going on, but I can control how I react.”
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CUTTING WEIGHT Gay Pride Interview Jack Woolley Los Angeles 2028 Olympics Paris 2024 taekwondo