Terry McHugh: Six Olympics, two sports and one man determined to do it his way

This story is part of a series, The Greatest Irish Olympic Stories Never Told, which will run every Saturday in The Irish Times up to the beginning of the 2024 Olympic Games, on Friday, July 26th

Once upon a time Terry McHugh’s life was changed by the Olympics. Not in a romantic, dreamy, Disney kind of way; changed for the rest of his life. In 1988 he went to Seoul as a 25-year-old production manager in a clothing factory, with a company car, a great salary, a new house, a 50-60 hour working week, responsibility for 240 workers, and an entry to the rat race.

What Seoul made him do was think: about choices; about the everyday practice of living.

Being the first Irishman to throw javelin at the Olympics had not changed his circumstances – not that he expected it would. As an elite athlete he was flying by the seat of his pants. State funding was minimal and poorly managed. In 1980s Ireland full-time athletes didn’t exist, or at least they couldn’t live here. Behind Catholicism and capitalism, amateurism was another cherished “ism” of Irish life.

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“When I told my boss I had made the Olympics he said, ‘Brilliant,’ but I literally took the minimum time off, the bare minimum, to go there,” McHugh says now. “It seems so backward. I arrived about five days before I competed. Carlos O’Connell was there for the decathlon and Carlos was not a very good javelin thrower. We were training together and Carlos and myself were throwing about the same distance in training.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh, good Jesus, I’ve left what I can do at home.’ Suddenly, you’ve made it to the world stage, you’re having to go into the stadium in a couple of days, and I was trying to find the feel [for throwing] and put it back together. When I got into the stadium, my first throw was an Irish record – 76.46. It was just like a weight was lifted off my shoulders and Seoul became the greatest experience ever.”

When McHugh returned home, though, he knew he couldn’t leave it at that. This wasn’t about him and the Olympics; it was about him. How much better could he become? Is that what he wanted? At what cost? Only the first two questions mattered.

“My dad was dying at the time which probably made me think too. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I can work to the age of 65 but I can’t do the sport to the age of 65. I have to make a decision now to reduce what I do in terms of work and find a way to do sport – or stop.’

“I had bought a house for £33,000. There was a first-time buyers grant of £3,000 from the government and I was earning £15,000 a year. I was earning half my mortgage a year as a salary so it was a very comfortable position to be in. In terms of making ends meet, doing a sport [full-time] was stupid. Fundamentally stupid.

“So, you can call it some sort of obsession, some sort of madness, but it was just really about trying to be the best that I could be.”

In his first two years as a full-time athlete McHugh was nearly £8,000 out of pocket. Once he had set off for the moon, though, there was no turning back. He sourced some sponsorship and set up a cottage industry selling trophies, something he could wrap his arms around when he wasn’t training or competing.

State funding improved a little, though the process was volatile and adversarial. Because the assessment criteria kept changing, McHugh found himself in perpetual conflict with the system, trying to justify himself while he was hurtling through space. He remembers one year being approved for a grant in March and not seeing a penny until the day in August when he took to the field in the World Championships. It only arrived then because McHugh had pushed them for an emergency transfer to meet his mortgage. This was the life he chose.

“There was a certain stigma attached to being one of the first full-time athletes in the country. You had people in your neighbourhood saying, ‘He doesn’t work, you know.’ Even within my own family. One of my sisters said to me after the Barcelona Games, ‘So, you’ll be stopping now.’ I understand. She worked very hard for a living and maybe she was concerned about my welfare. I didn’t have a problem with that.”

Stopping came much later. At the Sydney Games in 2000 he became the first and only Irish athlete to compete at six Olympics: four Summer Games in the javelin and two Winter Games in the bobsleigh. He tried for Athens in 2004 too and fell short. There are others on the mountain with multiple Olympic appearances, but McHugh stands above everyone, somewhere in the clouds.

The Winter and Summer Games have been decoupled in the Olympic cycle since 1992, but that year McHugh competed in both: Albertville in February, Barcelona five months later. In this he was unique too.

The Irish bobsleigh team was the dream work of Larry Treacy, a British-born entrepreneur with Irish parents and a passion for winter sports. The operation was run on a shoestring. Pat McDonagh was McHugh’s partner in the two-man bob and for the 1992 Games they were the only crew – apart from New Zealand’s second string – who didn’t compete full-time on the World Cup circuit. That season they went to three World Cup events before their money ran out.

Everything about it was pioneering and infectious and childlike: they dared to do something that was alien to their experience. At home they perfected their take-offs and pushing on an ice rink at Dolphin’s Barn. The bob they used for practice was a retired racing machine, clapped out and gallant and fit for their purpose.

“Was it enjoyable? Enjoyed is a hard word. With bobsledding you’re at the track for eight hours for two minutes riding on the back of the sled – which was an absolute thrill. There’s lifting sleds, there’s preparation of runners, pulling the sleds on trucks, getting equipment, undoing things, doing things. We were our own roadies.

“In competition we were doing 120 kilometres an hour in the bob. It was like being in a low car, with no suspension, on a boreen, going around 15 bends, trying not to crash. It was a hell of a ride. You know, if someone said you have a month to go dick about on the ice with a best friend, with no other pressures in the world – it was just good times. Good times.”

Naturally, there were risks. Before Albertville McHugh injured his knee in training. For the bob he was fine as long as he didn’t flex his knee beyond 90 degrees, but once he returned to the gym to prepare for Barcelona his knee flared up and refused to settle down.

“People will say, ‘You didn’t have great results in Barcelona.’ The ‘92 season was destroyed because of that injury. The system wasn’t professional enough for me to have the help to be ready and there was no one in the system to say to me, ‘You’re not fit enough to go to Barcelona.’ I look back on it now and it was a terribly, terribly amateur situation.”

After Seoul it was clear to McHugh that he needed outside help if he was going to improve. He approached John Thrower, who managed Team GB’s javelin throwers, and they welcomed him with open arms. Steve Backley, one of the greatest javelin throwers of all time, was at the height of his powers and he became McHugh’s training partner.

“I was the perfect training partner for him because in me he had somebody who was faster than him, stronger than him, could jump further than him, but wasn’t as good at javelin as him.”

[ Worth waiting for: Terry McHugh leads the way for Irish athletes on definitive list of caps ]

Like every other event in track and field, javelin had a doping problem. McHugh had no desire to play that game. On a queered pitch he understood the odds. How did he stay motivated? He saw hope and believed in it. Without cheating, Backley won three Olympic medals and four European golds. Outright brilliance still had a chance. That’s what McHugh was chasing.

“I went to Germany in 1987 and somebody in the German system explained to me that I would never win a medal clean. I remembered that. I kept their number and I called them up after I threw 84.54 [years later]. And they said, ‘I’m amazed you did that. Congratulations. You exceeded what I thought you could do. Now, two things. One, you still haven’t won a medal [at a major championships]. And two, give up the bobsledding.’

“What I would say is that in the 1994 European Championships I could have won a medal. I was in the final. I threw 82.14 in the qualifying and 82.50 won the bronze. I tore my abductor in the fifth round. That’s no problem, that’s life. At that moment, I realised it was possible. Improbable, but possible.

“I look back at names and lists and championships and several of the individuals I threw against eventually came up with positive tests. Anything I say will just be the words of a bitter man who didn’t win but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel [some bitterness]. There were times in my career where I thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’ There was one stage where I thought, ‘Well, I’m an idiot if I don’t.’ But it was a thought and it ended as a thought. I’m happy with who I am. I have no regrets. I did what I did clean. That meant a lot to me.”

He always felt his best throws were fuelled by emotion; some ad hoc meeting of desire and motive and moment. But that feeling didn’t come by appointment and it wasn’t always there when he needed it. Before Sydney, it was nearly late.

At the Swiss Championships he had been 80cm short of the Olympic qualifying standard, his best throw in nearly four years. A case for his inclusion on the team was made to the Olympic Council of Ireland and it was rejected. He begged for an invitation to the British Grand Prix in Crystal Palace a week later. That was the last chance. He exceeded his throw in Switzerland by a metre and a half. The A standard was met.

Every so often in his career, that stuff happened. In Limerick, nine years earlier, he threw 84.54, the longest throw of his life. It started with a feeling.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘Don’t start celebrating, you haven’t thrown the javelin yet.’ But I knew it was going forward, there was no question in my mind. It was almost like there was a little bag of something inside me just exploded. It was the oddest sensation.

“I was trying to control myself. I ran to the end of the runway and I couldn’t get there quick enough in case this feeling would pass. I hit the javelin and I looked up and the javelin hadn’t even hit the ground when I was celebrating.”

Those throws were in him. Those feelings carried him.