Niamh Fitzpatrick is a sports psychologist who is helping the Irish Olympic team perform their very best in Beijing
I've just received business cards with my name and the Beijing logo on them, so I assume I've been reappointed!
We've actually been out there already, in August, looking at all the factors that could affect the athletes - climate, humidity, travel culture.
After the last Olympics, the idea was to let the dust settle and then stand back and assess each component and see how we could improve. Of course, that's the ideal model - in reality, there's a lot of work to do.
I'd like to dispel this myth of sitting around on a couch. Texts and inventory are all very good, but the skill lies in building a rapport, finding out your patient's challenges, weaknesses and goals and marrying that with research from talking to the coach and getting out onto the field, watching people's patterns of skills.
I used to have an office in town but I never used it. I mainly work from home in Rathfarnham but I'm also on the road a lot, I think I've been abroad six times with the rowing team over the past year.
It is a tough enough profession, you're running around like a nutter a lot of the time. I myself had ME for seven years after I had been working too hard, driving 900 miles a week. My body was screaming at me to slow down, telling me I was doing too much, and eventually I picked up this virus.
Thankfully, it's been gone for the past two years. I'm back in the gym. In fact, I'm doing a lot of kickboxing now.
My own sport is showjumping. When I was in competition, I would sometimes sail through the early rounds without a fault and then bash into eight or nine jumps in the final.
I knew that I hadn't become a bad rider overnight, and my horse hadn't suddenly turned into a bad horse. It was those experiences that prodded me in this direction.
Sometimes, I'm approached by individual athletes and sometimes by coaches or managers.
I get a lot of referrals from the Olympic Council, the National Coaching and Training Centre and the Sports Council.
I'm quite lucky in that people come to me, although I will be advertising for the first time soon, as I'm involved in a new joint venture with a doctor, a nutritional therapist, a fitness adviser and a massage therapist.
We had all been beavering away on our own for years and, now, we're working together to offer the same support system that athletes enjoy to people in the corporate field.
We will assess psychology, posture, medical, fitness and then build a programme for the future. Companies are beginning to realise you've got to look after your employees.
The holistic approach is a brilliant way of dealing with problems.
I often find with my own work that if people can learn the skills needed to progress with their sports then they subsequently become happier in other areas of their life.
(In conversation with Robin O'Brien Lynch)