SPORTING PASSIONS:Former rugby international Victor Costello on being an Olympic shot-putter

I got into the shot-putt in school at Willow Park and I managed to be quite successful at a young age. In saying that, it wasn't exactly the most popular sport, but I found I was able to throw the iron ball a little bit further than most.

Shot-putting is a field event. In athletics, the field event lads would be like forwards in rugby and the track events would be like the backs. So the big, burly fat guys throw the shot-putt. But it's kind of like a golf swing - there's a lot more technique to it than people realise.

It's basically a power sport. You need fast twitch muscle fibres, as the experts call them. A fast twitch muscle fibre athlete wouldn't be particularly good at the longer distances, but can be more powerful over short bursts. As a result of that it took me a while to get up to the fitness standard for Ireland or even the Leinster team rugby after the Olympics. But there's no doubt that the conditioning training I did with shot-putting helped.

A lot of the training I had done in athletics in the late 1980s, early 1990s came into rugby in the late 1990s. Plyometric training, sprint training - techniques that as an amateur rugby player you wouldn't have had the time to concentrate on.

It was all about timing when it came to the Olympics. I was fortunate enough to be on the Ireland senior team at the age of 15 and that meant I missed out on many a summer until the age of 22. I was off representing my country and travelling the world, meeting the likes of Frank O'Meara, Marcus O'Sullivan and Eamonn Coghlan, real gentlemen of Irish sport. So in that respect it was very exciting.

In those days in rugby there was a period of apprenticeship, I suppose. Unless you were extraordinarily talented and ready to go you weren't looked upon as a potential Ireland team member, particularly in the forwards, until later on in life. So I took those years to balance rugby and athletics. I played on the Ireland under-21s until Christmas and then I'd focus my energies on shot-putting.

The Olympics came around in 1992 when I was 21 and I think the reason I really went for them was because I didn't see a future in athletics for me. I was coming from a team environment, which I found much more rewarding and more enjoyable.

It's unfortunate for a lot of athletes that they never experience that, because it is a selfish sport. You enjoy the success yourself and I suppose the failure you're responsible for as well. But if you fail on a team sport you're letting 14 other people down. So the pressures are slightly different, but the rewards, the loyalty and the camaraderie are a lot higher.

The Olympic Games is a little bit different because people from every discipline are part of the Olympic team. I really enjoyed meeting Gary O'Toole, Michael Carruth and Wayne McCullough, people who were among Ireland's best athletes. And obviously, being the greatest show on earth, it was a great experience to be there. But I was never going to carry on and I retired in 1993.

The sorry thing about it is we had fantastic athletes in Ireland, the likes of Sonia O'Sullivan, Aisling Molloy, Frank O'Meara and Eamonn Coghlan. Coming from Ireland and looking at the facilities in America every one-horse town in America has a track. So for these athletes to succeed they've got to be even more talented than their American counterparts.

In the late 1980s I got offers to go to America on athletics scholarships, but I never took them because I wanted to keep playing rugby. I live in the States now and when I look at American football I can't help but think: "Would I have made it at that or would I have been wiped off the floor by these guys?"

The "what if" scenario is if I didn't go down the Irish rugby route, would I have gone through college football and how would I compare?

From a skills point of view, they make it look easy, but you don't want any of those big lads running over you because the chances of them ending your career are a lot higher than they are in rugby.

The quarterback is the target and the skills of the quarterback are huge, up there with the likes of Ronan O'Gara and Brian O'Driscoll.

But it is different to rugby. They have a lot more people, they have a lot more moves and it's a lot more commercial. The entertainment factor is there, but about 40 per cent of the entertainment is probably off the pitch.