Persistence is a word typically associated with Olympic athletes, and O'Flaherty personifies that. For the Down woman, Rio has been a long time coming, the now 35-year-old moving in on qualification for the London Olympics only to fall short. In 2014, she qualified to represent Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games, then last summer she knocked almost 10 seconds off her best to clock 9:42.61, an automatic qualifier for Rio. She'll probably need to go significantly quicker again to make the final, although buoyed up after making the final at the Europeans it's not beyond her reach.