What is your role within the support team, and what are your primary responsibilities?
I’m a Deputy Chef de Mission with responsibility for the performance support team here in Paris. That’s 21 Sport Ireland Institute staff and nine NGB service providers. My primary role is to support our team in delivering their expert services.
How does your role contribute to the overall performance and well-being of the athletes?
Our support team includes doctors, physios, nutritionists, physiologists, psychologists, performance analysts and S&C coaches. They work with our athletes and coaches to provide a holistic support system to enable them to train and recover effectively and deliver their best performances on the Olympic stage. My job is mainly to get out of their way!
The team have a huge depth of experience and expertise and all I do is check in with them and clear any obstacles to them delivering their support.
How did you transition from being an international lacrosse player to a psychologist, and what inspired you to pursue this career path?
I played at international level as a lacrosse player for Scotland and then moved into coaching. I also studied sport science and psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, where I worked as an academic and sport psychologist with GB Hockey.
I was lucky to have the opportunity to bring those experiences to a role with the Sport Ireland Institute as it was getting started. It’s been a fantastic journey to have played a small part in building the institute from a start-up to a world-class team delivering expertise at the highest level.
What’s your favourite sporting memory?
I think it’s the moment when Kenneth Egan qualified for the Beijing games in 2008.
He’d been to five qualifying tournaments and gone out in the crucial round each time, usually to an opponent he should have beaten comfortably. This was his last shot.
Working with Kenneth and his psychologist, we realised he didn’t have a clear focus in the ring and so his attention was liable to drift back to what had happened or forwards to the consequences of winning or losing. We needed to find his focus.
We figured out that he got most of his information from the hips and shoulders of the other boxer. With that intel he could use his technical expertise to feint and strike. So, he needed to look through a “window” to see the hips and shoulders then the “technician” could go to work. We had his focus.
In a dank, dusty, dim area on the outskirts of Athens where every boxer was at the last-chance saloon and most would go home having failed again to make it to the Games, Kenneth brought his clarity of focus and realised his dream. He’ll tell you that he collected his silver medal in Beijing, but he won it and the battle in his own mind that night in Athens.
What are you most looking forward to?
I’ve always loved game-day. So to see athletes and their support teams ride the emotional rollercoaster that is the Olympic Games is always a thrill. The highs and the lows are all part of the ride.
Phil Moore is Deputy Chef de Mission with Team Ireland and also Director of Performance Support for the Sport Ireland Institute. Sport Ireland Institute is the official performance support delivery partner to the Olympic Federation of Ireland.
