Aoife Hoey

Aoife Hoey was born in Portarlington, County Laois, on 6 September 1983, the soil that gave Ireland one of its tallest Olympic athletes. She stood six feet four at Vancouver, carried the Irish flag into the ceremony, then raced with Claire Bergin to seventeenth while hiding three herniated discs and endometriosis discovered only days before the run. The town produced no bobsleigh track, no sponsorship machine, no winter laboratory; it produced a woman large enough to fill the sled and stubborn enough to fly it. Her body paid the price in discs and pain, but her name still belongs to the place that made her.