Former Olympian Ciarán Ó Lionáird dies aged 38

Former Irish track athlete and 2012 Olympian Ciarán Ó Lionáird has died in Montreal, aged 38.

The Cork man represented Ireland in the 1500m at the 2012 London Olympics, and took home a bronze medal in the Men's 3000m at the 2013 European Indoors.

Raised just outside Macroom in Cork, Ó Lionáird rose to fame at schools level where he was a national 1500m champion and would go on to win bronze at the European Youth Olympic Festival in 2005.

After finishing school, Ó Lionáird accepted a scholarship at the University of Michigan, before transferring to Florida State University, culminating in becoming an 'All American' at the 2010 NCAA Men's Division I Cross Country Championship.

Ó Lionáird's first World Championships with Ireland was in 2011, where he would qualify for the final of the 1500m, a 10th place finish on the world stage.

He relocated to the United States as part of his build-up to the 2012 Games, working under coach Alberto Salazar, who in 2019, was handed a four-year doping ban.

However an Achilles issue that was a constant in his career curtailed his Olympic preparations, and he finished 13th in his 1500m heat.

"This has been the worst experience of my life," he told RTÉ Sport. "There's no positives I can take from this. Maybe if I spend some time away from the sport, it will get me healthy again and relight the fire."

Despite bouncing back to secure a bronze medal in the European Indoors in 2013, competing this time in the 3,000m, the Leevale AC runner's ailments persisted, and two further surgeries took O'Lionáird out of competition for large chunks throughout 2014 and 2015.

With the Rio Olympics approaching, O'Lionáird lost the battle to return to full fitness and bowed out of the sport at just 28-years old in 2016.

Four years later, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, Ó Lionáird revealed that he was to come out of retirement, then aged 32, in a bid to qualify for the following year's postponed Olympic Games in Tokyo.

"I'd be lying if I wasn’t saying that a big part of the reason that the Olympics is starting to come into view is that I want to right the wrongs of 2012," he told RTÉ Sport in May 2020.

Illness however scuppered those plans and he retired for a second time in 2020.

After working for Nike at the company's headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon from 2015 until 2021, Ó Lionáird spent three years working in Los Angeles with Vizio, a manufacturer of smart TVs. He also spent a period of time working in Mexico City.