Rob Heffernan interview: ‘I always felt like a bit of a black sheep’

This was the 2008 Olympics, his third of a career five. In the 20km race walk Heffernan led the race at the 14km mark and went on to miss out on the podium. The sensation that greeted Nevin’s invite was painfully familiar. Blind panic in the face of intense pressure became a nagging issue hindering his every move. A year later at the European Race Walking Cup in Metz, he passed home favourite Yohann Diniz after 3km and was out in front as the bell sounded for the final 2km circuit.

Three Italians went by down the stretch, ultimately leaving him fourth. The Cork athlete was still third with 500m left but turned to see Jean-Jacques Nkouloukidi hunting him down. The stress amassed to the point of surrender.

“I tried to deal with that with an Irish psychologist. My background made it hard. I was always small and would walk down to Ballyphehane Park when I was younger and I could end up in a scrap. When you’re smaller, you are more threatened. Playing football and end up scrapping with some fella. My back was up all the time, a chip on the shoulder.” 

At the Irish national championships in Santry just before the 2009 World Championships, he sought to tackle it. A distress signal went up for the Irish team psychologist. He needed someone to liberate him from that overwrought tension. Instead, they immediately poked at the wound. ‘You have me up at 7.30am in the morning Rob, this better be good.” 

His inbuilt defensive mechanism reared. Rage descends down, fists rise up.

“You have to understand, I went to my first Olympics and came back… Imagine this. I’m from a working-class area and your family has no sporting background. The son of a plasterer and my mam was a housewife. Next thing you know you’re going to European junior championships, European U23s, winning awards. It was massive in the context of where I came from. There was so much to absorb.

“The reason my career went on for so long is because my base level was so low. I was always learning. Whereas my son Cathal playing soccer now or my nine-year-olds are high-performance heads. That is their world. Cathal goes to work every day at training. My girls do 15 hours of gymnastics and it’s normal. They’re supported. They have good food, lifts and all of that. They’re in a good environment.” 

Heffernan never neglects to acknowledge his Togher roots with pride. They were the making of him. From those branches, champions have and will blossom. Nor does he shirk from the pain at the heart of it. He left school as a teen to work on building sites but returned when the prospect of an athletics scholarship emerged after some encouragement from Brother John Dooley of North Monastery.

His father couldn’t comprehend or contemplate that. “This fecking walking, go away and get a trade.” His mother, Maureen, was the same in that she had no understanding of the sport itself and different in how she approached it. She passed away in 2011 after suffering a heart attack in Cork while her son was in Korea at the World Championships.

“I said it to (my wife) Marian the other day, I remember my car broke down and Mam bought me a car. Not an expensive car but it worked. I remember another time I couldn’t pay my ESB bill and she came down to my apartment and sorted it out. My mam always had my back 100%. That unconditional love. The biggest thing for me was she wasn’t alive to see my major success later.

“Even with my dad, I think of what Cathal is doing. Cathal came back from Italy and said he didn’t want to go back there, he wanted to go to England (Newcastle United). It was the same problem on a higher level. I didn’t want to turn around to him and say stay in Italy, this is great, don’t do this. You have to support what the person wants to do. That passion and desire is driving them, I knew that.” 

He grew up feeling like a fighter. On Olympic trips, his closest confidants were often the boxers. In 2016, a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport stripped 50km Russian doping cheat Sergey Kirdyapkin of his London 2012 gold. Heffernan finished fourth and was subsequently bumped up. A ceremony was organised in Cork even though his medal hadn’t arrived. Paddy Barnes and Michael Conlon both offered to lend their 2012 bronze medals for the ceremony.

“They were stone-mad but similar to me growing up and the same mentality. I could relate to the boys. I loved the craic too. Joe Ward. Calling into Big Joe Joyce in Moate. I loved it. I got on with lads.

“Athletics has probably suffered… it is nearly a middle-class sport in a lot of ways. I was around lads going to college and doing degrees. I was meant to do an apprenticeship. I always felt like a bit of a black sheep.” The solution was in Spain. In a meeting with Spanish psychologist Patricia Ramirez, Heffernan finally opened up and broke it down. All of the anxieties that came consistently at a certain point. He vividly remembers looking across at a Russian and watching him become bigger and stronger in front of his eyes. In the entirety of his mind.

“She explained you just need cues for the stuff you can deal with. Your arms, are your hips working, how are your legs, what is your heart rate? She gave me cues.

“That big, bad monster was there but I wasn’t dealing with that because I had my own thing to do. After growing up in an Irish GAA culture supposed to be very masculine, it felt like cheating. You weren’t competing with the guy next to you or scrapping with him, you were just doing what you had to do. Don’t get stuck in basically.” 

The demons, the drama, doped opponents, he elected to treat it all as a distraction.

“When I was younger all the talk was doping and doping and doping. So, you can imagine when it comes to the crunch time in a race and you're absolutely fucked and you think you are going to die, if I’m up against you, human nature means you are looking for a way out. If in that moment you go, well he is doping. You’re gone. You are done. Fight over.

“Whereas I had to look at it and say, ‘I need this time for 5km, this time for 10km, I need to deliver and really perform on the day regardless of the boys.’ You just have to perform and see what happens. You’ll never have three others who will perform on the day. Someone will be off because they can’t handle the pressure or occasion.” 

That too came at a cost. The toll on himself was self-inflicted and thus tolerable. Those closest to him felt the brunt too. That evidently still stings.

Heffernan previously trained with Irish race walker Brendan Boyce. Recently they were talking about the pursuit of medals and Boyce’s wife Sarah recalled a camp in Fota Island. He buries his head in his hands before he can apologetically recall it.

“Marian had the two kids in the car, one a newborn and 15 months between them. Awh, man. I bollicked Marian for not having a drink ready while she was changing a nappy in the back of the car,” he says with a grimace.

“My mentality then was that everyone was giving out about the Russians and doping. I said OK, but look at their system, their talent, good coaches, good technique, they are hardy. I knew I wasn’t going to dope so I need to have my planning 100% right. No excuses. That was tough. Tougher on Marian and the kids properly. That professional support wasn’t going to be on the ground in Ireland, so I had to create it myself.” 

Heffernan is currently a performance coach with Cork’s senior footballers. Those difficult experiences with angst influence his training now.

“I remember a Mexican, Eder Sánchez, said to me at the Olympics in the call room, ‘Rob. You nervous?’ I came back, ‘are you not nervous boy? At the Olympic games? If you are not nervous now there is something wrong with you!’ Nerves are good as long as long they don’t cripple you.

“Eventually I used to love the crowd. In London for example, I knew it would be massive. So it was zone out and don’t use it for the majority of the race and then pay attention at the end to get you through. Use it as motivation. I loved that. Showing off my event, race walking at the highest level.

“My heart rate for the last 10km in the 50km race was as high as it would be in the 20km. I was closing, closing. I remember people kept saying if there was another lap you would’ve caught them. No. If there was another lap I would have collapsed.

"I say this a lot to athletes or teams. If you have the work done, the crowd can be an added thing. A bonus. It’s not stressful, it is great. You earned it. It depends on how you look at it as long as you have both. You could put me on the Olympic start line right now and as much as my mindset is the same, I’d be stone-cold useless. You have to enjoy it while you are good as well.” 

*Rob Heffernan was speaking at the launch of the 2024 Mazars Steps Team Challenge. Companies, clubs and organisations in Cork can take part in teams of four on the Challenge App. It runs from January 15 to February 11, 2024.