Winter Olympics: Meet Ireland's six athletes ready to compete in Beijing
- Published
Seamus O'Connor was Ireland's flag bearer in Pyeongchang four years ago
Thirteen and a half years ago 54 Irish athletes competed at the Beijing Olympics.
Three boxers - Kenny Egan, Darren Sutherland and Paddy Barnes - returned home from a truly memorable games with medals around their necks.
Now in 2022, it is the turn of the Winter Olympics with Beijing playing host once more.
Ireland's contingent for these Games is nine times smaller than the 2008 squad - but each competitor will carry the same Olympic dream into the Bird's Nest stadium at Friday's opening ceremony.
Jack Gower & Tess Arbez - alpine skiing
Jack Gower will be the first Irish athlete to begin his Beijing 2022 campaign in the downhill alpine skiing in the early hours of Sunday, 6 February.
Having switched allegiances from Great Britain last year, the 27-year-old will represent Ireland across five alpine skiing disciplines at the Games.
A junior giant slalom world title winner, Gower's best event is the super giant slalom - known as the super-G - having previously been ranked inside the world's top 40.
The Gower family already boasts considerable sporting pedigree with former England cricket captain David a cousin of Jack's father.
Alpine skier Tess Arbez will compete in her second Winter Olympics
Gower is not alone in representing Ireland in alpine skiing, with 24-year-old Tess Arbez returning for her second Winter Olympics.
Arbez became just the sixth woman to represent Ireland at a winter Games when she recorded top-50 finishes in the slalom and giant slalom in Pyeongchang.
This year she is primed to make yet more history as the first Irishwoman to race Olympic super-G on 11 February, the last of her three events.
Having recorded her best international event - 38th in the giant slalom at the World Championships - a year ago, Arbez is out to better her results from four years ago.
Bubba Newby - freestyle skiing
Another Winter Olympian returning for a second Games is freestyle halfpipe skier Brendan 'Bubba' Newby.
Newby's event only made its Olympic debut at Sochi 2014, and four years later in Pyeongchang the then 21-year-old was among the field for the halfpipe.
At the halfway stage of the 2018 competition Newby sat 13th thanks to an impressive first run, only for a fall during his second seeing him drop to 22nd.
Raised in Utah - host of the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City - Newby was born in Cork, where his parents lived for two years while his father taught economics at University College Cork.
The 25-year-old faces the longest wait of any Irish athlete in Beijing with halfpipe qualification on 17 February.
Bubba Newby will be Ireland's joint flag bearer alongside Elsa Desmond at Friday's opening ceremony
Seamus O'Connor - snowboard
At just 24, Seamus O'Connor is a relative Winter Olympic veteran as he prepares to compete at his third Games.
The halfpipe snowboarder was the event's youngest competitor in Sochi where he finished a creditable 15th in the halfpipe and 17th in slopestyle.
Four years later Californian O'Connor - whose paternal grandparents hail from Drogheda and Dublin - shook off a knee injury that robbed him of a full season to return in time for Pyeongchang where he finished 18th in the halfpipe.
O'Connor reached his third Games in spite of the halfpipe field being narrowed to just 22 with competition hotter than ever. His campaign begins with qualifying on 9 February.
Elsa Desmond - luge
Luger Elsa Desmond will become Ireland's first female Olympian to compete in the event in her first run on 7 February.
It has been a whirlwind period for the 24-year-old who has juggled her sport with a medical degree at Kings College London.
Desmond will become Ireland's first ever female luger at a Winter Olympics
Desmond trains and travels with the International Luge Association (FIL) - a group of competitors from smaller nations who fund collectively their own coaching, training and traveling.
Competing on the international Nations Cup circuit and juggling her medical career at Southend University Hospital requires meticulous planning and commitment; indeed Desmond's first shift back at the hospital is just three days after her second day of Olympic competition on 8 February, but having fought hard to make history in reaching the sport's biggest stage she is determined to make the most of the opportunity.
Thomas Maloney Westgaard - cross-country skiing
Thomas Maloney Westgaard is another Irish athlete making his Winter Olympics return having debuted in Pyeongchang.
The cross-country skier came 59th in the men's 15km freestyle four years ago out of 112 competitors.
In the interim period Irish-Norwegian Maloney Westgaard, who trains in the city of Trondheim in central Norway, moved up the world rankings and is out to improve on his 2018 result.
He will compete in three events in Beijing: 15km x 15km skiathlon (6 February), 15km classic (11 February) and 50km, which is the final event involving an Irish athlete on 19 February.
No Passion, No Point: Adam Peaty reveals what he's had to sacrifice in pursuit of Olympic gold
The truth behind 'The Purple One': Will Prince now be known as evil or genius?
