Nicola Daly has the drive and the formula for further success

Next year may, in part, rescue the disappointment of 2015 for Nicci Daly. The Irish hockey team, after the blow of near qualification for London 2012 missed out again on qualification for next year's Olympics. Therein is the silver lining.

This will be largely a down year because the games will dominate world hockey’s interest, so the Muckross player has a window to take up a position in the motor racing industry as a trainee engineer with Mazda Star.

Capped 119 times for Ireland, she will shelve the hockey stick and take off to Indianapolis to live with her uncle for five months to try to break into the motor racing industry, traditionally a male-dominated sport. Her uncle Derek is well known and raced in Formula 1 for Tyrrell and Williams among other teams and also in the Indianapolis 500 during the 1970s and 1980s.

Her late father Vivion was equally high profile in the sport and was a hugely distinguished figure in the Irish racing scene before his premature death from cancer at just 48.

The racing genes have passed on with her cousin, Derek’s son Conor, also in motor racing as a driver. Conor spent some time with F1 team Force India as a test driver and also competed in the Indy 500 in 2013. “It started when I was a kid,” she says. “We basically lived in Mondello Park every weekend. I was there because I’d be begging my dad to bring me at six o’clock in the morning. I wanted to be part of his team and I’d have a job of holding up the timing board for the lap times.

Motor sport engineering

“There was always something I was involved in. After I did my undergraduate degree I saw this course in England. It was a master’s in motor sport engineering in Cranfield. It was like, ‘I want to do that’.

“Recently it was, ‘When am I going to start my actual career?’ because I’ve put it on the back burner in terms of getting involved in motor sport as an engineer.

“I can’t do both. I’m not ready to walk away from Irish hockey and I see myself around for the next cycle. But I will try to manage that with working as well.

“So next year I’m going to take April to September to go to the States and work for a racing team as an assistant engineer. I’m looking at Star Mazda. It’s a feeder series for Indy Car. I’m starting at the lower formula with the intention of maybe going to Indy car or somewhere like that.”

It will be Ireland's loss for a short time. Her goal against South Africa in the Olympic qualifying process, the World League semifinal, is as good a goal involving pace, balance and adventure as you can see.

Full pace

In what they call 3D skills in hockey, Daly picks up the ball 25 yards out, runs around defenders, pops the ball in the air and volleys it past the Springbok goalkeeper, all at full pace.

But if there is to be another international cycle in the 27-year-old – and there is no reason why not – a career must elbow into the limited space. It’s not a traditional pathway but motor sport has been in her blood since she went kart racing as a child with her brother Barry.

Driving is what she wanted then. But her father was trying to keep his own successful driving show on the road and two additional children drivers were two too many.

“I always wanted to drive but my dad was always too busy driving himself,” she says. “It would have been fun for a while. But I don’t think it would have developed into anything too big. It’s too hard and too expensive. We just don’t have it in Ireland any more.

“It is a male-dominated sport. But I’ve met a lot of female engineers already. If you want something badly enough and you are willing to work just as hard and you are confident within yourself, I don’t think there is any reason for me to fear I can’t do the job just as well. It doesn’t really bother me.”

Next year is not devoid of international hockey. In January Ireland go for two weeks warm weather training in Spain and the team has been invited out to New Zealand in March to play in a festival of hockey with many of the competing teams going to Rio in August. It’s then to the US.

Motivational company

“Uncle Derek still does local television and he has his own motivational company and also driver development,” she says. “He’s worked very closely with me going through the Olympic qualifying, the mental skills. He helped me a lot.

“The first thing he’ll say to you: his career went from 0 to 60 in two years from F4 to F1 in 15 months.

“He’ll say to you he made every mistake you could make because his career went so quickly he never had the chance to take it all in. It was go, go, go.

"He wrote a book on it called Race to Win: How to Become a Complete Champion Driver. I'll stay with him next year."

Probably not a bad idea, for all sorts of reasons.