People of 2016: Annalise Murphy, Olympic silver medallist

A year in the life of Annalise Murphy. No one marvels more than the Olympic medallist at the contrast between the first seven months of the year and the period since August 16th, the day she won silver in the Laser Radial sailing event at Rio Olympics.

How much has life changed since then?

She laughs, not sure where to start.

But there was that time she went to the local supermarket to shop for dinner. “I’d just done a 16-kilometre run. I didn’t look great. I was pretty red-faced and sweaty looking. And then a girl came up to me and asked could she have a selfie. I was absolutely mortified. I wanted to say ‘I’ll come back in an hour!’”

She didn’t, though; she obliged and smiled. The mere notion that an Irish sailor had become a target for supermarket-shoppin’ selfie-seekers a source of no little amusement – or joy.

But once she returned from Rio with that silver medal around her neck she overdid it, too reluctant to turn down invitations to sundry events and ceaseless media requests for a chat.

“It was great, but I did a lot more than I probably should have. One day I was out and I said, ‘Mum, I think I need to go home’. I think I hit my capacity. I was pretty tired for a while, I tried to go to too many things.”

In the midst of all that madness, there was little time to reflect on an achievement that didn’t just yield a medal but also reclaimed much of the self-belief Murphy had lost in a difficult build-up to Rio.

Now, finally, she has time to think it over.

“Yeah, it definitely restored a lot of the confidence I feel I lost over the last few years. I struggled for quite a while. I wasn’t racing very well, I wasn’t too sure if everyone else had got better or maybe I’d reached a certain standard and everyone had just gone beyond that and I wasn’t there any more. That doubt creeps in to your mind.

“And then I also had a lot of people telling me that Rio wasn’t going to suit me as a sailor, that I was going to struggle there, so when you get told that repeatedly it does start to affect you.”

Something special

“But the last six weeks before the Olympics I started to think that I was going to be able to do something special. I wasn’t too sure whether that was going to be finishing 10th or winning a medal, but I knew I was going to be able to do some kind of personal best performance in a light-wind venue.

“So by the time the Olympics came around I was feeling very confident, but I wasn’t telling too many people about it, just the small team of people around me.”

“And everything came together. That’s happened to me a couple of times in my life, but not very often. Things worked out. In the past they often didn’t; I was always just on the wrong side of something.

“But in Rio, I was just ahead, that half a boat length in front of someone, the difference between finishing fifth and 15th in a race. So it was a really enjoyable experience. I was having fun, I was relaxed, and I was looking forward to going racing every day. I was never afraid of what could happen, and I think that made a big difference.”

Before the medal race, though, the fear set in.

“I was terrified. Really, really terrified. I had watched my final race in London a lot of times. Watched the mistakes I’d made, where I’d gone wrong. I’d been kicking myself for the last four years. I always felt I threw away an Olympic medal in 2012 and I thought that I’d never get another chance to win one.

“In London, I was terrified of finishing fourth, but what I learnt from that is I had to see the opportunity that I had given myself, an opportunity to finish first, second, third or fourth, it just depended how I raced the last race.

“So I had to see the opportunity I had given myself and fight to win, rather than looking at it as a negative. By the time I got to the medal race in Rio I really just wanted to get it done with. I’d been waiting long enough, four years for this opportunity.”

Job done

She cut herself off through it all from the buzz back home. Focus, focus, focus. But then she started wondering if anyone was paying any attention.

“I met my brother and sister on the first rest day, we all got coconuts and walked along the beach. I was like, ‘a lot of my friends aren’t texting me, have they forgotten me’? They burst out laughing. They were ‘no, it’s okay, they’re all texting us, we’ve got a massive Whatsapp group with 200 people’. But I wasn’t included!”

She was finally admitted to the group after the medal was sealed. Job done.

“I just hope I’ve shown what’s possible and that it can be the start of something great, not just for sailing but for Irish sport in general. What we can do, what we can achieve.

“We are a great little country, we are great at sport, I don’t see why we can’t compete against the likes of New Zealand and win the kind of medals they get in the Olympics. That is possible for us, we just need to look at how to do it.”

“We never knew in sailing that we could even get a medal; we’re up against countries with ridiculous funding behind them, their sailing budget is what our entire sports budget is. So it seemed impossible to get a medal when we were up against that.

“But I think I’ve put a whole new set of beliefs in there, especially with the youth sailors. I’ve had a lot of parents coming up to me giving out because their kids now want to go to the Olympics. That’s brilliant,” she laughs.

“I’m just a normal person doing something that I love to do, that I have fun doing. It’s just mad to think that I’ve managed to get an Olympic medal and encouraged others to aim for the same.”

Any special requests for Santa?

"Just being able to spend Christmas at home is enough," says Murphy, who was named Irish Times/Sport Ireland Sportswoman of the Year on December 16th.

“Seeing all of my friends, just being able to enjoy it. It’s going to be great, spending it with the whole family, Granny in particular.

“Every Christmas for the last seven years I’ve had a pretty hectic schedule with events and competitions and training camps, sometimes I’ve only been home for two or three days and then I’m gone again. So it’ll nice to be at home and be able to eat some of my mum’s Christmas cake. Lots of mum’s Christmas cake.”

She’s earned it.