The opening sequence would do the new James Bond movie proud, as first Ciara Mageean, then Michael Darragh MacAuley, skydive from a small aircraft, screaming hysterically, and begin their rapid free fall somewhere over the coast of Costa Rica.
If this sheer adrenaline rush is the ultimate reminder of living in the moment, it deftly sets up episode two of Uncharted with Ray Goggins (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm). Especially knowing what Mageean has already been through over the last year, and, it turns out, some uncharted territory for MacAuley too.
“I haven’t felt that rush since my last race,” says Mageean, one of those being the European 1,500m title she won in June 2024.
“Eighty thousand people shouting at you in the dying minutes of a game, that is comparable to jumping out of a plane,” adds MacAuley, who won eight All-Ireland football titles with Dublin.
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Goggins, a former special forces soldier, has a weighty reputation for taking people out of their comfort zone, and their six-day, 250km coast-to-coast journey across Costa Rica – biking, hiking and kayaking – becomes an increasingly arduous ordeal. One month’s rainfall in two days helps make sure of that.
“They’re doing this for their own reasons, and we’ll figure out during that week what that is, the real why,” says Goggins, hinting at what is to come.
Because for Mageean, Uncharted also provides some heartfelt reflection on her cancer diagnosis, at 33, this time last year. Even knowing this, and the resilience she’s always displayed as an athlete, it’s no less of an emotionally jarring moment, when on the second morning in, she talks openly about her experience so far.
“I do joke, I don’t look like I have cancer,” says Mageean, perfectly comfortable in her own humour despite holding back the tears. “Initially, with the diagnosis, you think, ‘Oh my God, am I going to die?’ Me and the girls always had plans of our big 40th birthday, and I’m like, ‘Will I be there to celebrate that 40th birthday with my friends?’
“I feel like it’s nearly easier being the person who has the illness. That going to treatment is in my control. How I cope with that post-chemo slump is on me, and I know I will make it through. But it’s my partner, Tommy, he has to see me feel sick. Or my parents, whose little girl is ill, and they can’t do anything about it.”
With that, MacAuley soon chips in with similar humour and empathy: “I reckon cancer is just like the two Brits on the last lap of the Europeans to you. Just smash through them, get through the line, you’ll be home and hosed.”
Mageean and MacAuley are sweetly matched in every sense, Mageean later telling him, during one particularly brutal climb on the bike: “Never mind cancer killing me, this f**king hill will.”
On day four, MacAuley speaks of the pulmonary fibrosis that took the life of his father back in 2012 despite three lung transplants: “So there’s about a 50 per cent chance genetically of me having it as well. I don’t know what’s down the track for myself either at the moment, if I’m being honest.”
He adds: “In some ways, the fear of death kind of brings us alive”.
Uncharted was shot at the end of January, weeks after Mageean had completed several more rounds of chemotherapy. Next month, she’ll publish her book, My Greatest Race, which we can expect to feature this same searing honesty.
“I’d put off having a family for so long because I always wanted to focus on my sport,” she says. “And now I’m in this position, I’m like, ‘Well, I probably won’t ever have a family of my own’. I could adopt, but I don’t even know if I will get to.
“What I wanted to achieve from this journey was to be reminded of the Ciara I was before cancer became a thing for me, and it did. Every challenge was tough, but I knew that I could keep going because I’m not going to stop in the middle of a tough climb and say, ‘That’s it, I give up’ ... I’m not going to do that. That’s not the person I am.
“I don’t know when the end of the journey will come, but I know that sure as hell I’m going to enjoy every path along the way.”
As compelling as any 50 minutes of television you’ll see all year, and a reminder perhaps that all our lives are uncharted.
