Transplant athletes welcomed home

EOIN BURKE-KENNEDY | Irish Times

AIRPORT ARRIVAL halls can be emotional places at the best of times. But you’d be hard pushed to witness more moving scenes than those at Dublin airport yesterday when Ireland’s transplant athletes returned home from the World Transplant Games in Sweden.

Most had triumphed against unimaginable adversity just to attend the event and it showed, not only on their faces but in the tears and hugs that greeted them as they spilled out into the arrivals hall shortly after midday.

The Irish team of 33 athletes, ranging in age from nine to 70, took home an impressive 36 medals and a new world record in the long jump. The athletes were among 1,100 competitors from 54 countries who participated in the biennial event which was held this year in Gothenburg.

Perhaps the star of the show was nine-year-old Oisín O’Gorman from Waterford, who bagged three gold medals and a silver on his way to becoming the youngest ever Irish transplant athlete to win gold. “It just feels great to come back with a load of medals,” he said.

His father Kieran, who donated a kidney to him two years ago after he had suffered kidney lacerations in a bicycle accident, said: “It’s not about medals, it’s about friendship and creating awareness around transplantation.”

John Moran (52), a kidney transplant recipient from Glasnevin, Dublin, achieved the team’s biggest medal haul, winning two gold and three silver medals from five cycling and track events. “It’s great to go and meet other people in the same boat, so to speak, and to see how fit they can be.”

Robbie Lyons, a 17-year-old kidney transplant recipient from Co Laois, won a gold and two silver medals, smashing the world long jump record for his age category, with a 5.30m leap. Taking only silver in the 100m metres still needled him, however. “I just got beaten by 0.06 of a second. I wish I could do it again,” he said.

Amid the melee of hugs and photographs stood Beaumont transplant surgeon David Hickey, who had come to salute the team’s achievements. Dr Hickey, who had taken part in a transplant operation that morning, said: “The games seem to breathe new life and ambition into patients, and they serve as a great promotion for organ donation.”

While the number of organs donated this year was up on 2010, the five-year figures have remained largely static, he said, and “the numbers going on dialysis is going up all the time”.

As he spoke to reporters, one woman pointed at him, saying: “You’re a miracle worker, you know that!” The woman was Ann Marie Reynolds from Tallaght whose son James (24) had a life-saving transplant operation performed by Dr Hickey.