![\"Milano](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/irish-athletes-welcomed-home-from-winter-olympics.jpg\")
Ireland\u2019s Anabelle Zurbay, left, Cormac Comerford, right, and Ben Lynch, behind, arriving at Dublin Airport (Niall Carson\/PA)<\/p>\nThe four Irish athletes who competed in the Winter Olympics have been praised as they were welcomed back to Dublin.<\/p>\n
Skiers Ben Lynch, Cormac Comerford, Anabelle Zurbay, and Thomas Maloney Westgard were greeted at Dublin Airport by their families on Monday.<\/p>\n
At an event at the Department of Sport in Dublin city centre, they were praised by the staff of the Olympic Federation of Ireland and the minister for sport, Patrick O\u2019Donovan, before being presented with participation pins.<\/p>\n
Nancy Chillingworth, Ireland\u2019s chef de mission for Milano Cortina 2026, told the athletes that across all Olympics there are common themes of \u201cstrength, resilience (and) pursuit of excellence\u201d, but the Winter Olympics bring \u201cthat little bit of madness\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s Anabelle Zurbay, left, Cormac Comerford, right, and Ben Lynch, behind, arriving at Dublin Airport (Niall Carson\/PA)<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we absolutely love it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are all just super proud of you, and thank you so much for making our job of supporting you very easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zurbay, 17, said it was scary to be competing next to the giants of Alpine skiing but advised people to \u201cjust have fun and see what happens\u201d, while 30-year-old Westgard, who has relatives in Galway but lives in Norway, said competing in the Milano Cortina Olympics was \u201clike a dream\u201d.<\/p>\n
Lynch, 23, who achieved Ireland\u2019s best ever result in the Winter games after coming eighth in the Men\u2019s Freestyle Skiing Halfpipe, said reality still had not sunk in.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, it still doesn\u2019t feel real. It\u2019s a surreal experience for me still, but I\u2019m just so happy that I was able to land that run,\u201d he said on Monday.<\/p>\n
His father, Kevin, a rower from Dublin who has lived in Canada for almost 20 years, said the amount of time his son spends training \u201cwould put an international rower to shame\u201d and said the competitions are \u201cparticularly brutal\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave me a hug after his first run, and he got his score, which was 13th, and it\u2019s the top 12 to make the final. And as he hugged me, he said \u2018Dad, that was my best one ever. What am I going to do now?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Do your best\u2019. So he did.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Milano](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771888873_312_irish-athletes-welcomed-home-from-winter-olympics.jpg\")
Anabelle Zurbay is welcomed home (Niall Carson\/PA)<\/p>\n
Comerford, 29, from Dublin, who competed in several Alpine skiing events including the Giant Slalom and the Super-G, said his mother Anna taken him to try out skiing for the first time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were up in my auntie\u2019s house in Kilternan close to the ski club. They mentioned that there was an open day on so my mum brought us up, we had a look.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were some family friends that convinced us put on some long sleeves, long trousers, and go have a lesson. From that moment on, I was obsessed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just love the feeling of going downhill, putting the skis on edge, the flow, the freedom that you have when you\u2019re skiing downhill. There\u2019s nothing like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He described the feeling at the top of the hill before competing in competition as \u201ca mix of emotions\u201d \u2013 of being nervous, excited and determined.<\/p>\n
Asked by the Press Association what he would say to Irish children who are interested in taking up a winter sport, he said: \u201cDare to dream.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t doubt yourself. If you have a belief, if you have a vision, then trust your gut.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to take yourself to the next level, just dream big because anything is possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came from the small slope of Kilternan, and then I had a vision, I had a dream to compete at the Olympics and be a great skier, and I\u2019m really proud that I have the self belief and the determination to pull through.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, for any kids listening: dare to dream. It\u2019s worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The four Irish athletes who competed in the Winter Olympics have been praised as they were welcomed back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-313751","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}