![\"Athlete](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/5114016_9_articleinline_964047_1_.jpg\" "\\"Athlete")
Athlete Ciaran O Lionaird. Pic: Pat Murphy \/ SPORTSFILE.<\/p>\nBack in 2020, when Ciar\u00e1n \u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird was plotting his course out of retirement, the Cork athlete reflected on the void he\u2019d felt in the years prior when running was no longer the sun around which his world orbited.<\/p>\n
The title of a docu-film about his journey back, Not Dead Yet, was inspired by US rock band Grateful Dead. \u201cOne thing I took away personally was how death is perceived \u2013 the idea that one is not really dead unless they\u2019re forgotten,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt lit a spark in me around my own running career: the notion that in retirement, a part of you does die, but perhaps it\u2019s not fully gone unless it\u2019s forgotten.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those words land very differently this week, ever since \u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird was found dead at a hotel in Montreal on Tuesday morning, the details of his passing still unclear. He was just 38 years old.<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird was a hell of an athlete, and one with a highly complex mind. There were layers to his personality and few got close enough to truly unearth them all. He could sit with a beer and have a laugh, chatting about the greatest footballers of the 90s, trolling friends with sharp line and cheeky smiles, then seamlessly transition into nuanced discussion about geopolitics or a Christopher Hitchens hypothesis.<\/p>\n
In the straight-laced world of athletics, he brought a certain rock-star energy \u2013 a quirky, offbeat, individualistic approach that led to him being nicknamed \u2018Mad Len\u2019. He relished being the showman, the rebel \u2013 James Dean meets Jakob Ingebrigtsen.<\/p>\n
He was first in line to laugh at himself. To not take life too seriously. But that masked a desire that seemed to spawn from somewhere darker. Even among the type-A folk in elite athletics, his drive was especially notable.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d grown up on a farm near Macroom, spending his adolescence building an intimate knowledge of the roads around Inchigeelagh. He won a rake of underage titles for West Muskerry AC before moving to Leevale AC, developing into a world-class junior under coach Der O\u2019Donovan.<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird was a gifted writer and in his teens he\u2019d post satirical stories about athletics friends on his club\u2019s message board, his command of the language and sharp wit giving them the feel, and funniness, of a Ross O\u2019Carroll-Kelly column.<\/p>\n
From a young age, he was looking stateside, firing off mails to university coaches in the US while midway through secondary school. He wanted to reach the very top and so opted for the University of Michigan, where many world-class milers were based.<\/p>\n
It went wrong for him there, \u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird spending much time injured before transferring to Florida State University. After a prolonged period of healthy training, his talent fully bloomed in 2011. He smashed his 1500m best, clocking 3:34.46 to qualify for the World Championships in South Korea.<\/p>\n
He performed remarkably there, making the 1500m final and finishing 10th. He then turned professional, moving to Portland and joining the Nike Oregon Project under coach Alberto Salazar. That also went wrong.<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird was in flying form through the indoor season that followed but the training intensity caused him to crack, an Achilles injury leaving him \u201crunning on a flat tyre\u201d at the London Olympics, where he trailed home 13th in his heat.<\/p>\n
By then he\u2019d relocated to Eugene to join British coach Mark Rowland at the Nike Oregon Track Club. He bounced back in 2013, clocking 3:52.10 to finish third in the famed Wanamaker Mile before winning European Indoor bronze in Gothenburg over 3000m.<\/p>\n
He still wasn\u2019t close to being content.<\/p>\n
By then, \u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird and I had known each other for over a decade, having been one-time rivals and friends amid the small world of Munster juvenile athletics. I went to Cork for his welcome back after that European Indoor medal and a lasting memory from the night was how uneasy he felt to be celebrating a bronze medal. To him, it felt like a failure.<\/p>\n
His beloved mother, Angela, offered him a slice of the celebratory cake. He turned it down. \u201cAh you\u2019ll have one,\u201d she insisted. \u201cA small one,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Athlete Ciaran O Lionaird. Pic: Pat Murphy \/ SPORTSFILE.<\/p>\n
That was a snapshot of \u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird the athlete. No matter what he\u2019d achieved, he wanted more.<\/p>\n
Injuries, however, fleeced him of his brilliance in the years after. In 2016, he called time on his career. Four years after that, during the pandemic, he found his way back, setting his eyes on the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics. But a bout of Covid-19 ended his racing plans in 2020 and he never made it back.<\/p>\n
Away from athletics, he built a successful career, spending several years as a product manager at Nike before working for Vizio, a manufacturer of smart TVs. He learned to DJ, played sets, got to know folk from a vastly different world. But something always pulled him back to running, an activity he was still doing in his final days.<\/p>\n
When his Olympic dream was still burning, in 2020, he spoke about his why. He was coming back for himself, of course, seeking something healthier, more fulfilling, than the paths he\u2019d gone down before. But he was also doing it for others, sharing his story, in all its fragility, knowing many would take heart from it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you see athletes who run well or play soccer well and you put them on this pedestal, it can sometimes be hard for the kid growing up to feel like it\u2019s them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do hope there would be just one [athlete] who watches it and says, \u2018I could do that. I faced some adversity, but I can do that.\u2019 That would make it worth all the hours of tedious rehab. It would have made all that anxiety and doubt worth it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird never got the chance to truly come back, and now he\u2019s left us for good \u2013 a wretched thought to come to terms with. But for those close to him, there\u2019s significant solace in knowing just how much life he packed into his 38 years.<\/p>\n
As for the idea that you\u2019re only really dead when you\u2019re forgotten? The impact he created in life means that won\u2019t be an issue. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2020, when Ciar\u00e1n \u00d3 Lion\u00e1ird was plotting his course out of retirement, the Cork athlete reflected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23713,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-493319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-irish-examiner-instagram-sport","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493319","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=493319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}