Another Past Pupil To reach The Olympics!

Skiing is easy. Just turn left, then right, then left again and so on; simple. 

Now try doing this at 150km/h for 5km with a vertical drop of over 1 kilometre, usually two steep changes in terrain - jumps, in -6 degrees wearing a 2mm skin tight leotard (naked essentially) with G forces of up to 3G (an average person greys out at 4G) for up to 3 minutes on bumpy sheet ice! Still easy? 

Now try competing at the highest level in that sport coming from a country with no snow!

Well these are only some of the challenges that 2010 past pupil, Patrick McMillan, faced on his road to these 2018 Winter Olympic games in PyeongChang. Patrick's life had taken a few turns before he even hit the snow. Originally from Letterkenny, Co. Donegal Patrick came to KH, played rugby and also competed in the 4x110m relay team with fellow Summer Olympian and past pupil, Séye Ogunlewe, taking the 2010 Irish School's National Championship. This natural athlete then joined the Leinster U-19 squad training with Tadhg Furlong and Jack Conan only to find out that, through a clerical error, he was a couple of months too old to join the team. 

After KH Patrick went to DIT to study construction management. However, Patrick's drive to compete drove him to take another turn in his life, leaving DIT in 2012 and move to Austria to pursue his other sporting passion, skiing, as a profession alpine racer. Patrick chose to compete in arguably two of the physically toughest winter alpine disciplines, Downhill and superG. Downhill is the Formula 1 of the Alpine races; the 100m Summer Olympics sprint event of the Winter Olympic schedule. It's a test of technique, courage, speed, risk, physical condition and judgement. The downhill course requires the athlete to adapt to the technically demanding terrain and layout of the gates.

Patrick started his training, five years ago, in the Bennie Raich Centre in Pitzal with a tough first season breaking his wrist and leaving him with a back injury. With unwavering determination, by Patrick’s third season he was training with a new coach Hans Frick in Flattach on the Mölltal glacier in Austria and made the top 500 in the FIS world ranking with is no mean feat considering that his fellow competitors have been skiing and racing competitively throughout their school years. During the 2015/16 season Patrick competed in the European and World Cup Races and represented Ireland at the Alpine World Championships in Colorado. Following these races Patrick was ranked at 445 in the FIS rankings giving him automatic qualification to these 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. 

After a great 15th place in the Czech National Downhill Championships and a strong performance in the FIS Cortina d Ampezzo race in January Patrick is ranked 338 coming into this Winter Olympics. 

Patrick course times have been improving across his three training sessions in PyeongChang. In his first couple of runs, Blue Dragon, a start drop followed by a compression was causing him some problems, but this tough competitor fought to keep his balance and financed all three sessions about 8 seconds down on the sessions leaders. This has placed Patrick in a very respectable 50th place in the starting gates. Due to the poor weather conditions in PyeongChang at the moment all of the training sessions were on a shorter course, approximately half the full distance. Patrick’s first race was due to take place on Sunday, however, high winds forced a postponement until Thursday. Patrick is also competing in the SuperG which has also been moved to Friday.

It is a fantastic achievement for anyone to reach the Olympics and particularly the Winter Olympics considering these are not natural sports for us. We are very proud of our past pupil to be only the second Irish person to compete for Ireland in the Olympic Downhill. 

Keep an eye on Patrick’s results on the KHPPU Facebook page.

 Past Pupils Patrick McMillan, Apline Downhill and SuperG Skier and Leo Varadkar, an Taoiseach.