We’re in one of the smartly renovated outhouses in a courtyard adjacent to Abbotstown House and Dr Una May shows me into her office and the command centre of Irish sport.
The first thing May does is apologise for the heaps of material spread across her desk. In fact it’s perfectly orderly: strategy and policy documents, anti-doping and high-performance reports, participation plans and core funding, all neatly branded under the Sport Ireland logo. Hers is an extremely wide remit and role.
May is almost a year into it, taking over last January as chief executive of Sport Ireland from John Treacy, who had been here since the beginning when, in 1999, the then Irish Sports Council became the first statutory body for sport in this country – a much wanted one too.
Only May has been here since the beginning too, joining the Sports Council as a development officer as it morphed out of Cospoir, set up by Jim Tunney in the late 1970s. Things were changing fast, which is partly why within her first year at the Sports Council she took charge of the first anti-doping programme in this country.
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Sport has been her life from the beginning too, raised in a sporting family, later marrying into one. The second youngest of five children, she grew up in Tibradden, in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, and is modest when describing her competitive sporting days as “high-ish performance”, because as Una Creagh she made a name for herself as Irish champion orienteer and hill runner, mixing it with some of the best on the world and European stages.
Much of that period was spent living in Liverpool. After completing her Leaving Cert in Coláiste Íosagáin, in 1988, she attended John Moores University, then a pioneering institute in sports science, where she later completed a PhD in exercise physiology.
“You do reflect a little,” she says, when asked how opportunities in Irish sport compare then to now. “Especially when you work around things like participation for teenage girls. I always envied the girls who were allowed play football with the boys, in primary school. Okay, I was really bad with the ball, the boys wouldn’t let me play.
“In secondary school, again it was mostly team sports, and I just wasn’t very good. Then I was introduced to orienteering, and hill running, that became much more of a thing. But I was very lucky, I had one teacher who was interested in orienteering, it just moved on from there. My parents had done some orienteering as well, years before, were still involved, and from the very first day I did it, I just loved it.”
As it turned out so did her future husband, Justin May, who she met through the sport, and would have known anyway given he was brought up on the other side of the Dublin Mountains, at Ticknock.
“His whole family were into the sport, including his sister Carey May, of course a very accomplished runner too, a pioneer in Irish women’s marathon running really. So you’re exposed to that early on as well, and then as a sports scientist, a lot of the research was around marginal gains, of sorts, Tom Reilly was a pioneer in the field, and it was about accessing cutting edge knowledge, and then applying the knowledge.”
The family home now is Celbridge, Co Kildare, their three children all active in sport from an early age, the eldest two Cian (22) and Caoimhe (19) both finding their way into elite competitive cycling. Not that they were ever pushed too hard into any sport.
“Of course we were very conscious of that too, both of us being international athletes,” says May. “I actually remember thinking, way back, imagine it turns out they’re not into sport. But no, from a very young age they were doing activities with us, came orienteering with us, cycling with us, hill walking, all sorts of things. We had the camper van and would head off on holiday, always an active holiday.
“All you can do is encourage them, make it easier for them, but ultimately it has to come from them. And all along we’ve tried to make sure they had coaches who weren’t us. It’s been great to watch them grow up around sport, and again they would have tried everything, including team sports, before drifting back into individual sports.
“With my daughter, I was also very conscious that while keeping things at arm’s length, I also wanted to make sure she got the opportunities. They all came back to cycling, because it’s what they enjoy, but they’ve tried a whole broad range of sports.”
Leading the Irish anti-doping programme happened by accident and design: in 1998, the Michelle de Bruin case had Irish people wondering for the first time could they really believe everything, even if other sports like cycling and athletics were already open to that question.
“Because I was the scientist in the group, that became my baby, and I loved it, absolutely embraced it. The first thing we had to establish was a set of rules, for all the governing bodies.
“It suited me, I remember in college, before I had any idea I was going to end up in anti-doping, we did a lab project around the Diana Modahl case [the British runner, who successfully appealed a doping ban on the basis of a mishandled sample] and how a doping sample could degrade in warm temperatures, if it wasn’t looked after. And if it did degrade, you could test positive.
“I realised then it was very, very important to get these things right, because you could ruin a person’s career, their life, if you get it wrong. So I was always committed to making sure we had the highest possible standard. Integrity was always a big thing for me, from day one. And if you do it right, it is expensive, and we believe it is worth spending the money to make sure it’s done right.”
I know we won’t catch everyone, but it’s a pretty robust programme, and if someone does want to dope in Ireland, they’re taking a pretty big risk
Days before we meet, the latest anti-doping review revealed that of 1,354 anti-doping tests carried out by Sport Ireland in 2021, across 28 different sports, there was a single violation reported resulting in a three-month ban. The prohibited substance in question was cocaine. The cost of the anti-doping programme in 2021 was €1,856,151. Whether or not that’s value for money, is it reflective of the doping situation in Irish sport?
“As we’ve always said it’s our insurance policy, to protect everything else we put into sport. In the early years we had a lot more cases. Cathal Lombard was a sort of landmark case, he put the hands up, but the then health products regulatory authority, they advised us, so we were working together for the first time
“I don’t think it’s in our culture, we have a pretty strong ethos, sport is such an important part of Irish society. It’s very hard to hide, and the consequences are so high. I know we won’t catch everyone, but it’s a pretty robust programme, and if someone does want to dope in Ireland, they’re taking a pretty big risk.”
Abbotstown House, in the process of being smartly renovated, will soon be a more focal part of the Sport Ireland Campus. The master plan for the next 15-20 years is to open more of the new and existing facilities to the public, and with that make it the home not just for high-performance Irish sport, but all Irish sport.
“I wish it could happen quicker, but I’ve had to learn to be very patient, around the construction industry. The velodrome for example has been years in the making, but we need to do it right as well. We’re a small country, but we are building something very special here.
“Participation is something we can always work on, to make people more aware of what’s out there, because there is something for everyone. No matter what they’re interest or skill or talent. And we have grown the whole area of inclusion, and diversity.
“We also have to challenge the governing bodies of sport, to see the value of their sport, beyond just serving their members. The local sports partnerships, when we established them, that was key in reaching out to people who maybe were active already. And I’m a huge believer in collaboration, and partnership, in achieving that.”
May’s first year as chief executive has coincided with another bumper year for Irish women’s sport, and still there’s plenty more work to be done on that front too.
“You see the success now, even more so when you see the range of sports, boxing, athletics, golf, the women’s team sports now, we’re seeing as much, or even more now, than the men’s side.
“Nora Stapleton has been a powerhouse of energy, as the women in sport lead, building a network of women in sport officers in all the NGB’s.
“One thing I’m strong on as well is that everything we do needs to be evidence-based, so we do a lot of research, not just counting numbers, but looking for insights, asking people why they’re doing what they’re doing, or why not.
“We were progressing very well in terms of gender balance in participation, the pandemic knocked that back a bit. There are so many different reasons for that. When we developed the women in sport policy we also identified a few key areas, visibility was one.
“That’s improved, but there’s still a long way to go, including media coverage of women’s sports. Leadership is one thing, and coaching and officiating. Initially we’re looking at board membership, that target of 40 per cent women by the end of next year, we’re getting there. Some will struggle more than others.
“Coaching is another one, because at the moment in high performance there are significantly more men than women in high performance roles. But for the first time ever we probably have a female manager, Vera Pauw, who is right up there at the forefront of everyone’s mind as one of the top managers in Irish sport.
“I feel there is still so much more we can do to improve everybody’s experience of sport, from the very grassroots to high performance, to people with disabilities and different ethnic backgrounds. We’re fortunate too that as the State agency for sport, there’s a sort of attraction in that in itself, and we’re blessed by having so many fantastic people working for us, with a passion and knowledge for sport.”
