The childhood dream was to follow in Sonia O’Sullivan’s footsteps and represent Ireland on the athletics track at the Olympic Games.

It’s taken some time, and a sidestep away from competing into officiating, but Wexford native Michelle O’Neill will get to taste that Olympic experience this month, after some last-minute packing today before a flight to Tokyo tomorrow.

O’Neill had already made her mark on a big stage when she was part of the refereeing team for the 2019 Women’s World Cup final, and now she’s the first Irish native to officiate at the football section of the Olympics, part of a 99-strong refereeing team but one of only eight female assistant referees selected from Europe.

“To be the first Irish representative to go out to an Olympic Games is a huge honour,” says O’Neill, who admits to effectively being ‘in camp’ since she was selected three months ago.

“It is going to bring joy and hope to the world to be able watch the Games, and for them to go ahead and that’s why we are super alert around the whole Covid guidelines. But we will take them out of our mind and concentrate on officiating the best teams in the world at the highest stage: the Olympic Games.

“I totally went into base camp for myself individually. That’s how I went into preparation and any correspondence around the Olympic Games was all from my Covid liaison officer in Japan and that’s all I focused on because I have to get a lot of testing, a lot of vaccinations, everything around it.”

Football has been driving her career for over a decade, when she quit her soccer playing career to focus on refereeing but her own dreams involved the five rings.

“My first sport was athletics, running around, watching Sonia O’Sullivan on TV, going ‘I want to be there one day’. I always wanted to be at an Olympics, representing Ireland,” she says.

“Obviously I didn’t know what sport back then as you are only seven, but you go on and whatever pathways and opportunities bring you, you dedicate your all to it and your hard work, it proves to me that you have a dream as a kid and you never give up on it, no matter what path opens for you, you put your heart and soul into it and now I am on the eve of my Olympics dream.”