The Big Interview: A second start for Newbridge sprinter Karen Shinkins after Sydney 2000

Karen Shinkins was amongst 64 Irish athletes that competed at the 2000 Sydney Olympics — and all but one came home without a medal.

Demonstrating why she was chosen as flag bearer Sonia O’Sullivan picked up a silver in the 5,000 metres. However, it wasn’t the underperformance of herself or Team Ireland that left a bitter taste in the mouth for Karen.

“I was stunned by the politics that went into it. To be representing your country at an Olympic level and to not feel as important as the team of suits that came with you was tough. Wondering do we as athletes matter here or are we just someone’s ticket to a big party,” Karen explained.

The absence of basics like not being able to access passes to get on the coach to go to the training track added fuel to the discontentment within the group.

“We all felt it within the camp. I mean some of the issues we faced as athletes should never have happened. People telling you how your day should go when they are not part of the journey up to that point. They wanted to flex their muscles of control and tell you how it’s going to go down. It was just disappointing and it’s just not what I thought the Olympics was going to be about,” Karen described.

“There is just this whole other world behind what you see on the track. I walked away from it all shook, to be honest. I hate to burst people’s bubbles and most of the time when they say, ‘that must have been amazing’ I just smile and nod.”

Drastic changes

The pain of this experience led Karen to make drastic changes in her life. Upon returning home, Karen and Team Ireland were faced with committee meetings to address the problems from the Games. But the damage had been done and the sprinter had no further interest in dwelling on the summer in Sydney.

“They held meetings to go over the experience again so that they could change policy for the future, that never happened. It was them going through the motions of pretending they were going to do better going forward because the Irish team had performed abysmally out there. I just genuinely felt that they didn’t care, and I needed to go somewhere to make myself the priority, so that’s what I did,” she said.

Karen moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and two years on from the disappointment down under she claimed a bronze medal at the European Indoor Championships 400m final and a much-needed boost to her confidence.

“The result of being surrounded by like-minded people who were driving each other and completely professional was bronze in Vienna and being the first sprinter to medal for the country. It was great because I had the world’s fastest time that year going into that and that was a new pressure of being expected to medal,” Karen described.

Loss of confidence

“My confidence was kicked after Sydney. I was shaken by the sport and the experience around it that I’d had. I felt if I was going to be more than that experience, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands and that’s why I moved to America. The result in Vienna justified my decision, it was a massive moment of pride for me.”

Karen has remained in Georgia to this day, now accompanied by two kids and husband Paul Doyle.

Despite now calling Atlanta home, life in the States wasn’t always smooth sailing for the Newbridge-born sprinter.

In 2005, Karen called it a day on her running career, but she was ill-prepared for her life coming off the track.

Olympic runner Karen Shinkins, pictured with her parents, Christine and the late TJ, at a Newbridge Community Games 40th anniversary celebration in 2014

Dark times

“That time after retirement was dark. You’re not ready for it; you think it’s going to be okay and it’s just not. There were way more highs than there were lows in my athletic career but the transition out of it was extremely tough,” Karen, who holds a degree in Business Studies from WIT, explained.

“I was naive when I went job hunting. I thought I was going to go into interviews, and they would be dazzled by my stories of the Olympics. When the first one happened, and the guy didn’t care I just assumed he wasn't a sports fan but none of them cared. Their only concern was this 10-year gap in my CV from my graduation to now.”

Karen’s move to America had earned her redemption on the track but she was now faced with the task of starting a whole new life away from running.

“Countless interviews went by, and I was just slowly falling into a depression. I would never have admitted it at the time but there is a lot of ego involved with being an athlete because you must believe you’re the priority, it’s very self-absorbed. Then you step into the real world where people don’t care,” she described.

“I loved the biographies of athletes, I read so much about how they fell into alcohol and drugs. I was always very judgemental of them thinking, ‘how you could let yourself turn into a mess like that after all that work you put in?’

“But then when I was living it, I completely see how that would happen. You have gone from someone who is seen as a big priority in your bubble, and you are now watching that world you were in move on without you.”

Watershed

There was a watershed moment for the sprinter, something had to change if her life was going to get back on course. The three months of no diet plan and lack of routine post-retirement were not who she was, and it was time to get going again.

“I took a job in a restaurant just to give me a reason to get up in the mornings. After four years of college and being at an Olympics I could have allowed myself to feel as if I was better than being a hostess, but I needed structure and to see it as a stepping stone to better things,” Karen explained.

Karen moved from the restaurant business into banking, and it would prove to be a stepping stone.

But the structured 9-5 lifestyle wasn’t for her, and she soon fell back into an old hobby that would prove to be her future.

“I always loved photography and I remember filling out my CAO looking at it, but I was thinking there is no way the parents will go for that. Fast forward, then I started an evening class and began asking photographers on Instagram that I liked, could I shadow them on shoots.

“It has snowballed from there to now being a full-time wedding photographer,” Karen said.

It’s been an incredible journey for Karen going from the Olympics in Sydney to life in Atlanta, but it all started with a trip to Newbridge Athletic Club with her big brother.

Karen Shinkins pictured after the Women's 400m semi-final at the 2005 IAAF World Athletic Championships, in Helsinki, Finland. Picture; Pat Murphy / SPORTSFILE

Early start

“I started running at seven years old. My brother had joined the local athletics club and I just tagged along like the annoying little sister I was, trying to do whatever he was doing,” Karen explained.

“A couple of weeks later there was a county athletics meet, and I ran the under eights 60m and 80m and won them both and from there I got the taste for it, not just the running but the thrill of winning and competition and it all kicked off from there.”

That taste for competition would ignite Karen’s love for athletics and her motivation to take her talent as far as she could.

Priorities

“There was no moment of change from hobby to career, but you know how hectic secondary school (at the Holy Family in Newbridge) is, so I had to prioritise something. I chose athletics. At around 15 I started to show promise, I was running shorter distances at that time but at national level I was making consistent finals,” she described.

“In the athletics clubs at the time, there was never much hope because Ireland didn’t produce sprinters. There was an attitude of, how far you are going to really go as an Irish sprinter? Kind of an ‘ah sure just leave her off’ kind of attitude.”

Karen’s persistence through the doubts of others would allow her running to take her all over the world. Her career path never seemed to go how she would have planned it.

But as she described all the ups and downs sitting in her back garden in the Georgia sunshine, there was a great sense that it all worked out in the end.