Wilf O'Reilly

Wilf O'Reilly
Full name	Wilfred John O'Reilly
nation	United Kingdom
birthday	22nd August 1964
place of birth	Birmingham
size	172 cm
Weight	65 kg
Career
society	Birmingham mohawks
status	resigned
End of career	1996
Medal table
Olympic medals 2 × 0 × 0 × World Cup medals 1 × 1 × 0 ×
winter Olympics gold Calgary 1988 500 m gold Calgary 1988 1000 m  Short track world championships silver Amsterdam 1990 All-round gold Sydney 1991 All-round
last change: December 25, 2009

Wilfred John O'Reilly (born August 22, 1964 in Birmingham ) is a former British short tracker .

O'Reilly was Britain's most successful short tracker in the 1980s and won two Olympic gold medals over 500 and 1000 meters in 1988 when short track was an Olympic demonstration sport. Three years later he was the only British so far to become world champion. After two more Olympic Games, in which he remained medalless, he was a Dutch coach until 2001.

Career

O'Reilly is of Irish West Indian descent and grew up in Great Britain, a country where winter sports are not a major factor. However, since he was six years old, he had been practicing ice sports. After initially starting figure skating, he switched to speed skating at the age of 13 . In retrospect, he explained that the entire sports career of his youth had developed, there had been no decisive turning point. When O'Reilly finished school, he first worked as a groundsman for the English football clubs Aston Villa and Birmingham City before his future manager Bob Copeman discovered him. Copeman brought the now 18-year-old to the short track, the Briton quickly developed into the best athlete in his country and became British Champion seven times in a row from 1982 onwards. In 1988 he traveled to the Winter Olympics in Calgary , where short track with five races was part of the competitions for the first time as a demonstration sport . On the two shortest distances, the 500 meters and the 1000 meters, the Briton won gold and thus secured his nation the only medals in the entire Olympic Games, even though they were considered unofficial as the short track was just a demonstration competition.

O'Reilly's victory at the Olympics greatly increased his popularity and that of his sport as a result. The media described him as "the only British ice skater that the majority of his compatriots have heard of". In addition, the Briton found many new sponsors, but at the same time the expectations of his supporters increased, who expected further successes. To achieve this, he and his manager Copeman developed training plans specially tailored to short-track using a computer program so that O'Reilly got to the best possible physical level. However, his thighs gained so much in thickness that they restricted the athlete's mobility in 1990. Apart from this problem, the 1990/91 season was again very successful for O'Reilly. After winning the silver medal at the World Championships in Amsterdam a year earlier , he defeated all competitors at the 1991 World Championships in Sydney and became the first British short track world champion. In addition, he achieved the title at the national championships for the ninth and final time this winter. In the period after that, younger athletes ousted the now 26-year-old, especially Nicky Gooch , who was eight years younger . At the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville , short track was an Olympic discipline for the first time. O'Reilly participated as defending champion and reigning world champion, but missed another medal both over 1000 meters and with the relay. Nevertheless, with the victory in the B final on the individual route and the associated fifth overall place, he was still the best athlete in his country.

At the end of 1993, O'Reilly's fiancée, the Dutch short tracker Monique Velzeboer , had a serious accident during training. In a collision with a barrier, she broke both wrists and neck and remained paralyzed from then on. After the accident, the results of the short tracker worsened because "the head no longer played along". Nevertheless, he started in 1994 at his third Olympic Winter Games in Lillehammer . As a goal, he again issued a medal, he would not travel to the games just to be in town and take part. In his first competition over the 1000 meters, however, the 29-year-old clearly missed this goal; as 22nd he was placed 15 ranks behind his compatriot Gooch. He also missed a medal in the 500 meter competition: in a collision at the start with the Australian Steven Bradbury , O'Reilly's left skate was ruined, and he was unable to compete in the following restart. Protests by the British team were unsuccessful and the short tracker was ultimately placed 27th. Nicky Gooch finished the same race in third place, winning one of three British medals at these games. A few weeks after the Olympics ended, O'Reilly said that in retrospect he would have preferred not to take part in the Olympics, but that it was "a step back to normal". Similar to the athlete Linford Christie , who became Olympic champion at the age of 32, the short tracker also wanted to compete in the 1998 Olympic Games, even though he would have been one of the oldest athletes at 33. After all, after two unsuccessful years, he ended his active career in 1996.

Following the end of his career, O'Reilly coached the Dutch national team and led them to the 1998 Olympic Games, where Dave Versteeg finished sixth as the best individual result. In 2000, the coach's two Olympic gold medals from 1988 and the world championship gold medal from 1991 were stolen when his house was broken into. Half a year later construction workers found the medals when they were dredging a river bed near Breda . As a curiosity, the news reached international attention in December 2000. In October 2001, the Canadian Yves Nadeau O'Reilly replaced as Dutch national coach. Since June 2002 he has been a member of the four-member ISU Short Track Speed ​​Skating World Cup Management Commission .

Awards

• Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), for services to sport, June 1997

Web links

• Stephen Brenkley: O'Reilly seeks break in the cloud on independent.co.uk. Published February 6, 1994 in The Independent .
• Wilf O'Reilly in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Short Track - Olympic History
2. ↑ Shorttrack in Great Britain ( Memento of the original from May 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ^ ^{A b c} O'Reilly seeks break in the cloud: Stephen Brenkley meets the Olympian, whose ideal survives a terrible ordeal
4. ^ Winter Olympics / Speed ​​Skating: Anguish again for unlucky O'Reilly
5. ↑ Speed ​​Skating: O'Reilly faces up to a conspiracy of the Fates: The world of Britain's former champion has turned sour but he is not giving up. Jon Culley reports
6. ↑ 100 Great Sporting Midlanders; Worthy champions of the Midlands, each and every single one
7. ↑ Stolen medals dredged in the mud  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Baggeraars find Olympic medals
9. ↑ PACKSTYLE.DE'S SHORTTRACK NEWSLETTER ( Memento of the original from August 1, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
10. ↑ Communication No. 1168 ( Memento of the original from September 7, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 26 kB)