At key moments in her life and career, sports journalist Jacqui Hurley took a leap of faith that made all the difference. On the eve of the Paris Olympics, she tells Donal O'Donoghue about a life shaped by joy and tragedy and going for broke.
"Am I competitive?" Jacqui Hurley repeats the question, as if there might be more than one answer.
There’s not. "Ah yes, I’m competitive at everything, even board games. You know my husband Shane and I can’t be on the same team because we’re way too competitive and it can often get out of control."
In what way exactly could Scrabble degenerate into a free-for-all? But then the RTÉ sports journalist (The Sunday Game among other things) is always up for the match or the craic, living a life shaped to some degree by a family tragedy (her younger brother Sean was just 25 when he was killed in a car accident in 2011).
"What’s the point in sitting back and taking it easy?" she says now. "It’s all about taking part and having the craic. In our house, we call it 'trigger time’, making that decision and just going for it."
It’s mid-morning and Jacqui Hurley has just dropped off Luke (10) and Lily (7) to their respective summer camps. Like their mother, both are sports mad so it was no hardship getting them out the door.
"They were up since 7am wondering when they could leave," says Jacqui, which must make half the parents in the country green with envy and leave the other half wondering what’s her secret power. It’s in the genes. Hurley, who turned 40 last January, still plays Gaelic football as well as basketball (in her heyday, she played camogie for Cork and was on the national basketball squad). She also coaches Luke and Lily, the mammy on the sideline who has her own teeny supporters when she’s on the pitch alongside players 20 years her junior.
"It’s all great craic," says Jacqui, who seems to find the fun in most things.
Then there’s the day job with RTÉ TV and radio, covering all kinds of everything. Halfway through 2024 and it’s been as hectic as anticipated (during the Christmas break she maps out the year ahead) with several major sporting tournaments, including such big beasts as the European Athletics Championships, Euro 2024 and the Olympics jostling for space in the diary. Then there is the compressed GAA season with the All-Ireland Hurling and Football Finals happening on the eve of travelling to France for the Paris Games. Jacqui will be working as the on the spot reporter.
"The one thing I wanted us all to do this year as a family was to go to the Olympics, even if it will be Shane minding the kids in France" she says. "I wanted them to have an Olympics experience, to see the spectacle and understand why I love it so much."
From the age of three, sports-mad Jacqui Hurley wanted to be on TV, cutting out a makeshift cardboard screen, emulating her small-screen hero Bill O’Herlihy, doing ‘news reports’ for her parents.
"It seemed like such a cool job but it’s a long way from thinking it’s cool to actually doing it," she says. "When I watched Bill in those early days, I just loved his relaxed, chatty style but I never dreamed that one day it might be me in that position."
Yet her career was shaped in sa way to make that dream come true: she did a BA in media and English at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, which included a pivotal year as an intern with a CBS affiliate in Columbus, Mississippi. "That is the reason why I’m here," she says now of a career that kicked off with Limerick’s Live 95FM and continued with joining RTÉ Sport in 2006: a path long marked out.
Hurley was just three years old when her family moved from the Cork village of Ballinhassig to Canberra, Australia. Her return to Cork at the age of ten was a traumatic wrench and it took her a long time to find her way again.
"I think about that more now because Luke is the same age that I was when I went from Canberra to Cork," she says. "I think that move gave me perspective on life, made me more resilient too. I wasn’t aware of that then, but maybe years afterwards, living abroad was so beneficial in ways that I only now realise. But it was awful as a ten-year-old. There were tears and tantrums and for months and months I suspect my parents thought that they would have to go back to Australia. But I’m so glad that we stuck it out. In a way, it made me who I am."
There are other factors, not least the loss of her beloved brother Sean, which left an unfillable hole in the family. "Seanie is with me, with us, forever," she says now. "You don’t have somebody who was that important in your life just fade away and forget about them. I feel that he guides us through so much. His presence is constantly there.
"There have been so many times that mum and dad have booked into a hotel and been given room number 109 (Sean’s race number): just a weird coincidence but it happens often. Or I hear his song (Good Feeling by Flo Rida) when I’m in a shop or in the car and it really lifts me. It makes me realise that he’s still there and helping us through moments when we need help too. My kids never had Seanie in their lives so I’m constantly telling them what he was like. Sometimes Luke might ask me, ‘Did Uncle Seanie do such and such?’ and I’d say: ‘Oh yes, oh yes, Seanie did that!"
Jacqui lives in south Dublin with her husband, Shane (they met at college) and their two children, a GAA house that flies the flags of Cork, Limerick (Shane is from Pallaskenry) and Dublin.
"Luke, totally unprompted, went off to camp this morning wearing the full Cork kit," says his mother, "but he’s cute enough. When he was going to the hurling semi-final, he was wearing Limerick shorts and a Cork jersey so that mummy and daddy would both be happy."
For Hurley, sport is also about empowerment, instilling self-confidence and belief. Her brace of best-selling books, Girls Play Too (2020) and Girls Play Too: Book 2, chronicles of successful Irish sports women, highlighted that message.
"When I talk to young people in schools, especially young girls, it’s not about selling them the dream of playing for Ireland or Cork; rather that time spent in sport can help change your life."
It's certainly Hurley’s story, with Paris her fourth Olympics, following London, Rio and Tokyo. "Anything can happen," she says of past Games. "We had Pat Hickey (the President of the former Olympic Council of Ireland) being arrested at Rio in 2016 and the craziness of the pandemic pushing Tokyo to 2021, but you roll with whatever comes your way and are ready for it. I was in Rio when I got a phone-call saying that Oliver Dingley had made the final of the 3m individual springboard. It was my first time at a diving event but with limited resources, you must be flexible. I enjoy learning on the hoof and experiencing something completely different. God only knows where I might pop up reporting from in Paris, but I’ll go wherever I’m needed. And hopefully, there will be magic along the way."
She lists some of her Olympic high points to date. Katie Taylor winning gold in London in 2012, contrasting with the anguish of Rob Heffernan finishing a cruel fourth in the 50km walk in the same tournament (he was later upgraded to bronze, Hurley presenting the medal to him at a ceremony in Cork City Hall in 2016).
"Our best ever Olympics was London 2012, where we won six medals, but I think that we might surpass that this year," she says. "I can’t recall having this excitement around an athletics team since the days of Rob Heffernan, Derval O’Rourke, Olive Loughnane and David Gillick, which was seen as the Golden Age. In Rhasidat Adeleke, we have a global star but there’s also Ciara Mageean, the relay team, the boxers, the rowers and the equestrian. Also Rhys in gymnastics and the Rugby Sevens. It’s going to be great, and I can’t wait."
Last January, Jacqui Hurley turned 40. For her 37th birthday, she celebrated by doing 37 challenges (including blindfold tasting of food chosen by her children). Were there 40 challenges this year? She laughs.
"I had planned on doing them but ended up having a huge birthday party in Copper’s nightclub in Dublin, an ’80s-themed bingo loco event. I’m going to see Adele in Munich later this summer and there are a few other bucket list items to be ticked off. I don’t ever want to feel that I have regrets. Sean never got to complete his bucket list so now I just do all the things that I want to do. So yes Donal, I’ll be treating myself for the rest of the year. While parenting can be challenging, the kids are the greatest craic to be around. Doing things with them is what life is all about."
