When Irish hockey star Nicci Daly was seven years old she started helping her father Vivion with his cars. He was a racing driver so that meant days out at Mondello, hours spent cleaning the body work and writing down lap times for him.
"It was not glamorous by any means but myself and my brother certainly had a passion for it," recalled Daly.
"We wanted to be around it and we thought our dad was cool we wanted to help him as much as we could. It was easy for us to get stuck in and get ourselves dirty.
He was one of the most talented drivers to come out of Ireland and he was Daly’s hero. When he got sick in 2000 her world crumbled and the memory of finding out he had cancer is etched in her mind.
"We were actually at an event up in Belfast, it was some sort of celebration and they invited over as many Formula 1 drivers as possible to do a parade lap up Stormont Hill and my dad was invited and my uncle Derek, who was a Formula 1 driver, was invited to drive his old Williams car.
"So we all went to it. It was such a buzz to see Derek in his car, we never got to see that because his career was over by the time we were born.
"And obviously seeing my dad drive his car as well. The next day after it being such a great day for the family, he went into the hospital he has some tests done and that was when we found out he had throat cancer.
It makes you stronger and make you want to be successful and do things for them in a way
"He started an intense program of chemotherapy and radiation but by February the following year, it had spread to his lungs and it was already Stage Four so it was difficult to see how he would ever overcome it but it never stopped him trying to fight."
In November 2002 Vivion passed away leaving behind his wife and four children. Nicci was 14 at the time. Her brother was just a year older and her two younger sisters were five and seven, it was an extremely difficult time for everyone but it has made Daly more resilient.
"It’s hard to see how anything else you could go through could be as hard. So whenever you do go through anything that is quite difficult, you can remember back and think well I’ve been through this, this is nothing compared to that so.
"It makes you stronger and make you want to be successful and do things for them in a way."
Over the summer Daly experienced success when her Ireland hockey team made history by reaching the World Cup final.
Graham Shaw's side suffered a 6-0 defeat to the Netherlands, who have won the tournament seven times.
However, the Irish team, who were ranked 16th in the world before the tournament, surpassed all expectation to reach the final.
"We have a silver medal from a World Cup which sometimes I’ll just sit and look at it and you know in the last four World Cups there’s always been a Argentinean or Dutch or someone from Australia sitting looking at the medal. Never did I ever imagine that this is me looking at a medal going this is a World Cup silver medal so…its just amazing.
"I think its going to take a bit of time to fully appreciate what we’ve done but I’m starting to appreciate it more and more as the days go on and you have more and more time to think about it.
"You definitely start to appreciate it a lot more. I think t will be further down the line where we will then ‘my god, what did we just do?’ And you start thinking back to all the small little things and all the memories that you have."
It was an incredible journey that captured the imagination of the nation and Daly has been basking in the glory since then.
"The reception we got was just amazing. We’re still hearing about the support people gave us when we were over there and we had no idea.
"It was really nice to hear all the messages of how much the country was behind us and how little people knew about hockey and now they seem to be experts about it so…its great to put hockey on the map like that."
What’s unique about Daly is her ability to combine her amateur hockey career and also her professional career.
She works as a data engineer in America for Junco Racing, an Indie car team. It’s been difficult to juggle everything, it required a lot of travel and a lot of determination.
"We have a WhatsApp group of the girls training and if they’ve a a grueling session at training they stick it up.
"Its hard to try get out to replicate that on your own because you only have yourself to push you. I have to go out on runs on my own, do weights sessions, play hockey on my own at times so it’s not ideal.
"But to know the other girls are doing it and doing it to a fairly high level its enough motivation for me to push myself as hard as I can."
After the World Cup, Daly picked up where left off and returned to America to her day job but there is still hockey to be played, so what’s next?
"Success tends to breed success and that’s definitely in all our minds especially with Tokyo only around the corner, the qualifiers are only next May.
"So we are definitely thinking let’s keep what we have and build on it and hopefully we are an even better team come next May.
"Obviously we want to get there again and we want to do well. We know we can we can beat any team in the world, bar the Dutch!Tokyo is our goal and it starts from pretty much now."
We Run the World is available on RTÉ Player now.
