Patrick McMillan grew up with a hurl in his hand, played rugby for Leinster, and now he’s on track to ski for Ireland at the Winter Games.
That’s good going for a 25-year-old, and he’s only getting started.
They don’t see much snow in Ballyheefy, near Killaloe, the pretty east Clare town on the banks of the Shannon, and you’d do well to get down Ballykildea Mountain on a pair of skis, but that’s where McMillan’s deep love of sport blossomed.
An all-rounder, it was the small-ball game that hooked him first.
"Down in Clare, we only played hurling," he tells RTÉ Sport.
"Hurling was life. Rugby (which he’d play later when he moved to Kings Hospital in Dublin to attend secondary school) was kind of similar to hurling… you beat the s**t out of everyone!
"In secondary school I played all the sports they had to offer. Whatever sport I put my mind to, I could do it. Some people have a natural talent for sport and I guess that’s something I always had."
"Once you’re out of the groove and not moving up through the academy it’s very difficult to play rugby at the highest level."
That natural talent looked, for a long time, like it would lend itself to rugby.
McMillan, a wing, played on the same Leinster Under 19 team as Tadhg Furlong and Jack Conan after impressing enough with Kings Hospital to be put forward for trials.
A clerical error meant he had to leave the side (McMillan was a few months too old for the age grade) and he never recovered the momentum to keep rising.
"Once you’re out of the groove and not moving up through the academy it’s very difficult to play rugby at the highest level."
At that point, he had a decision to make. Still playing rugby with Lansdowne, McMillan’s lifelong desire to represent his country at the highest level raged within. He dreamed of competing with the tricolour on his chest. But he needed to change tack.
"Around that time I’d gone on a family holiday in St Anton (the Austrian ski resort). I said to my dad, ‘how about I give this one more go?’. I looked for a ski school where they do racing and I started off there."
His commitment to the slopes wasn’t a total curveball. The McMillans had been going on ski holidays for years and Patrick had taken to it from a very young age. It felt right.
"I wanted to do the downhill and Super G (super giant slalom) disciplines. I found an Austrian coach and he accepted me on to his team. For the last three and a half years I’ve been with him."
In that time, his progress has been astonishing. Based in Austria for 11 months of the year, McMillan cracked the world’s top 500 in 2015 to become the highest ranked Irishman in his discipline.
Now, he’s 285th, with the ‘A’ standard required for Winter Games qualification already in the bag. The boy from Clare is on course to make Pyeongchang next February.
But for McMillan, it’s the not the peak; he has bigger fish to fry.
"The very best downhill skiiers are in their mid-30s; 33 is when they start hitting their prime because downhill takes a lot of experience – kilometres and kilometres under your skis. You don’t go to the big races and win them on your first time.
3..2..1 BLAST-OFF!! 🚀 ☘️ #teamireland #headwhatsyourlimit #skiing #irishskiteam #motivationmonday #austria #ireland pic.twitter.com/Worli6MGxz
— Patrick McMillan (@mcwindy) September 13, 2017
"If everything goes well with my health, I think I have 12, 13, 14 years to go. The way medicine is developing, who knows, maybe I can make it to 40.
"You look at who is winning things, everyone is in their 30s. This sport doesn’t just happen overnight. It takes years and years of development and commitment to it."
Nonetheless, McMillan is hoping to make a serious impact in South Korea. How many kids took up an oar after the O’Donovan brothers’ heroics in Rio last summer? How many girls went to their local gym after Katie Taylor’s brilliance in London?
McMillan’s ultimate ambition is to make even one young person chase what looks an impossible dream.
"Everything I worked for in my life was to get to a moment like this, where I can represent my country at the highest level.
"I want to do it for years to come and hopefully build my sport up and build my own reputation up, and get people interested and excited for the Winter Olympics.
"Just because we’re on an island and we’ve got no snow doesn’t mean we can’t be good!
"It only takes one good result and everybody gets excited about it. Then the support and the funding… it comes. It’s not impossible.
"I hope when I’m done with all this that something comes from it that there’s a great system in place to bring through younger athletes, that everything I did wasn’t a waste.
"As long as I can bring up the country of Ireland in winter sports, that would be great to look back on."
