Sackville Currie competed in the men’s modern pentathlon at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games as part of Ireland’s first-ever Olympic modern pentathlon team, suffering an early disaster in the riding phase when a moment of distraction caused him to jump a practice fence from the wrong direction – earning a 200-point penalty that relegated him from a potential top-ten finish in the riding section to last place with 870 points.

Sackville spent his early childhood in Tullamore, Co. Offaly where his father was a bank official, before the family moved to Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh. Enrolment at the Portora School introduced him to a broad sporting curriculum. His mother Nancie was a keen huntswoman who founded the Fermanagh Pony Club, taught riding to the disabled and ran a Connemara pony stud-farm.

Through the Pony Club he was introduced to tetrathlon – a sport adapted from the modern pentathlon in the 1950s – and was invited to train at Sandhurst where he was coached by Jim Fox, the 1976 Olympic modern pentathlon gold medallist.

His Olympic dream was born when Diana Conolly-Carew, one of his instructors, sent him a postcard from the Mexico City Games.

He represented Ireland for the first time at the Modern Pentathlon World Championships at San Antonio in 1977, where he was managed by Tim Hartigan.

At Trinity College Dublin he met Mark Hartigan, joined the Dublin University Fencing Club and the Moscow partnership was formed. Unlike the Hartigan brothers who were based in Reading, Currie trained primarily in Enniskillen, practising shooting at the local British Army Barracks, travelling to Belfast where he was coached by Ken Stanford, fine-tuning his riding at the Sligo Riding Centre, and travelling to London to fence at Salle Paul.