Brendan O’Connell competed at two Olympic Games, the 1972 Munich and 1976 Montreal Olympics, as one of the pioneers of Irish canoe sprint on the international stage.

At Munich he competed in the K-2 1000m alongside Howard Watkins, setting an Irish record of 3:45.18 in the repechage, and also competed in the K-1 1000m.

He later became President of the Irish Canoe Union. For Montreal, O’Connell prepared with characteristic dedication, converting his garage into a makeshift gym and combining dry-land training with sessions on the River Liffey alongside his day job.

He competed in two events at Montreal with Declan Burns as his K-2 partner. In the K-2 500m, the pair had completed two excellent time trials at full effort in the two days before the race – a confidence-building exercise that, as O’Connell later recalled, ’emptied their sharpness’ and left them performing well below their capabilities on competition day.

Their heat time of 1:56.86 was the second slowest recorded in the opening round, thirteen seconds behind heat winners Romania; the repechage was paddled considerably faster (1:47.56) but the pair were eliminated. O’Connell recalled crossing the Montreal finishing line thinking he would ‘never paddle another canoe’ after what he considered the worst race of his life – ‘a wretched, dismal performance.’

The Irish K-4 1000m quartet, which O’Connell also competed in, finished second last of the twenty-one crews – an event entered because four canoeists happened to be present in Montreal.