Eileen O’Keeffe represented Ireland in the women’s hammer throw at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, becoming the first Irish woman ever to qualify for the Olympics in that event.

She did not advance from qualifying, hampered by a serious knee injury that had developed in the build-up to the Games. O’Keeffe’s journey to the Olympics is one of the most self-reliant in Irish athletics history. From Callan, Co. Kilkenny, she came to hammer throwing entirely by accident aged 17 when her brother Michael bought an instructional DVD by American Olympic gold medallist Hal Connolly at the Pound Shop in Kilkenny. Her father built a concrete circle on the family farm so she could practise. She had no coach – she taught herself the technique from the video and by competing. She was a member of Kilkenny City Harriers and trained as a nurse at Athlone Institute of Technology while competing at the highest level.

She improved her Irish record by more than four metres in a single season, ultimately setting the current Irish record of 73.21 metres at the national championships in Dublin in July 2007. That year she finished 6th in the hammer final at the World Championships in Osaka – qualifying for the final with her first throw – and won silver at the World University Games in Bangkok, and was named Irish Athletics Athlete of the Year. She won nine consecutive Irish national hammer titles and six discus titles, and won the British AAA hammer title in 2006. She subsequently completed postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and retired from competition in 2011 following a prolonged knee injury.