Michael O’Brien competed in the men’s individual épée at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, qualifying from his preliminary poule of seven fencers with four victories – including one against the 1989 world champion Manuel Pereira of Spain – before being eliminated by Switzerland’s Olivier Jacquet in the direct elimination phase.

His 34th-place finish out of 70 competitors was the finest performance by an Irish fencer in Olympic competition. Born in Williamstown, Carbury, Co. Kildare, O’Brien attended Clongowes Wood College, where his mother Sheila – a keen fencer and secretary of the IAFF – had established a fencing club in Edenderry, Co. Offaly in 1980.

He developed under Paddy Duffy at the Salle in Dublin and was also coached by visiting French coaches and by the renowned Polish coach Zbigniew Czajkowski, the ‘Father of the Polish School of Fencing.’ A defining moment came in 1988 when he won the October Revolution Memorial under-20 tournament at Szczecin in Poland. He subsequently spent two years at the Academy of Physical Education at Katowice in Poland, living and training under Czajkowski in the professional structures that flourished under the communist system – high-quality competition and a peer group of excellent fencers – until the collapse of communism brought food queues, ration cards and hyperinflation and ended the privileges available to student-sportsmen. In 1990 he moved to Paris, enrolled in the Sorbonne to study Polish letters and civilisation, joined the ASPTT fencing club and trained on a full-time basis there in 1991 and 1992.

At Barcelona he was, ‘the only épée fencer to finish in the top half of the draw representing a nation that sent only one épée fencer to the Games.’