Michael ‘Mick’ O’Shea competed in the men’s 5,000 metres at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, finishing 10th in his heat in 14:02.97.

O’Shea was the first Irish athlete to enrol at Providence College in Rhode Island – preceding John Treacy and the generation of Irish distance runners who followed – and his pathway to Providence helped establish the connection between Irish athletics and that institution that would produce so many outstanding results in the following decade.