Nick Sweeney competed in the men’s discus throw at three consecutive Olympic Games – Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 – making him one of the most prolific Irish field athletes in Olympic history. He also qualified for Athens 2004 however injury preventing him from starting at those Games.

Sweeney’s finest international results came at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, where he finished 6th, and the 1994 European Championships in Helsinki, where he finished 4th – the best result by an Irish field athlete at a European Championship at the time. He also won the European Cup in 1994 and the European Clubs Cup in 1997, a bronze medal at the 1993 World University Games, and was one of a small number of Irish athletes to win a British AAA title, taking the discus title in 1995.

He was ranked in the world’s top ten for several years during the 1990s, reaching as high as 4th in 1994.

From Dublin, he attended Wesley College, where PE coach Dan Kennedy introduced him to the discus and he became Irish schools record holder, and won four caps for the Irish schools rugby team in 1986 against Australia, England, Wales and Japan. Despite receiving no athletic scholarship offers from American universities, he travelled to Harvard College on his own initiative and completed a four-year degree, winning two Outdoor Heptagonal Championship titles and earning All-American honours.

He won ten Irish national discus titles, as well as national titles in the shot put and the 56lb weight throw, and set an Irish record of 67.89 metres in 1998.