Victor Costello competed in the men’s shot put at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, finishing 22nd in the qualifying round with a best put of 17.15 metres, before going on to become a prominent figure in two very different fields – as a Leinster and Ireland rugby player and as a Fianna Fáil TD for Dublin South Central.

From Dublin, Costello had taken a sabbatical from a promising rugby career to chase the Olympic dream. A ten-day training camp in Italy under former East German coach Dr Karl Arbeit had transformed his technique and his season, and a national record of 19.93 metres at the Offaly Open Championships in Tullamore secured his selection.

In Barcelona, both he and rival Paul Quirke were making their international debuts and both found the magnitude of the occasion overwhelming – a performance described by one journalist as among the most mediocre by Irish competitors in Olympic history. After Barcelona Costello returned to Leinster rugby, where he played as a number eight and became a significant figure in the professional era of the late 1990s and early 2000s, winning two European Challenge Cup medals. He later served as a Fianna Fáil TD.