Sean Greenwood blames his Irish DNA for the inner drive. His mother Sibéal, a fine arts teacher at Surrey’s Kwantlen University College, was born and raised in Galway, on Ireland’s west coast, before she immigrated to Canada in the early 1980s along with two of her sisters. Though the Athlete Family and friends ticketing programme the Olympic Council of Ireland have provided two family tickets per event that their athletes compete in. So Sibéal will be at the Sanki Sliding Centre to see her son fulfil his dream of performing for Ireland in Sochi. Greenwood did a considerable amount of growing up in his ancestral home in Ireland, spending countless summers in his grandmother’s thatched cottage.
In his qualification period he said “There’s an element of defiance to it as he had little resource for coaching support. Like, ‘You don’t need a coach as long as you’ve got enough determination.’” But in Sochi the OCI have secured Jeff Pain to provide expert support to Sean. Pain is former World Champion and Olympic Medallist- Turin 2006.
Ireland has skeleton pedigree. In Salt Lake City 12 years ago, an aristocrat called Clifton Wrottesley came within 0.4 of a second of claiming the country’s first Winter Olympic medal.
Similarly, Greenwood is ranked 29th in the official world rankings and with some impressive training runs already under his belt since arriving, he wants to make a statement.
“I’m one to engage and better myself. I want to prove that I can compete and show Ireland can be there and do this and overcome a lot of the challenges. For me, there’s only one way and that’s going right after it.”
