Simon Taggart was a regular on the Donore Harriers national track and league team that won promotion to the Premier Division. He was a key points scorer in the team’s drive towards the top division. An example of Simon’s endeavours was in a Division One qualifying round in 2013, when he won the 110m hurdles, ran in both relay races and came 5th in the Discus.
Indeed, Simon was one the club’s most successful athletes in the past decade. He was the national senior 110m Hurdles champion in 2012 (14.27), came 2nd in 2013 (15.16), and 3rd in 2011 (14.44) and 2015 (14.83). He won the AAI Games in the high hurdles in 2012 (14.19) and 2013 (15.04) and the AAI Indoor Games in the 60m Hurdles in 2013 (15.04) and 2015 (15.03).
Representing Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in the Intervarsities between 2005 and 2011 Simon took gold and silver in the 110mH, two golds in the 400m, a silver in the Combined Events (3328 points), a bronze in the Shot Putt and a silver and bronze in the 4 x 100m relay. Indoors he won a gold, silver, and bronze in the 400m, a silver in the Combined Events (2641 points), and a silver and bronze in the 4 x 200m relay. He then won the 110m Hurdles in the 2013 Celtic Games at Tallaght in a time of 15.38.
The story is that Simon had been indirectly recruited to Donore Harriers by Maurice Ahern: “I got to know the athletics coach at Terenure College. One of his athletes, probably a lad who played rugby on the wings, won the West Leinster Schools 100 metres. So, I contacted the coach, and he persuaded the lad to meet up with Cyril White for a coached session at the Belfield track. That lad brought along another guy with him, who happened to be Simon Taggart. Simon was a fine athlete. He could do the Long Jump, High Jump, throws, you name it! The bottom line is that the rugby playing sprinter didn’t become a regular Donore Harriers athlete, but Simon did. Simon initially concentrated on the 400 metres, but then changed to the 110m Hurdles. He holds the club record in that event. The other thing to say about Simon is that he was a great man to have in the League”.
Simon Taggart was awarded the 2012 Donore Harriers senior athlete of the year.
Now living in Canada, Simon has many fond memories of competing for Donore Harriers.
STANDARD QUESTIONS
PLACE AND YEAR OF BIRTH? Copenhagen, 1986
WHERE WERE YOU EDUCATED? Terenure College and Trinity College Dublin
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR CAREER PATH? I have been working in restaurants and bars full-time since 2012. I intend to open my own place in the next few years.
IN WHAT YEAR DID YOU JOIN DONORE HARRIERS? I honestly can’t remember! Whenever it was, I don’t have any digital proof to check up on. Somewhere between ages of 14 and 16 I reckon.
<<about 2001>>
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE DONORE HARRIERS? In truth I didn’t choose Donore, it was a great bit of luck. A lad I went to school with was lightning quick at the West Leinster 100m in Santry one year and Maurice Ahern signed him up. I did the Triple Jump and on the coach back to school he was telling me about it and I just said “I’ll come with you” and that was that. Unfortunately, he didn’t run many races for the club but, in me, Donore Harriers got a very average triple jumper as consolation.
WERE YOU A MEMBER OF ANY OTHER CLUB BEFORE JOINING DONORE HARRIERS? No
DID YOU PARTICIPATE IN ANY OTHER SPORT? I did a bit of everything in school but mostly rugby and badminton – and I played for a couple of local football clubs. Athletics didn’t get a look-in by the coaches in school until the rugby season was done and I always looked forward to that. I didn’t have much of a head for rugby. I’ve even done a bit of cross country.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE ATHLETICS EVENT? To compete in, it has to be the 110m hurdles. There’s just such an adrenaline rush that I didn’t get in other events. The hurdles come at you so fast there’s no time to be stuck in your head or think about mistakes because there’s another barrier coming your way, so you have to keep going.
WHAT WAS YOUR ROLE AT THE CLUB? Athlete
WHO WERE/ARE YOUR SPORTING INSPIRATIONS/INFLUENCES? Michael Johnson – I think he has to be my favourite athlete. The 400m was my first love. I admired his level of dedication and he was just incredibly dominant. His records seemed untouchable until Bolt’s performance in Beijing. On top of that I think he’s a great pundit, he keeps the BBC’s feet on the ground.
Maurice Ahern – I don’t know what I can say about Maurice that hasn’t already been said and felt by everyone at the club. I owe him a huge amount for getting me involved, linking me with my first coach Cyril White, for giving me lifts to races, for always supporting me through my athletics journey and for his endless encouragement. I don’t think of Donore Harriers without thinking of Maurice.
SOCIAL QUESTIONS
WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ? Wherever You Go, There You Are – Jon Kabat-Zinn
WHAT WAS THE LAST CONCERT YOU ATTENDED? FKA Twigs, November 2019 in Toronto (which feels like forever ago)
WHAT ARE YOUR 3 FAVOURITE FILMS? Don’t watch a tonne of films to be honest!
1. Gran Torino
2. Jaws
3. Shawshank Redemption
FAVOURITE COUNTRY VISITED? Not a country but I love New York City. There are few places in the world that I know I could visit again every year and still look forward to the next time. There’s so much character, great food, dive bars, music clubs etc.
WHAT ARE YOUR OTHER INTERESTS AWAY FROM ATHLETICS/SPORT? I listen to and play music and I cook a lot. I got into fermentation this past year, so I make my own ginger beer now and hot sauces.
IF DESERT ISLAND DISCS ASKED YOU TO PLAY 3 SONGS, WHAT WOULD THEY BE?
1. Sister Sledge – Pretty Baby
2. Van Morrison – Brown Eyed Girl
3. New Order – Bizarre Love Triangle
ATHLETICS QUESTIONS
WHO WERE YOUR COACH(ES)? In order, my coaches were Cyril White, Jim Kidd, John Coghlan and Gerry Ronan.
WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER TO BE YOUR BEST ATHLETICS ACHIEVEMENT? Even though I ran well, my national senior title was a bit anticlimactic due to a very poor turn-out that year. I’m quite proud to be ranked in the Irish top 10 all-time at 110m Hurdles. I’ll enjoy that stat while it lasts! As a sprinter, I think the fact that I’ve never pulled a muscle is a pretty big achievement!! Plenty of other injuries unfortunately!
WHAT ARE YOUR BEST TIMES/MARKS (PBs)? These are the ones I can remember –
400m – 49.00s
110mH – 14.19s
60mH – 8.22s
100m – 11.0x
600m 1:21
WHAT WAS/IS YOUR FAVOURITE COACHED SESSION? I liked any fast technical sessions with starts over the hurdles. I had one interesting session where we would take away the 3rd or the 4th hurdle, build up speed and really attack the 5th.
I used to like hill sessions during the winter and 150s because of that feeling where you sling off the bend into the straight. I was a terrible bend runner.
DESCRIBE THE MOST DIFFICULT SESSION THAT YOU HAVE DONE? I’ve probably blocked it from my memory. We did some tough sessions when I was training for 400m. 600m, 500m, 400m, 300m, 200m, 100m was brutal going flat out by the end.
WHAT WAS YOUR TYPICAL WEEKLY TRAINING PLAN? I haven’t had one for many years now. 2012 was my last committed year and we trained 20 – 25 hours per week, 3 days we did both gym work and track sessions. Lots of drills and conditioning work on the days we weren’t on the track. Prior to that season it was 6 days (about 14 – 16 hours) 4 track sessions and 2 in the gym.
DO YOU HAVE A FUNNY OR UNUSUAL STORY RELATED TO ATHLETICS/THE CLUB? I can’t think of many! I must have been a bit too serious as an athlete.
When I got into the hurdles I started to do a couple of things to mess with my competitors a little bit before a race. I remember feeling sick as a dog before any 400m race but for some reason I didn’t get that way before the hurdles. Sometimes I’d feel a bit sluggish or tired maybe, but I developed a coping technique whereby I’d just tell myself persistently that I felt amazing, and really strong and I would have a huge smile on my face. I could see the other lads were nervous, so I’d smile even more and sometimes say things to them like “this is going to be good fun, isn’t it?!”. It can get so serious at the track and it helped me to take the edge off and felt a bit cheeky. I’d keep smiling all the way to the blocks. I also used to breathe very heavily and audibly when we were on our marks which I’m sure was distracting.
In 2011, I entered the 400m and 60mH in the Odyssey. I ended up making the final in hurdles and unexpectedly the B final at 400m. They were only a few minutes apart and I had a medal chance in the hurdles. If I pulled out of the 400m final having run the heats I would have been ineligible to then run the 60mH final. If I ran the 400m my legs would have been shot. So, I took to the start of the 400m, ran to the end of the back straight and pulled-up without finishing the race. An official figured out what I was up to and told me to start acting like I had tweaked something because if it looked like I hadn’t made an effort I could get DQed anyway!! Luckily that official was TCD athletics president, Cyril Smyth, and I went off and came 2nd the 60mH, my first national senior medal.
WHO ARE YOUR TOP 3 IRISH SPORTSPERSONS OF ALL TIME?
1. Paul McGrath
2. Roy Keane
3. Sonia O’Sullivan
SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
YOU RAN A 49.01 FOR THE 400 METRES IN SANTRY (COMPETING FOR TCD) IN 2007, SO WHEN AND WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO CONCENTRATE ON THE 110M HURDLES? I started doing the hurdles after getting into a rut with the 400m and a few injury lay-offs. I wanted to have a bit of fun and began training for the decathlon, so we built hurdles into my training.
DID YOU EVER GET TO REPRESENT IRELAND AT ANY LEVEL? No. That was certainly a goal, but it wasn’t to be.
YOU WERE A VERY ACTIVE COMPETITOR WHILST ATTENDING TCD. INDEED, YOU REPRESENTED THE COLLEGE ON 50 OCCASIONS WINNING 4 GOLD, 6 SILVER AND 4 BRONZE MEDALS OVER 400m, 110m Hurdles and Relays. WHAT IS YOUR BEST MEMORY FROM YOUR TCD DAYS? Lots of great memories from intervarsity competition. In my second year I won the 400m outdoors in 49.01 which was a big PB at the time. I ran a solid heat and, in the final, came into the home straight well back in 3rd and caught the lad from UCC only a few metres from the finish line. I think I came 7th the year before and was well off the pace so it felt fantastic.
We also regularly over performed in the sprint relays. We rarely had finalists in the 100m or 200m and yet we were able to pull a team together and squeeze into the medals more often than we should have on paper. It was great fun.
IS IT TRUE THAT YOU COMPETED IN THE 3,000m RACE WALK IN THE COLOURS OF TCD? Haha, yes! Just the once. That year, I was captain, injured and TCD were hosting the Intervarsities. I didn’t have a race walker and we wanted to have as many people in as many events as possible and no-one would do the walk. I told Sam Mealy of Crusaders that if he did it, I would line up beside him so that was that. It was a bit of a laugh, quite a painful laugh actually.
YOU COMPETED FOR THE DONORE HARRIERS NATIONAL LEAGUE TEAM IN THE SPRINTS, HURDLES, HIGH JUMP, THROWS… DID YOU EVER CONSIDER COMPETING IN A DECATHLON EVENT? I had a goal of completing a decathlon and was training for that in 2011 when I first stepped over the senior hurdles. I did the multi-events for TCD that year and I carried on competing over both the hurdles and 400m that season and got medals at National Seniors. I had a lot of fun that season and I think it upset a few of the more experienced hurdlers. The reason I never did a decathlon was I tore cartilage in my shoulder doing Pole Vault at the combined events squad day and that was that. So, I focussed on hurdling from then on.
YOU RANK 8th ON THE ALL-TIME 110m HURDLES IRISH LIST WITH 14.19 IN THE AAI GAMES 2012. DO YOU THINK THAT YOUR CAREER WAS A BARRIER TO YOU REACHING TO THE NEXT LEVEL IN THE HIGH HURDLES? Yes and no. Working long shifts in hospitality and trying to have a consistent training routine is something I found very difficult, but ultimately it was a choice I made to pursue that line of work. I knew what that would mean for me and my hurdling. I was content with that.
DO YOU HAVE ANY SPORTING REGRETS? No regrets, plenty of “what ifs”.
I had a few difficult injuries that kept me out for long periods and one that really stung was in January 2012 when I picked up a stress fracture in my foot. I was actually still able to manage it and run. In February I was even going to run indoors over in Birmingham but snow cancelled my flight and so I trained the next day instead. I was struggling to push out of the blocks and ended up clattering the first hurdle badly. I took a heavy fall and needed stitches on a gash as deep as my shinbone from the support of the hurdle kicking up when I hit it. So, we decided to take some rest and heal the fracture. That took about 6 weeks and when I came back jogging, we discovered that I had damaged my ankle in that accident and cost me another 4 weeks. Suddenly it was May, and the outdoor season was kicking off. I was fast and at my strongest that year but technically short. I had already decided that if I didn’t reach my targets, I would take a step back from training after that season and focus on work. So, it was a shame to not find out how I might have gone with fewer setbacks as that wasn’t the only injury that year.
In 2015, I started working with Gerry Ronan when I fancied doing a bit of casual training down at the club and a few races. I wonder what I could have done if we had struck that partnership when I was younger. He helped me to understand the technical elements of the hurdles that had been missing. I actually think running 14.8 at national seniors that season into a headwind was down to that work because I wasn’t in particularly good shape. In different circumstances, I would have enjoyed having another go.
It always annoyed me that I never broke 49sec in the 400m. I ran 49.01 and 49.00 in the same season.
Overall, I have nothing to regret about my time in the sport. It has taught me more than I ever expected it to.
YOU WILL BECOME A MASTER ATHLETE IN 2021. DO YOU PLAN ON COMPETING IN THIS CATEGORY, PERHAPS WITH THE EUROPEAN AND WORLD MASTERS CHAMPIONSHIPS AS A FOCUS? I’ve thought about it. I live in Toronto now since 2016 and if I could find a space to train with hurdles, I’ll certainly give it some thought. I’d love to sprint race again and I just can’t get into the rhythm of long-distance running, it’s not for me!