Mayo GAA star talks about life's struggles as he prepares for Mount Everest climb

Mayo and Ballina Stephenites star Padraig O'Hora has spoken of his plans to climb Mount Everest next April.

In an interview with the Sunday Independent, the 32-year-old community liaison officer with the Mayo Mental Heath Association said he first thoughts about climbing the highest peak in the world (8,848 metres) came when he was a young child.

“I wanted to go to the top of the world, yeah? And I forgot about that, and I left it behind me, the same way most of us do as we grow up."

He will attempt the climb with a small Irish team led by Jason Black, an endurance athlete and experienced mountaineer from Donegal.

Black has scaled Everest before and also the K2.

In preparation, O’Hora travelled to Argentina last February where he climbed Aconcagua - at 7,000 metres the highest mountain outside Asia.

More recently he reached the summit of Gran Paradiso, the highest peak in the Italian Alps.

“We tried to simulate an Everest summit there. After climbing Gran Paradiso in Italy, the next day at half ten at night, we took off from Mont Blanc and we spent 21 and a half hours on the mountain without a break. Like, we went for it. It’s just to get used to hardship.”

Looking forward to the April challenge, he observed: “You get the hit when you’re standing on top. And it’s a serious hit. It’s also a serious fall. That’s where all the fatalities happen. On the way down.

“And what happens when we get like that? We make mistakes. We don’t pay attention. And you make a mistake at 8,000 metres, you’re dead.”

“I think the risk is worth the reward. I think there’s something to bring back. I think it’s more important to other people than it is me.

"I do these things with the hope to bring it to other people. It’s another thing to inspire these young fellas.

“And I bring them out in the Mayo mountains all the time. You see them when they get to the top of Croagh Patrick for the first time. It’s incredible."

He explained his preparations involve building up resilience and endurance.

“It’s all about staying in the game.

“That’s all it is. So now instead of me doing 10 or 12 hours walking across the Ox Mountains, I’m just putting disciplines into it.

"So I would cycle, swim, run, kayak, climb, whatever. Marry them all together because not only is it good to mix it up, but it is also forcing your logistics. That’s the important stuff.

“How much food, how much water, how much do I have to carry, where do I need it, when do I need to take it, how do I sustain myself, are my clothes staying dry, am I going to get wet, have I got a back-up, what if I need to sleep here, what if I need to fix or repair, do I have my medical kit, how do I take care of myself?

"They’re the important parts of the mountain, not the climbing. It’s all of that stuff.”

O'Hora returned to Ballina Stephenites a number of weeks ago after taking a break from the sport for a year.

“I was struggling a bit away from it. There was a couple of things in my life that weren’t going right and I was finding it difficult and I think the retirement or the stepping away from football added to that.

“I went back to football and it helped a lot you know. You underestimate the value of it socially, emotionally, that physical exertion — all of it. Take it away and you realise that is my antidepressant. That’s my own antidepressant right there.”

In the interview with Dermot Crowe, he revealed how he suffered panic attacks in the aftermath of Mayo defeating Dublin in the All-Ireland SFC semi-final in August 2021

His first panic attack occurred in a local bank

“I went into the bank and I felt like everybody was looking at me. And they were because you had a lot of fame at the time after beating Dublin. It was the first time that I felt like I really couldn’t go anywhere without somebody talking to me.

“I can get a little bit strange like that, I’m a weirdly introverted extrovert. I don’t do well in those spaces. I just remember being a little bit shuddery. I went in and I stood in the queue for the bank. Then the woman in the bank made a big fuss. She called out the woman behind the counter who wanted to tell me a big story. She wanted to take a photo. Then a couple of other people wanted to take photos.”

“I just was frozen. I couldn’t even go over as far as my car. I was just trying to breathe."

He spoke of 'a massive' mood drop.

“I think it’s a big part of my ADHD diagnosis and it’s a big problem I’ve had. After beating Dublin, I didn’t sleep for two days. I physically couldn’t sleep. And I dumped about five or six days later. And from that moment on, all the way through the All-Ireland final, all the way out to the far side of it, I was on the ground.

“I was on medication by the time the All-Ireland final came around. I was in a really bad place. Because I just couldn’t handle fame. It just got a hold of me. Something got a hold of me,” he stated.