Sonia O'Sullivan joined Off The Ball for a look back at a stellar athletics career, as well as some of the less-treasured memories.
O'Sullivan spoke to us in conjunction with the 20x20 campaign, to encourage more female participation and coverage of female sport.
Few could be better role models than Sonia, whose Olympic performances captured the imagination of the nation, but she believes that chasing the victory might have undermined her ability to score better times.
Sonia O'Sullivan
"I think I enjoyed racing too much - I wasn't prepared to run one race, and then go off and train for weeks. I wanted to be in the thick of the action and competing all the time.
"That was how I lived my career. I lived to race. The training was what I did in the wintertime. The hard training would stop at the end of June, and you would be straight into racing - I loved doing that."
So does O'Sullivan believe that she would prefer a Sliding Doors reality where she was adorned with Olympic gold, rather than silver?
"I suppose that there is no doubt you probably would be, you would be able to do a lot more things," she says. "Oftentimes, I hear people refer to me as an Olympic gold medal-winner and I never correct them!
"But at the end of the day, no, it probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, but it would probably add more things to your life that you would be expected to do.
"But there is no doubt if you had the title of Olympic champion, then you have that for your life. It would be a nice feeling and a nice title to have.
"When you walk away from your career... I like to have a quiet life and do normal things. Maybe you are allowed to be a little more normal when you are a silver medallist than a gold medallist."
Losses
While the victories were savoured by Sonia - and Ireland - which of the near-misses hurt more?
"I think 2004 was more acceptable to me, 1996 was a lot harder," O'Sullivan says.
"There was a little bit of unknown there [in 1996] and probably a lot of denial in the level of training that I pushed myself towards.
"You think that when you are running for the Olympics that you have to run harder and have to do more, whereas you actually just need to do more of the same. Get yourself to the start line in the same shape that you were in for the World Championships because that was good enough, so why not the Olympics?
"The Olympics just changes the goalposts for everybody, and the expectation and pressure is that much greater. Even if you don't think you feel that, it is around the place and you know that everybody is watching so you need to improve yourself that bit more.
"It is something I like to skip over a lot and think about the good times, but then when I do think about it - you always learn from your mistakes. You hope that you use those lessons when you have to make decisions further down the track."
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