'The idea you would put environmental beliefs ahead of sporting goals is a very alien concept'
CLIMATE CHANGE: Miriam Gormally's no-fly decision in 2020 before covid hit effectively brought an end to her Irish beach volleyball career. Pic: ©INPHO/Tom Maher
Miriam Gormally lets out a deep laugh a good half-hour into the chat. Her mirth, not for the first time, cuts through the seriousness of a discussion on climate change and what it is that individual athletes like her can possibly do in the face of a tide that threatens to wash over sport and so much more.
âThere was a joke one time about how, âthe planet is in trouble and we really need to do something for our childrenâ. Someone says, âoh, thatâs terribleâ, and theyâre told that if they stop flying then that could be a massive contribution. The guy says, âhold on, I didnât mean like a real thing, I meant more like a bumper stickerâ.â She has seen lots of bumper stickers in environmentalism, whether thatâs putting plastic in the green bin, or recycling a worn tennis ball â one of 330 million made every year - that takes 400 years to decompose. And sheâs okay with that. Really. Deeper change is expensive and difficult, and you just canât preach to people about this stuff.
Those deeper changes? Gormally has upgraded the insulation on her house. She drives an electric car and has long since given up eating meat, but it was the no-fly decision just before covid hit in 2020 that brought her time with the Irish beach volleyball national team to a premature end.
And, look, sheâll say straight up that this wasn't exactly giving up a shot at appearing at an Olympics. Ireland were never competing at that level, but this was no small thing. No more training camps in Tenerife, no more handy hops across to the UK or elsewhere for tournaments.
It had consequences.
âI do remember my coach saying, âwell, you canât really be a serious athlete if you are thinking like that. And, you know, they were right, because if you were trying to go to the Olympics you couldnât not fly. You just couldnât.
âSome people did say that they had taken some note of it, and that they would only fly for sport and not indiscriminately, but just the idea that you would put your environmental beliefs ahead of your sporting goals would be a very alien concept.â
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Beach volleyball, like winter sports, is front of queue in terms of its exposure to a changing climate. Play at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 was halted when the sand was too hot to stand on. Fans at the tournament held under the Eiffel Tower at last yearâs Paris Olympics had to be doused with hoses. The new normal, basically.
Gormallyâs environmental awakening happened when she was in her early teens. An economics teacher did an experiment on soy protein, which everyone thought at the time was going to be a game-changer in the green movement, and it got her thinking. A vegetarian at first, she is now vegan.
âI did worry about that. I wanted to do this for environmental and animal reasons but, again, like the no-flying thing, would it have an impact on my sporting performance? And do I just accept that and go with it? But it didnât. I was playing as well, if not better, and if you look into the research there are plenty of athletes that have plant-based diets.â Not many have sacrificed an international career because of the airline industry, though.
Innes FitzGerald didnât go quite that far in 2023, but the British 16-year old did decline an offer to represent her country at a World Cross Country Championship in Australia because of her concerns over the impact the travel would have. The UK media very quickly dubbed her âThe Greta Thunberg of Sportâ.
Two-time Olympic Games beach volleyball player Lina Taylor has used her training as a scientist to work as a climate executive coach, training people on environmental solutions. Former Australian rugby player David Pocock is now a senator in his native country and a vocal supporter of various environmental issues.
Olympic champion Eliud Kipchoge, who delivered a speech on deforestation at the COP26 Climate Change Conference four years ago, has adopted over 120 acres of forest in the Kenyan Highlands. Former Wimbledon and US Open finalist Kevin Anderson has been active in pointing the ATP World Tour towards more sustainable practices.
The list goes on.
Danish footballer Sofie Junge Pedersen led a campaign to offset flights around her involvement at the 2023 Womenâs World Cup in Australia. Another 43 players from various nations joined her and the campaign, rolled out in conjunction with Common Goal and Football For Future (FFF), is now being built on for the menâs World Cup in 2026.
âIt was led by her. She was the face of it. She wanted the responsibility to drive this action,â says Aisha Nazia of FFF. âWhat we found is that this resonates with someone you look up to when it is an Italian or a Canadian player and playing in the World Cup in Australia.
âThey are talking about something that will affect their game in the next few years. Sofie is not doing something like this for her popularity. If climate change is going to increase the heat at which athletes play, it is going to affect their job.â
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Fergal Smith was a surfer on the global stage when he had a moment of clarity whilst in Tahiti after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. The Mayoman decided it would be better for the planet if he stopped adding to the air miles and set up a regenerative farm in Clare instead.
âPeople ask me do I miss it, the travelling and the surfing, and obviously it was an amazing time. I would never say I didnât enjoy it, but it was time for me to stop and I donât regret it at all. Living that fast-paced, rock-star lifestyle chasing waves was great in your early twenties, but it didnât sit well with me, as great as it was.â
Smith grew up on a farm so he understood that this new path made for a long road. What started off as a half-acre plot grew incrementally by another two, then some more again, and again. The farm now sits on 130 acres with ten large polytunnels, a garden, 500 hens and about 40 cattle.
A work in progress, he calls it.
Smithâs example has served as an inspiration for other sportspeople to get in touch and tell him about their own green journeys. It proved the catalyst for another surfer, Dave Rastovich, to throw himself into green activism. The Kiwi now has his own organic food operation and has become an outspoken critic of fish farms and offshore oil drilling.
That blew Smith away, the fact that his own story could inspire others to make the same leap of faith, but there have been so many other times when he has found himself faced with people whose environmental concerns had been overwhelmed into a state of paralysis by the sheer enormity of the problem.
His own approach is that it isnât possible to continually âtake all that stuff onâ. He read a book one time by Allan Savory whose eponymous Institute is involved in regenerating the worldâs grasslands. In it, Savory advised people to spend no more than 15-20% of their time on big issues like political activism and at least 80% on actual, physical and positive change.
It works for him.
âItâs a funny one because, yeah, you could read things and it is so vast and big. I am not tooting my horn, but one person can do a lot of things. It may seem like an absolute drop in the ocean, but we are tangibly feeding lots of people and looking after acres of land. Itâs still only a small idea, but if everyone had that initiative to do things it adds up very quickly.
âWhen I see people getting overwhelmed by all the different issues in the world, reading and thinking about them all the time, yeah, it doesnât solve anything. Certainly in farming, if you start a project like this you havenât time to stress about it because you have cows to move and hens to feed and a harvest to get out the door.â
He still surfs locally, still loves the waves, but the itch that once drove Smith around the world is long gone, replaced by something deeper.
