A car accident in 2007 left Pat in the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) for three months and a wheelchair user since but, since his first marathon, in Dublin, in 2013 which he completed in two hours and 38 minutes, he has become world-class. He trains on the roads in his native Kildare but also in nearby Mondello Park, Ireland’s premier car-racing track.
In June 2019 Pat set a massive new PB by breaking one hour and 23 minutes in Duluth, Minnesota. It is a notoriously fast course but it knocked over six and a half minutes off his PB. That ranked him five minutes faster than anyone else in the world in the T53 class and also fourth fastest in the world in the less impaired T54 class that season.
Pat made his Paralympic debut in Rio in 2016 where he finished 16th and in Tokyo will once again be one of very few T53 athletes competing in the T54 ‘mixed’ marathon, which takes place on the final day of competition.
Ireland’s hand-cycling Paralympic champion Mark Rohan has coached him for the past year but getting races has proved very problematic due to COVID. His last marathon was in Dubai in January 2020 where he recorded a time of 1:34.55.
In the past year Pat has returned to college as a mature student and is studying Community and Youth Development at the Technical University of Blanchardstown.
