News
Killarney’s Olympic hero arrives home

By Sean Moriarty
Olympian David Kenny - who made his Olympic 20km race walk debut in Toyko last week - is already setting his sights on a better result in Paris in three years’ time.
The 22-year-old from Rusheen, Firies exceeded all expectations by coming in 29th place overall but he has already turned his focus to the next Olympics in 2024 where he hopes to move even further up the ranks.
“Qualifying for Paris is almost a given,” he told the Killarney Advertiser. “The people around me expect more, Sport Ireland, my training group, and to be honest, I agree with them.”
David arrived home to Firies on Wednesday night. He shared the long-haul flight from Tokyo to Dublin with Olympic gold medallist Kellie Harrington and the rest of Team Ireland.
While Harrington was whisked away for an open-top bus tour of her native inner city north Dublin, the rest of the team quietly went their own ways – an unwelcome side effect of pandemic restrictions.
As result of those restrictions the Tokyo games lacked the usual hype associated with the Olympics and David believed this helped him perform better in the race.
“There was no hype around the [Olympic] village, that helped me concentrate on my race," he added. “Other lads were telling me this was not the same as other Olympics, but I had no knowledge of what the other games were like.”
He was also full of praise for the enthusiastic Japanese fans.
“The Japanese were great, they lined the whole route, both sides of the road, for my race,” he said.