RTE Guide
Saturday 4 August 2012
For Jacqui Hurley her recent wedding day was a bittersweet occasion, a lovely family celebration that was marked by the absence of her brother, she tells Andrea Byrne
For sports broadcaster Jacqui Hurley, one of the major benefits of London being the host city of the Olympics is that she won’t be too far away from her husband of only a few weeks. “If it was in Beijing and I was only just after getting married, I’d be nearly divorced”, laughs the bubbly presenter , who’s sporting – if you’ll pardon the pun – quite the tan following her honeymoon in Mexico, the Caribbean and Portugal.
Jacqui and Shane McMahon, who have been together since college, married in June in her native Cork in front of 260 friends and family in what she describes as a “mad wedding, a bit like a festival”.
However it was a day marked by sadness for the bride and her family, as she and Shane were married in the same church that she buried her brother from, just six months before. Sean (25) who was a champion motorcycle racer on the verge of turning professional, was killed in a car crash when his car spun out of control in freak weather conditions.
“It’s up and down”, Jacqui says, tearfully, when asked how she and her family are coping. “It’s six months down the line now but in some ways it feels like it was only yesterday and then in other ways it feels like we have done so much”.
Sean was due to be one of Shane’s groomsmen and although not there in body, Jacqui felt the presence of her only brother in the church. “I lit a candle for him on the altar, I was able to go out after and lay my bouquet on his grave. It bucketed rain on the day and I had been so looking forward to a nice sunny day. But my brother, when he was racing motorbikes, always loved to race in the wet, so when it started bucketing, we were like, ‘ah here, is he taking the “Mick’?” she laughs adding “but we had a lovely day and particularly for my family it was great to give people a good day out, because we have had enough bad days over the last six months. Walking up the aisle and marrying the person yo
u love, it’s a once in a lifetime feeling. Even being at the back of the church with my Dad, it was just so emotional, the two of us trying to hold it all together and then I got up to the top of the aisle and Shane was bawling crying as well”.
For Jacqui Hurley, sports broadcasting was always the career plan. “Literally, as a three and four year old, I would be walking around with a cardboard cut-out TV reading the news to my parents”, she remembers.
During an Erasmus year in her Media Studies degree, Jacqui went to the US to do an internship with CBS in Mississippi, where instead of making tea and cleaning cupboards like most other interns, she was given a hands-on role. It was a validation of sorts; she now knew for sure that sports journalist was her ultimate goal, and she wouldn’t rest until she had achieved it. “My parents always encouraged us to do whatever it is we wanted. Nothing was ever too much or too big. Sure, look – I have a sister who is a pilot and a brother who was about to be a professional motor bike racer”, she tells me in her Cork tones, slightly diluted after almost eight years living and working in Dublin. In her final year in College, after sending in a show reel, Jacqui began doing some contributory work for RTE’s youth programme TTV. “I drove up from Limerick to RTE once a week for five minutes on air”.
Once she had finished her degree, she and Shane, who works as an accountant, moved to Dublin and following a meeting with the then Deputy Head of Sport, Ryle Nugent, she began working full-time in RTE.
Ambitious and determined, Jacqui’s rise up the ranks was swift.
In 2009, aged only 25, she took over as the co-presenter of Sunday Sport alongside Con Murphy on RTE Radio 1, becoming the first ever female presenter of the show. She also regularly presents the sports headlines on RTE’s Six One News.
Does she ever feel any pressure to prove herself in what is still perceived as a male-dominated part of the profession? “It was said to me at the very start, you know it is going to be tougher because you will have to prove yourself, but once you have proved yourself you’re on a par”, she smiles, clearly satisfied that she has silenced any naysayers. “I honestly love getting emails from women asking for advice because it means there are more of them who want to get into it, and that is a great thing because they obviously see enough of us making the break through and they see that it is not the glass ceiling that it used to be”.
Jacqui is about to fulfill her biggest career ambition; reporting from the Olympics. She is reporting from London for radio and television for the duration of the Games and, having spent the last year interviewing Ireland’s Olympic hopefuls, there is no one better to predict Ireland’s medal prospects. “You can never look beyond the boxing. I have known Katie Taylor for many years, and she is one of the most level-headed people I’ve ever met, and so is her father Pete. I really think she could do it. I would never say she is a banker because a) she doesn’t deserve that type of pressure; and b) you never know what can happen”.
“It would be lovely to see her get a medal of any description. After that, I think we are talking about a very small population of people who can do something. Rob Heffernan has a huge chance in the walk; Annalise Murphy in the sailing; and the triathlete Aileen Morrison has a massive chance of getting a top ten finish”, she concludes.
Wedding plans and work aside what has helped Jacqui cope with the loss of her brother Sean is that she and her family are busy completing his ‘Bucket List’, a set of personal goals that he drew up two days before he died – one of which was to run a marathon.
Jacqui, her husband and 75 friends ran the Cork Marathon in teams of three, two days after the wedding.
“When we were taking on the Bucket List, I knew it was going to be a logistical nightmare and I knew there could be all kinds of problems, but I just couldn’t let it go”.
All the proceeds raised from the activities on Sean’s Bucket list are being donated to the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY), which Jacqui is an ambassador for, after her cousin Nicole was lost to sudden cardiac death ten years ago. “I think for all of us the Bucket List has given us a great way to remember Sean. Part of us feels like, what are we going to do when it is over? But it is nice to focus on these things because they are making us all so happy. We are getting out and about wearing tshirts with his face on them. I love that people are still getting to see his face. It is very difficult to let go sometimes and,” she pauses, “the fact that you can walk around with his smiling face next to you is really wonderful thing to be able to do”.