Chasing the dream: Emma Moore on turning childhood ambition into Olympic reality
Emma Moore on her way to breaking the Irish U-23 800m record at the National Indoor Arena, December 2025. Photo, Barry Clavin / TrackVision
Chasing a childhood dream
Emma Moore likes to think big. As a nine-year-old watching the London Olympics, she told her mother she wanted to break the Irish 800 metre record one day.
She hasn’t got there yet, but things are very much going in the right direction. The Galway woman is just back from competing in the 800 metres at the World Indoor Championships in Poland, and she is now setting her sights on the LA Olympics.
To get where she is today, Emma has overcome some major challenges along the way. She started running at the tender age of six, and as a juvenile athlete with Galway City Harriers, she showed great promise. But a serious injury when she was 14 forced her out of competition for nearly two years.
Getting back to competitive athletics aged 17, she feared her abilities might have peaked. “I was like, Oh God, I'm never getting back there, am I?”
From Galway to DCU Sports Scholarship
One person who didn’t doubt her potential was Joe Ryan from DCU Athletics. “I think it was obvious from an early stage that she was a very, very talented athlete,” says Joe.
Joe believed Emma would flourish again with the right training framework. He got in touch to see if she would consider taking him on as her coach. “And I was like, yeah, 100%,” says Emma.
She secured a place on DCU’s BSc in Physical Education with Biology, a degree that prepares students to teach at Leaving Certificate level. With that came a sports scholarship, and participation in the University’s athletics programme under Joe's guidance.
Emma Moore with coach Joe Ryan, DCU Athletics at the World Indoor Championships 2026. Photo, Pierce O'Callaghan
Seeing the pair interact during training, you can tell there’s an easy relationship between coach and athlete. When asked what music she listens to on the treadmill, she jokes,
“Anything to block Joe out!”
Joe describes Emma as “a very coachable athlete” who takes his advice on board and implements the training programme. “She is patient and realises that we're playing the long game here.”
Running into REDs
The 21-year-old has had to dig deep into her reserves of patience. In first year, Emma struggled with the combination of living away from home for the first time, along with a busy course schedule and a highly intensive training programme. Then her health deteriorated. “So, within four months, I had completely broken down.”
Physically exhausted, she went to her doctor, who diagnosed REDs (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport), a syndrome affecting athletes who aren’t consuming enough calories to meet training demands. It meant she had to take a month off training to recuperate, a serious setback to her ambitions.
Looking back, she’s not surprised by the REDs diagnosis. What shocked her was the lack of awareness and information about the syndrome in the Irish athletics community.
To get back on track, she worked with a nutritionist at the Sport Ireland Institute to create a tailored fuelling plan. This puts an emphasis on the athlete consuming enough carbohydrates during training.
Emma went public about her experience as she feels there needs to be greater awareness about REDs. “I have had a lot of people reach out to me about it, saying, I think I might have it. Have you any advice?”
Balancing Training and Study
The training programme Emma casually describes as “fairly hectic”. It involves two or three two-hour sessions a day, featuring a mix of treadmill, bike, and track sessions at Morton Stadium.
Alongside her training, completing her coursework is another big demand. When asked about how she balances study and athletics, she says that “being organised” is the key.
As a DCU athletics scholar, the University has accommodated her around major competitions and training camps, and she adds that her lecturers have been very helpful. She had to delay some second-year modules in the course. Now in the third year of her four-year course, Emma has some big championships ahead, which may require her to stagger her academic schedule once more.
Emma is hoping to go professional in the next year or so, but is also determined to qualify with her degree. “You know, this running thing will only last however many years. So, you know, when I'm 30, 31, I don't want to have no qualification. And I love teaching.”
With so much on, Emma has very little down time but enjoys hanging out with friends for a coffee and laughs that she’s slightly “addicted to TikTok”. At weekends she tries to make it home to her parents in Oranmore as often as possible but she rarely has a “total relaxation day”. Despite her schedule she is trying to make time for less energetic pursuits like mindfulness colouring and knitting.
Olympic ambitions
With the World Indoors experience under her belt and her natural ability, Emma and her coach are confident that she can be really competitive at the highest level. In the last 12 months, she has broken the Under-23 Irish record, and ironically, her injury and illness challenges could play to her advantage in the years ahead.
Due to the enforced breaks in her career, Emma’s “training age is less than her chronological age,” according to Joe, who thinks she is six years away from her peak. “That's probably another thing that gives me huge hope that she can compete with the best in Europe and ultimately compete with the best in the world.”
The next big event is the European Championships in Birmingham in August, but ultimately, the 2028 Olympics is the big target. Emma wants to run a sub two-minute race this year, but believes she needs to be running times of 1.56 or 1.55 to be in the picture for an Olympic medal. “That's where I want to be.”
And as for nine-year-old Emma’s athletics dream, she maintains that breaking the Irish record is still “definitely in my sights.”