THE second phase of the Olympic Federation of Ireland’s Dare to Believe programme was rolled out last week and FBD were announced as the new sponsors. Among the new ambassadors to get on board with the programme is eventing Olympian Joseph Murphy and eventer Fred Scala.

The programme aims to inspire the young people of Ireland to Dare to Believe in themselves through an interactive curriculum that explores the Olympic values using Team Ireland role models to bring the messages to life through school visits (or virtually at the moment).

Galway native and Olympic modern pentathlon hopeful Sive Brassil is a long-time ambassador for the programme and spoke to The Irish Field last week. “We talk to the students and tell them our story through sport and about our Olympic dreams and then we get them to think about their Olympic-sized dreams in sport or something completely different. I find I come away from it feeling inspired as well,” said Brassil, whose High Performance training was not affected by the Level 5 restrictions.

“We were really lucky Level 5 has allowed elite athletes to continue training, so I haven’t been hampered this time round. I had a new energy and love for it after the first lockdown, it re-lit the passion even more because it was taken away for a while.”

Brassil was on the cusp of Olympic qualification when events were all cancelled in March but hopes to pick up where she left off. “We are basically picking up where we left off last season, when we had just started the world cup series. We will be starting with the next World Cup at the end of March. From the end of March to middle of June, we will have five competitions and within that there is a few direct qualification spots and there is also a pathway through world rankings.

“I am 34th in the Olympic ranking at the moment. It will have a number of people in it that will have gotten direct qualification spots so their ranking is kind of irrelevant. I will be looking to build on that and qualify through the world ranking,” Brassil said, adding Tokyo would be “a dream come true, a lifetime of work.”

Schools that would like to get involved in the Dare to Believe programme can apply online at www.daretobelieve.com