Comerford looks to add her own unique colour in Paris

Coping with adversity is part and parcel for every athlete.

The setbacks and challenges along the way shape the outcomes, the sense of joy over an achievement heightened by the toil along the way.

Sprinter Orla Comerford, who has a genetic eye disease called Stargardt disease and began losing her vision aged 11,is one of the most experienced members of Ireland's Paralympic squad that will depart for Paris, the 27-year-old ready for her third Games.

Having secured a surprise Rio qualification in 2016 in her Leaving Cert year, the Tokyo Games was where she expected to make her mark, bronze medals at the 2018 European Championships fuelling her ambition.

Those dreams were derailed by physical and emotional setbacks.

In 2019, the Raheny Shamrocks athlete underwent ankle surgery and a subsequent period of rehab. Having pushed her powers of recovery to the extreme, she was in a good place before a torn quad 10 days out from competition in Japan.

And that paled into insignificance when Comerford’s long-serving coach Brian Corcoran passed away while she was in Japan.

Having made the T13 100m final four years previous, simply getting to the heat felt like a monumental achievement in itself.

"He’s (Brian) in my ear all the time when I'm on the track," she tells RTÉ Sport.

"Tokyo Games were tough. Not that I didn't want to be there, of course I wanted to be there, but when everything happened at home, you just want to be at home with everybody for all of that."

The injury "completely ripped" her ambitions, Corcoran’s untimely passing compounding matters to the maximum.

Right now she considers herself to be in the best shape possible, but even that journey since Tokyo has been a rollercoaster.

She has been tinkering around with her mechanics