Castleisland teenager, Darren Moloney was selected as part of the Irish Drug Free Powerlifting Association team which travelled to Telford University Campus in Birmingham for the World Drug Free Power-Lifting Championships at the weekend.
Apart from helping his country win the overall title, Darren also brought home two, individual world championship titles in the T3 Division in the ‘Squat and Dead-lift category.
A member of An Riocht AC, Darren, a son of John and Chris (Casey) Moloney, was back in the Castleisland based gym on Tuesday with his trophies and his first gym instructor, Pa Murphy was there to greet him. The now 18-year-old world champion first went to the gym as a 14-year-old.
“I only went for a bit of fun and messing around and not knowing what I wanted to do there like anyone else who walks in here for the first time,” said Darren.
“I was never much into football or rugby myself but I got to like the gym work and I met Pa Murphy and he helped me with a programme here. I had friends coming here also and they suggested I should try the weights and I loved it and got hooked on it,” he explained.
“I got into the lifting then, power-lifting style and concentrated on it and I needed to set myself a goal. It was then that my friends suggested that I should enter a competition and it went from there. I won the Irish Single Lifts championships then and that’s how I was picked for the ‘Worlds’ in Birmingham at the weekend,” he said.
Though he does Sports Psychology as a module of his Health and Leisure course at the Institute of Technology, Tralee, Darren’s greatest motivating force is the support provided by his family and friends.
As to his future career, Darren is delighted with the course he’s doing in I.T. Tralee and he sees it as a definite career path.
“The beauty of the health and leisure course is that you get to see all the options it takes in and I can see myself taking up one of those,” said the well grounded teenager with the world at his feet.
