"She's a pair of legs on her like a gazelle," said Freddie Moran as he watched his three-year-old granddaughter running around her kitchen floor. That was 23 years ago, and Sonya McGinn is still leaping about, only these days she's chasing more than imaginary butterflies.
These days the Irish badminton champion is chasing ranking points around the globe in the hope that she'll have picked up enough by next Friday to qualify for the Olympic Games, thus fulfilling a lifetime's ambition and realising a dream denied her grandfather by the intervention of World War II.
The late Freddie Moran knew a budding athlete when he saw one, not least because he was a sportsman himself. A winger with Clontarf, he made his international rugby debut against England in 1936, scored two tries against the same opposition the following year, and four in as many games against Scotland and Wales between 1937 and 1939.
They say once he had the ball in his hands there was no stopping him, that he was a blur of green flying up the wing.
In his spare time he represented Ireland in clay pigeon shooting, while his daughter Therese (O'Reilly) did the same in amateur golf. The Moran family mantelpiece was cluttered with silverware. Sonya, daughter of Pauline Moran, probably could have played rugby too, if she really wanted to, being one of those infuriatingly good sporting all-rounders, but she chose badminton and, in the family tradition, became damn good at it.
If she'd any sense she would have packed it in years ago and devoted her youth to nightclubs and such like, but why should a miserable lack of funding, a fractured knee cap, two fractured shins and damaged knee ligaments put you off chasing your dreams?
While most companies in this country show a depressing reluctance to sponsor talented young Irish sports people, Irish Express Cargo and Cybex, the exercise equipment manufacturers, to their credit, took an interest in McGinn. Between them they have provided much of the funding she needed to go full-time in her pursuit of Olympic qualification over the past few months.
Where has she been? Well, Indonesia, Canada, Slovenia, Cuba, Peru, Chile - just six of her ports of call. Cuba? Yes, the young woman from Howth had ranking points on her mind, but all she could talk about when she rang home was the poverty, the Elian Gonzalez T-shirts being handed out for free to every passer-by and the woman doctor who worked for her as an interpreter so she could add to the $6 a week that she earns in her job. Olympic ranking points didn't seem so important to Sonya after that experience. Still, she reached the semi-finals, beating the number two seed, Kara Solmundson of Canada, along the way, and another player ranked above her, Finland's Ann Weckstrom.
Next, Peru. Lima was stunning, she said, and so was her form. Again she beat Solmundson, who's all but assured of Olympic qualification, and reached the final where she took 10 points off Ida Takako, the world number 13. Next, Chile, McGinn's final tournament before the ranking points are added up and she knows her fate. The tournament is in progress right now, but so complicated is the Olympic qualifying system McGinn can't be certain what she needs to do to make it to Sydney. She reckons she needs to be in the high 50s in the world rankings to get there: on Thursday she climbed to 58th (10th in Europe).
Reaching 58th in the world in an Olympic year is a remarkable feat for an Irish badminton player, particularly when you contrast the support she has received with almost all those above her in the rankings. In recent times McGinn has competed comfortably against Kelly Morgan of Wales, who is ranked 15th in the world and will be in Sydney come September.
McGinn will play her heart out in Chile and then will wait to see if it's enough. If it is, then Freddie will be "chuffed", as McGinn would put it herself; if it isn't, well, auld gazelle legs couldn't have done any more.
But if there's a higher power with any compassion and sense at all, she'll be off to Australia in September.
