Life

How Down camogie star Niamh Mallon is pushing the boundaries in female sport

Down camogie player Niamh Mallon is operating at a top level both on and off the pitch. She tells Gail Bell about the challenges of working with elite female athletes and their hormones

Portaferry woman Niamh Mallon is involved in Galway-based firm Orreco's drive to tailor bio-analytics for elite sports performance specifically to women. Picture by Hugh Russell
Portaferry woman Niamh Mallon is involved in Galway-based firm Orreco's drive to tailor bio-analytics for elite sports performance specifically to women. Picture by Hugh Russell Portaferry woman Niamh Mallon is involved in Galway-based firm Orreco's drive to tailor bio-analytics for elite sports performance specifically to women. Picture by Hugh Russell

WHEN Chelsea Women became the first football club in the world last year to tailor their training programme around players' menstrual cycles, Down camogie player Niamh Mallon took more than a sporting interest.

The 26-year-old Portaferry forward – and Player of the Match in Down's long-awaited All-Ireland Intermediate Camogie Championship win against Antrim in December – has been involved in helping deliver the groundbreaking initiative through her work as a sports scientist with Galway-based firm Orreco.

Global leaders in bio-analytics for elite sports performance, the company is behind the FitrWoman app which allows women to track their menstrual cycle and provides personalised training and nutritional suggestions relating to fluctuating hormone levels.

Invented by Dr Georgie Bruinvels, research scientist at Orreco, the app is part of the firm's Elite Female Athlete Programme which is attracting huge interest from sports stars around the world.

For Niamh, whose role is mainly focused on the nutritional apsect, it is a game-changer for female athletes, with the end goal to enhance performance and cut down on injuries.

"It's all very new and exciting; very cutting edge stuff and we're really only starting to scratch the surface," she says. "The primary role of the company is in blood bio markers, so essentially what we do is test athletes' blood and based on those bio markers, we can tailor their nutrition, training and recovery accordingly.

"Then, a few years ago, prior to me joining the Orreco team, there was a realisation that a gap in the market existed – looking at enhancing performance for female athletes specifically. Historically, research in this field has been lacking and female athletes have always been treated like males – which doesn't make sense when their physiology is completely different.

"How sportswomen prepare, how they tolerate load, how they fuel – these are also different, so off the back of that, the company developed their female athlete programme in which I am heavily involved, particularly on the nutritional side of things.

"It is really fascinating work and every day is different. I get to work with a wide range of athletes across various sporting disciplines – from Olympic swimmers like Allison Schmitt (USA) to professional soccer players in the Premier League."

Recently American skateboarder Mariah Duran, who is hoping to make her Olympic debut in Tokyo this summer, spoke of her "eye-opening" encounter with the programme and how understanding the "physical being of a woman" led her to take the necessary steps to help avoid fatigue.

"We have also been helping Rose Lavelle from the US national team – she is currently playing with Man City – and a whole range of individual track athletes and teams, educating them and helping them work with their own bodies to get the very best results," enthuses Niamh.

"Pre-covid, the work was very much hands-on, with redox testing – essentially a point-of-care blood test for oxidated stress levels which shows, in a matter of minutes, how well an athlete is adapting to training, how well the recovery [is going] and readiness to perform.

"That has been used more for male athletes and our female athletes haven't quite reached that level yet, but hopefully over time, it will be rolled out as part of our female programme."

A graduate in Sports Science from Ulster University – she also holds a master's in Sport, Exercise and Nutrition – Niamh has always been "passionate" about sport and feels extremely lucky to be working in an environment where science and athleticism symbiotically collide.

"The job can be extremely varied, but basically I would be looking at different athletes and their dietary patterns, while factoring in the menstrual cycle and its different phases," she explains. "For example, if an athlete says she has Olympic trials in x number of weeks, when she would be in phase three of her cycle, then I would help put together a specific nutrition plan to cater for those demands.

"Phase three of the menstrual cycle is around ovulation and this is where one of the two primary hormones, progesterone, will rise to its peak. Progesterone is what we refer to as a catabolic hormone, so muscle breakdown and recovery at this time needs to be considered. In practical terms, you need to be really proactive around your recovery and making sure you get the correct amount of protein to offset that catabolic response."

With regards to her own sport, Niamh had a camogie stick thrust into her hands almost as soon as she could walk and wryly observes that with a family steeped in all things GAA – her father is former Down and Ulster hurler Martin Mallon and her mum, Mary Jo, sits on several club committees – she and brother, Darragh, "never really stood a chance".

"I was playing camogie since school and with my family so heavily involved in Portaferry GAA, it was just a natural progression for me," she says. "Portaferry, in many ways, seems very cut off from the rest of Northern Ireland, so, as a child, you either went to the park to train and play, or you were just left at home."

She is at her happiest out on the pitch and is using her knowledge as a sports scientist to boost her own performance as a player.

"Working on my own nutritional programme was especially helpful when travelling back and forth from Galway before lockdown restrictions meant I could work from home," she says. "The travelling was really starting to get on top of me and I was actually beginning to have conversations with the Orreco team about me working from home a bit, anyway, when the pandemic brought that all forward.

"I was working in Galway Monday to Thursday evening and then getting in the car and driving straight to Newry for training before going home to Portaferry for the weekend. Then, when I was home, I would be training and playing all weekend, getting back into the car on Sunday evening to repeat the process. It was truly exhausting."

During the week after work in Galway, Niamh also took to training with a team based in nearby Owenmore and also kept up her fitness schedule working solo in the gym.

"The worst thing and the thing that got to me the most was not being able to train with my own club to the same extent," she laments. "If they played games on a Wednesday evening, more often than not I wasn't involved with them, so that was annoying and something that really played on my mind when I was away."

Now, though, she is feeling well rested while working from home in Portaferry and can't wait to get started into a new season with Down's elevated status to senior level.

"From the camogie side of things, there's a massive challenge lying ahead of us in 2021, going up to senior level, but I'm really looking forward to it. I don't know when the next match will be, but hopefully we'll get back training in the middle of April and the games will kick off a month, maybe six weeks, after that.

"Meantime, I am learning to wait and have even started to appreciate walking which I have taken up as a hobby – big, long walks which I would never have entertained before. I always had to run everywhere."