Football

Ireland's fittest man Savage doesn't regret turning his back on GAA

PD Savage in action for Liatroim. He quit the sport at 25 after discovering CrossFit
PD Savage in action for Liatroim. He quit the sport at 25 after discovering CrossFit PD Savage in action for Liatroim. He quit the sport at 25 after discovering CrossFit

THERE were 25 jerseys for championship. When the roll-call reached its end, PD Savage’s name wasn’t called out.

The Down minor dream passed him by, cut just before championship began. He milled around the U21 squad a few years later but made an early exit too.

He’d been a Liatroim senior since 17, playing anywhere from midfield up. Won an U21 championship with the club but at senior level, they bobbed and weaved around the bottom of senior football, just keeping themselves afloat and no more.

By the age of 24, he’d found something else.

In 2014, he took part in his first Titanic Games in Belfast. The world of CrossFit was beginning to mushroom and it was his first major event.

He’d only been at it six months but finished third.

“I felt it’d be unreal to take part in, never mind podium in it. I missed a football match that week because I told the manager I was sick, but I was actually going to do a CrossFit competition.

“That was the start of the end. They found out when it was in the newspaper.”

He quit Gaelic football the following year.

By his own admission, his success in the sport is more down to perseverance than anything.

Initially the GAA background stood to him. When he started out in the multi-discipline sport, he found that some of it didn’t come naturally.

Standing at 6’1” and 100kg, he is one of the bigger athletes in the field. Endurance, no problem. Strength, all good. But it’s the gymnastics, the mobility, the burpees that test him.

But in his third-place Titanic Games finish, he found that one of his biggest advantages was pure stubbornness.

“I’m a bit of an outlier. If it is very heavily a gymnastics programme, that’s not particularly in my favour.

“I can do it all but when you’re lugging around an extra 20kg compared to the other guys, it’s a fair amount.

“In terms of endurance, because I was playing lots of football, I was flying at that. When it came to gymnastics, I had absolutely no body awareness for doing handstand push-ups or walking on your hands or doing ring muscle-ups.

“That took a long time to come – the skill side of it. In CrossFit terms, people would talk about your engine, I would have had a good engine for longer workouts with the football background.”

Last year, PD – short for Patrick Daniel – was the fittest man in Ireland, by the definition of CrossFit.

There can be no definitive claim placed on such a title but the sport’s multi-disciplinary approach gives it a very strong case.

Last weekend, the Open took place. In past years, it was treated as a competition that offered entry into the CrossFit Games, which are due to take place in Wisconsin on the last weekend of July.

They were meant to be held there the same time last year, but Covid got in the way.

Savage won the Irish men’s title, as such, which would ordinarily have directly qualified him for the Games, but the necessary decision to slim them down to just the top five male and female athletes meant he didn’t get to compete.

This year’s Open was different. He was the third-placed Irish male but there was no qualification attached, so he treated the workout as a training session rather than anything more serious.

He’ll ramp up for this weekend’s quarter-finals, from which the top 60 in Europe will go to semi-finals. They’re due to be held in Germany and the Netherlands but again, that might not happen in-person and have to be done remotely.

The 31-year-old was twice winner of the Northern Ireland regionals before it became an all-island category. He missed 2019, then won the Irish crown in 2020, but didn’t get to compete in the Games.

While there are group elements to CrossFit, it’s largely an individual pursuit. And while he misses the team camaraderie in Liatroim, this suits his mindset better.

“I got hooked from it, that experience of whatever you put into your training, you get out.

“I think I was getting fed up, we were going to training with 10 or 12 boys turning up until the relegation playoff. It was an accumulation of finding it at the right time and being fed up of the training routine we were in.”

Just turned the corner into his 30s, he hopes CrossFit isn’t exactly like Gaelic football in terms of reaching his peak.

Savage is the same age as five-in-a-row CrossFit Games champion Matt Fraser. Having come to it relatively late, the county Down man believes there’s more in him.

“I feel like I’m getting smarter and more strategic with my training. It’s figuring out more about your own body and how it works, how to train better and smarter, make sure things are working.

“I feel better and stronger now than in a long time. People think it’s going in smashing yourself all the time, going hard, but it’s figuring out what needs activated and if something’s a bit sore that day, you leave it off. Hopefully I’m learning after several injuries.

“I’ll keep going for as long as I can. Basically as long as you’re putting out results.

“Whenever the day comes you’re not putting out good results, given the time you’re attributing to it, if it comes I’m still training four hours a day and not getting the results that justify that, I’ll call it a day. It just depends on how the body holds up and injuries.”