From Rock Bottom to Everest: Pádraig O'Hora's Breathing Story
"The Higher We Got, the Stronger I Felt in My Breath."
Pádraig O'Hora — Former Mayo Footballer, Everest Summiteer & OA Instructor
From addiction and self-doubt to the summit of the world's highest mountain, Pádraig O'Hora credits breath training with giving him control at the exact moments his brain wanted to panic. He's since completed his own Oxygen Advantage® Instructor training — determined to bring what got him up the mountain back down to everyday life.
Pádraig O'Hora's story doesn't start on a mountain. It starts in his teenage years, in a period he's been open about as a battle with alcohol and drugs — a time, in his own words, when he looked like he had everything together and was quietly falling apart underneath it.
GAA changed that. Football gave him structure, discipline, and a community that held him together when little else could. He went on to play inter-county for Mayo across seven seasons, starting their 2021 All-Ireland final — and along the way, he began speaking publicly about mental health, discovering how many other people recognized their own struggles in his.
A later ADHD diagnosis reframed years of difficulty for him. He's described turning everything he'd learned — from the pitch, from recovery, from high-pressure environments — into a second career: corporate speaking, performance coaching, and mental health advocacy.
Then came Everest.
Two months before he left for Nepal, Pádraig spent three hours with Patrick McKeown in Galway. It reshaped how he trained on his altitude simulator — and he's credited that single session with a tenfold improvement in his performance at altitude. It became one of the pillars of his preparation, alongside the physical and psychological training that carries any Everest attempt.
The expedition itself ran 47 days, through avalanches, whiteouts, and an icefall that stayed impassable for days on end. High in the death zone, on the South Col at Camp 4, hours before his first summit push, Pádraig described functional breathing as the thing that let him take control at the exact moments his brain wanted to panic — the thinner the air became, the stronger he felt in his breath.
The first attempt fell 400 metres short, turned back by ice-covered ropes and worsening weather. They retreated to Camp 4, regrouped, and went again. At roughly 1:30am on May 20th, 2026, Pádraig — alongside teammates Éanna McGowan and Adam Sweeney and their three-man Sherpa team — stood on the summit of Everest, becoming part of the first all-Irish team to reach the top in over 20 years.
"I'm over the moon to have achieved what I set out to do."
What followed the summit is a part of the story he's chosen to tell just as openly as the climb itself. In the weeks after coming home, Pádraig spoke publicly about the comedown — the disorientation, the difficulty reconnecting to everyday life, and moments of real low feeling that followed even a successful expedition. He returned to therapy, and used the platform of Men's Health Week to encourage others to reach out for support rather than sit with it alone.
Most recently, Pádraig returned to train with Patrick — this time in Vélez-Málaga, completing his own Oxygen Advantage® Instructor Certification. What carried him up the world's highest mountain, he's now bringing home to Ireland and the UK, working it into his corporate speaking, coaching, and mental health advocacy.
"Resilience is not something you are born with. It is something you build."