Ellen Keane: “I came back from the Paralympics and my motivation was in the bin”
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Who is Ellen Keane and why is her story featured on My Life In Five Songs?
My next guest has accomplished more in her tender, 31 years than most people do in a lifetime. She is a gold medal winning Paralympic swimmer, a five-time Paralympian in fact, a successful author, a coach in Ireland's fittest family and a proud disability advocate to talk us through her life so far in just five songs. Ellen Keane, you're very, very welcome. Yay, I'm so excited. I've had a little look ahead and you are a quintessential pop princess. Apart from one. Apart from one. Apart from one, which we'll get to. But was picking five songs easy or hard for you?
It was quite hard because I had to try and not choose all Taylor Swift songs. Are you a dedicated Swifty? Yeah, I just feel like I grew up with her. So even songs that you wouldn't have related to when they first were released, do you find your way back to them? Because there's so many.
Are you surprised that the wedding pics haven't been released yet? Because she shared so much of her life and so much of her relationships with everyone.
Yeah. Do you know what? I feel a bit weird about the whole wedding thing. Like I went to go see her in concert. I love her as a musician. And then just like shutting down New York on the 4th of July weekend, I felt it was a bit weird. So I don't know how I feel about that whole thing. But her as an artist, I adore her.
So what about you? Obviously swimming played a big part, but did music play a big part in your life growing up? Were you a musical house?
No, I wouldn't say we were a musical house as such. I think my kind of first experiences of music was really like television music. Eurovision? Yeah, big fans of Eurovision. So weird the older you get and as you go through life, the experiences that you had. I was at a party and I found myself standing next to Mickey Joe Hart and I literally lost my mind. I was like, oh, my God, you were in my childhood. Can I get a photo? So that was nearly a song. And then, yeah, I just I loved like music talent shows. I worshipped the ground that Louis Walsh walked on. I thought I was going to be on X Factor. Can't sing for the life of me. So that was never going to happen. But yeah, that was kind of the experience of music.
for me as a child. And then it was kind of only as I got into sport that I really started to rely on it.
Because there's an interesting sort of correlation between sports and music and particularly with the boxers. You know, they sort of have their, I don't know, their fight song or whatever, but that song that gets them into the zone and sort of gets them out. I guess we can't join you in a swimming pool. So does that, did that ritual take hold?
Yeah, it did. So when I started swimming, there's a lot of time between when you're racing, between when you do your warm up and when you race. So there's a lot of kind of waiting around. Nerves can build. And when I first started competing, one of my coaches recommended to my dad that I get an iPod Nano and I put some music on there and I got some headphones just so that it would calm me. So that became my ritual. So I would do my warm up. I'd get changed and I'd always have my headphones on. Like that was kind of what I'd be known as walking around poolside. Ellen has her big headphones on. Leave her alone.
Yeah, leave her alone.
Don't come anywhere near me.
You and You come from quite a big family here in Clontarf and Dublin. Yeah, there's four kids and then my mum and my dad. And you were born with your left arm missing from below the elbow. But it seems that your family didn't treat you as someone who had a disability, even though you did.
Yeah, yeah. So my dad comes from one of 17, so very big family. And then my mum would have lost her parents quite young. So They're very independent people and they know how to just get on with things. So that's kind of what happened when I was born. My three siblings are older than me. So I was a baby and they kind of when I was born, they weren't given a reason as to why they weren't expecting it. But they just got on with it. They threw me into every sport that my siblings were doing.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Who is Ellen Keane and why is her story featured on My Life In Five Songs?
0:00–8:00
2
How did music and pre-race rituals shape Ellen’s early swimming career?
8:00–10:41
3
How did growing up with one arm influence Ellen’s confidence and school experience?
10:41–21:32
4
Why did Ellen choose Eminem’s 'Lose Yourself' as her first song and how did Beijing affect her motivation?
21:32–27:42