Daniel Fox during the Gymnastics Ireland content gathering day at the Sport Ireland National Gymnastics Training Centre in Dublin. Photo by David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile
Daniel Fox regards himself as your standard citizen of the Rebel county.
"It's the most typical Cork thing to say ever, but I hate leaving Cork," he laughed. "I love training at home!"
Nevertheless, this week the Douglas man is happy to swap home for the European stage as Ireland's senior men's gymnastics team strives for success in Croatia.
The 30-year-old is the oldest member of the set-up that he believes is the strongest the country has ever sent to a major competition.
Fox is joined by Olympic champion Rhys McClenaghan, Eamon Montgomery, James Hickey, Adam Steele and Oisin O’Connell for the European Championships begin at the Zagreb Arena on Wednesday.
This will be his sixth Europeans. Fox missed the last championship because of niggling injuries, but he had also walked away from competitive gymnastics in 2019 to concentrate on his studies after injuries took their toll.
However, the Covid pandemic reignited his passion and he returned in time for the 2022 renewal in Munich.
He came home to Cork from England, where he had been working as a schoolteacher and gymnastics coach, and rebuilt himself to elite level.
Now he combines his training with a full-time role as a sports development officer with Cork City Council.
"If they read this in the council, thanks very much, they're brilliant," laughed Fox, in his second year in the role.
"It's a class job, you get to work with brilliant groups, we try to bring sport to a lot of communities and get young people involved in local clubs and youth groups.
"A bit of school work is involved. Depending on what we're doing, we could be advertising through schools, running camps through the city council, or working with Munster Rugby and getting young coaches into their programme.
"It's very varied, but it's great craic, and it means I can come up to the National Gymnastics Centre for the weekend training camps, that's no problem."
That's despite the aversion to leaving his home county. After all, Fox says, competing for Ireland is everything to him.
