More than a month has passed since the European Championships in Zurich, but for World Champion walker Rob Heffernan, the memory of his withdrawal from the 50km final is still vivid and painful.

Despite describing his experience in Switzerland as feeling “like a death”, he is searching for positives to build on.

“Obviously, it was tragic for me. I came home from it, and it genuinely felt like a death. I was very, very down for a week. I didn’t even want to go outside the door,” Heffernan stated yesterday.

“With the race at the Europeans, I went out being World Champion with the intention that I wanted to win it.

“But Yohann (Diniz)’s performance was a world record. It was out of this world, and it crushed me mentally and physically. It’s the only race in my life that I’ve never finished. My prep was fine but, looking back at the year, I had to manage a lot of injuries. When the crunch came, all the negative factors add up, and it can be overwhelming. It was difficult, but you have to get the positives from a bad experience.”

In the immediate aftermath of the race, the Leeside athlete revealed to the waiting media that he decided to opt out when he realised that a first or second place finish was beyond him. Heffernan was eager to stress that this was an emotional reaction, though, and while he had an obvious desire to add to last year’s gold medal performance in Moscow, he had reached a point where he couldn’t physically continue.

“Obviously, when someone is interviewed directly after a race it’s all emotional, and the message was that I pulled out (because I wasn’t going to win gold). It wasn’t. For ten miles before, I was going through complete turmoil, and by the time I had to stop I physically couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t believe that the whole thing unravelled for me, and there was a lot of other factors. I didn’t pull out because I wasn’t going to win gold.

“If I carried on and finished I’d have destroyed my body. I had a problem with my hip going into it, and I’ve gotten an injection for that last week. To go on and completely destroy myself when I have a World Championship and an Olympics to come in the next two years, it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.”

Indeed, 2015 and 2016 are set to be massive years for the 36-year-old Cork man, and though an investigation into 2012 gold medallist Sergey Kirdyapkin might yet lead to him being awarded a medal for his efforts in London, Heffernan is planning to make a big impact in what is likely to be his final Olympics in Rio. “It’s a dream of mine to win an Olympic medal and it’s the only box that isn’t ticked for me yet. It’s a massive, massive motivation. It’ll be my fifth Olympics as well.”

Rob Heffernan was speaking at the launch of Centra’s ‘Let’s Walk’ Campaign, in aid of the Irish Cancer Society’s Action Breast Cancer.