Background
O'Dwyer was born in Kilkenny to his sporting parents Paddy O'Dwyer, a judoka who competed for Ireland at the 1975 World Judo Championships in Vienna, Austria, and Gudrun Marx, an East German-born eventing rider.
O'Dwyer was born in Kilkenny to his sporting parents Paddy O'Dwyer, a judoka who competed for Ireland at the 1975 World Judo Championships in Vienna, Austria, and Gudrun Marx, an East German-born eventing rider.
O'Dwyer attended both primary and secondary school at CBS Kilkenny, where he began his athletics career and lettered in the sprint races and long jump.
During his athletic career, O'Dwyer holds two senior Irish outdoor (2002 and 2003) and indoor titles (2003 and 2004), and competed in the men's high jump at the 2004 Summer Olympics, representing his nation Ireland. Additionally, he set his own personal best and a remarkable Irish record at 2.30 m at the international meet in Algiers to secure a place on the Olympic team. Indeed, O'Dwyer is considered one of the tallest athletes in the elite Irish track and field team, standing 1.97 m (6 ft 5 1⁄2 in).
At the age of 13, O'Dwyer grew exceptionally taller and turned his attention to high jump. Since then, O'Dwyer excelled the sport, and had an initial jump of 1.86 m, until he extended it tremendously to 2.01 to establish a high school and junior record in 1999. In 2000, O'Dwyer moved to St Kieran's College to continually pursue his high jump career.
While at St Kieran's, he set numerous intermediate high school records and earned more titles in the same discipline at the Irish Schools Athletics Championships. After graduating from St Kieran's in early 2003, O'Dwyer trained full-time for Kilkenny City Harriers, under his personal coach Sean Lynch. Shortly after the Worlds, O'Dwyer broke the Irish under-23 record with a leap of 2.26 m at the high jump meet in Eppingen, Germany, edging closer to the 2.30-metre mark.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, O'Dwyer qualified for the Irish squad, as a lone athlete, in the men's high jump. O'Dwyer had crashed out prematurely of the qualifying round after failing to clear an opening height of 2.10 metres in all three attempts that left him bitterly disappointed by his poor performance. O'Dwyer currently works as a fitness instructor in a gym club at Hebron Industrial Estate in Kilkenny.