Born to Perform (3 page)

2

The Early Days of Triathlon

I am walking along the promenade in Puerto del Carmen in Lanzarote. It's January 1, 2011, and it's a walk I have done on the first day of the New Year for the past five years. By the shore front stands a sculpture and commemorative plate celebrating the first-ever Lanzarote Ironman Triathlon, held on the island on 30 May 1992. It was the brainchild of my good friend Kenneth Gasque, the director for many years of La Santa Sports Centre in Lanzarote.

Kenneth and I first met on the Island of Hawaii in 1985, when we were both competing in the Ironman World Triathlon Championship – that's the full 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile cycle and 26.2-mile marathon run. When Kenneth Gasque crossed the finish line on Ali'i Drive on October 26, 1985, he became the first Danish person to complete the Hawaii Ironman. He went on to start the first triathlon in Lanzarote and was also the originator of the Volcano Triathlon, along with the now famous Lanzarote Ironman of which he still acts as race director.

Kenneth and I meet up regularly, and reflect on and banter about the innocence of those early days in what we both know were the formative years of the triathlon. As I stand admiring the commemorative plaque, I reflect on the uniqueness of having played a part in pioneering and developing the sport of triathlon. Kenneth was the one who nudged me to put pen to paper and document some of this story – the story of triathlon in its infancy.

Many people have no idea of how the sport of triathlon first developed, how it evolved and what it was like in the early days, especially in Ireland. It was my life, and in many ways the only life I lived from 1984 to 1991. In some ways, then, I feel obliged to give an insight into the wonderful sport of triathlon in its early years.

In the mid-to-late 1970s,
The Superstars
was an international made-for-television competition for which famous sports stars from all over the world converged annually in the Bahamas. The idea was simple: the competition pitted some of the great sports stars and sporting heroes against one another for the coveted title of World Superstar Champion.

The champion of the Irish Superstars competition received an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas to compete internationally. The Irish contest was thus televised as an exciting one-hour competition, shown at prime time – and not surprisingly it achieved a maximum viewership rating at the time.

The RTÉ crew then covered the Irish champion superstar competing against the best in the world in the Bahamas. Memories of the great Olympic 400-metre hurdles champion Edwin Moses going head-to-head against Kerry football star Pat Spillane, participating in five events – ranging from an obstacle course with climbing wall and tightrope beam to track cycling, archery, running, throwing and lifting heavy objects – still come easily to mind. It was spectacular television, showing the fittest athletes in the world doing combat in exotic settings.

By 1982, RTÉ executive producer Justin Nelson had witnessed
The Superstars
reach its pinnacle, then realised the ship was leaking. It had outgrown itself, or else it simply had had its day. Justin looked at other options and by chance stumbled across an ABC TV production from the US showing the first-ever televised Hawaii Ironman event.

The history books show that this took place after a retired naval commander Captain John Collins found himself in a bar room argument with his friends over who was the most fit – the long-distance swimmer, the endurance cyclist or the marathon runner. Was it Mark Spitz, the nine-time Olympic swimming gold medallist? Was it Eddy Merckx, the five-time winner of the Tour de France? Or was it Frank Shorter, the Olympic marathon gold medallist?

They decided there and then that the fittest was surely the person who could do all three events back-to-back. With the argument decided, it was agreed to stage a competition, which Collins immediately termed the Ironman. The distances decided upon came from three separate sporting events held annually on the Hawaiian island of Oahu: the 2.4-mile Waikiki ocean swim, the 112-mile Oahu annual bike race and the Honolulu 26.2-mile marathon run.

Thus, within two years, an event that was spawned in a bar room argument had received big interest in the US, especially in California. It spread across the country, with short- to medium-distance triathlons fast becoming the norm. The big Granddaddy of them all – the Hawaii Ironman – was reserved for the purists, the super fit or simply mad hatters. At least that was the way it looked to most mere mortals in these formative years.

And so Justin Nelson had found a replacement for
The Superstars
, which was losing popularity. He sold the idea to the heads of RTÉ, and with that decided to cover the first-ever RTÉ All-Ireland Triathlon in 1983. It would be screened as a one-hour documentary. The distances had to be challenging enough to make it a true test of endurance fitness and interesting enough for a television audience, so that the viewer could respect the athletic feat and watch the footage in awe and admiration. Some observers would probably slam it as utter crazy and say it was a fad that would not survive, but that was bound to happen.

The winner of this first All-Ireland Triathlon would go to the remote exotic island of Hawaii, way off in the Pacific Ocean, to pit himself against the world's best – followed by RTÉ camera personnel plus the famous voices of RTÉ Sport, Jimmy McGee and Brendan O'Reilly, to shoot this once-off documentary for Irish viewing. It would be the perfect mix of sport and entertainment amid a paradisical backdrop.

Michael Walsh from Dublin was a good amateur international cyclist, and took the honour of winning the inaugural All-Ireland Triathlon, which was staged in Greystones in Co. Wicklow in 1983. He then travelled to Hawaii where he faced the unprecedented challenge of lining up for the 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile marathon run – all in temperatures of over 90°F. The distances of the All-Ireland Triathlon had been half the full Ironman distance, and thus became known as a Half Ironman. Yet Walsh battled through the event to finish 276th out of 1,450 starters. In the process, he made history in becoming the first Irishman to compete in and, indeed, finish the Hawaii Ironman. These days, over 1,800 athletes qualify out of 30,000 hopefuls to do the Hawaii Ironman.

I strongly suspect I was the first Irish person to participate in a triathlon when I took part – and actually won – the Contraband Triathlon in Lake Charles, Louisiana, US on May 22, 1981. What I am sure of is that I was the first Irishman to have won a triathlon in the US.

What is also true is that I won the inaugural All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo in 1984, and on the back of that success founded Limerick Triathlon Club in October of that year, the first triathlon club in the Republic of Ireland. Six months later, I also started the Kilkee Triathlon – better known as the “Hell of the West” – which is the longest running triathlon in Ireland and still one of the best. Kilkee, a seaside resort, is where my family own a summer house and where I holidayed each year from the age of three. When I established them, I had no idea how long the Limerick Triathlon Club or the Kilkee Triathlon would last.

Seven All-Ireland Triathlon titles and five wins in the Kilkee Triathlon, along with representing Ireland in European and international triathlon and Ironman events, helped establish me as one of the fittest endurance athletes in Ireland in the period 1984 to 1991. Then, on the day of that freak accident in August 1991, my life as the best triathlete in Ireland was history. Someone else would have to earn the title and fly the flag for Ireland on the world triathlon stage. At the time, all I could do was struggle to survive and find a new identity.

Triathlon is truly a universally participated-in sport. It is a lifestyle for so many people and, of course, a very healthy one at that. Limerick Triathlon Club has also grown from strength to strength, with over 300 members now, and the Kilkee Triathlon is so popular that places are sold out within hours of it being announced each year. Some 140 triathlons were staged in Ireland in 2011, with participation of over 15,000 – and of all ages, genders and ability.

When serving as club chairman from 1984 to 1990, I designed the original Limerick Triathlon Club logo. Using a tenpenny piece, I drew three interlocking circles, akin to the five Olympic rings, placing a swimmer in the first, a cyclist in the middle and a runner in the third, which in my mind represented the new sport involving three events, yet making up one new sport – triathlon.

It is satisfying to look back in time and realise that the hard work, the time and input was worth the effort, not just on a personal level, but more importantly in leaving a legacy whereby many people can continue to enjoy and engage in this healthiest of pursuits.

After helping to pioneer the sport of triathlon in Ireland, I then returned to the US to pursue a profession in physical therapy and thus handed over my responsibility as chairman of Limerick Triathlon Club. At this juncture, the club committee nominated and appointed me Lifetime Honouree President of the club, and presented me with a black blazer with the club logo on its crest. The blazer is too tight a fit now but is proudly displayed as part of the Hartmann Collection, a small sports museum in the University Arena at the University of Limerick, which has several hundred items of unique sporting memorabilia.

Limerick is known as Ireland's sporting city. Indeed, it was a designated European City of Sport for 2011. As a true Limerick man, born and bred in the city, I am proud of my roots and of the many sporting and professional achievements in my fifty years of existence. My name through my work is universally linked to the success I have had as a physical therapist, working with many of the stars of world sport. What I now understand is that being a consummate professional – spearheading developments and methodologies in treating musculoskeletal injuries in the elite sportsperson, and being willing to do anything to address the process of healing injuries – is what I replaced my previous passion for triathlon with. It has made me not only proud of my contribution to triathlon but proud of how it shaped me.

I still get great satisfaction when I see how popular the sport of triathlon has become: it is now a valued member of the Olympic family. I was the physical therapist to the British Olympic team in Sydney 2000 and witnessed first hand the inaugural Olympic Triathlon. That was spectacular.

Many years later, standing on the promenade in Puerto del Carmen watching a group of swimmers training, it feels like only yesterday that I was training with unbridled enthusiasm in preparation for an upcoming triathlon. What seems to me to be only yesterday was in fact twenty years ago.

The 11-and-a-half-stone, super-fit champion of Irish triathlon is now a 50-year-old, 14-and-a-half-stone recreational weekend warrior – and as I have aged and changed so too have the sport of triathlon and, indeed, the Ironman.

One thing is still true: triathlon and Ironman had taught me well. I took the same missionary zeal that I had in becoming a champion in triathlon and simply transferred it, with all my energy, into my career as a physical therapist.

Whatever passion, hard work, discipline, focus and drive I had to reach the top in triathlon, it took that and more to reach the top in my career as a physical therapist. My experience proves that if one has the qualities to succeed in one endeavour in life, there is no reason why success isn't possible in another. Whether you get knocked down in sport, in business or in health, with a positive attitude and by tapping into the same qualities that made you successful in the first place, you can be successful again.

3

My Decision to Pursue Triathlon

In the spring of 1981, two years before the first All-Ireland triathlon took place in Ireland, I was on the second year of a four-year athletic scholarship at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. I had left Ireland in 1979 full of hope and promise to make it as a runner.

The oppressive heat and humidity of the Deep South was a limiting factor, but also the man with the stopwatch – my coach ‘Bullet' Bob Hayes – wasn't exactly developing my potential either. My running performances were going down hill fast under his tutelage. Ironically, I did not know the story of this infamous coach until I had left the university.

There was already something of an Irish trail to McNeese State University. Fanahan McSweeney from Fermoy was Ireland's sprint record holder and also worked for Aer Lingus as an 18-year-old in Shannon Airport. He later competed in the 1972 Munich Olympics over 400 metres and desperately wanted to avail of expert coaching in the US. RTÉ sports commentator Brendan O'Reilly, who would cover my exploits in Ironman and World Triathlon Championship events, and was himself an Irish champion high jumper in his younger days, encountered Fanahan McSweeney on one of his journeys to the US, when he was embarking at Shannon. O'Reilly promised McSweeney that he would make enquiries about the best coach for an aspiring Olympic sprinter. The rest, as they say, is history.

O'Reilly landed McSweeney a four-year scholarship to McNeese State University, believing he would be coached by Bob Hayes, the Olympic champion in the 100 metres at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games.

On the first day of track practice, McSweeney enquired about when he would meet Coach Hayes, expecting to see the muscular black sprinter who was the fastest man in the world. With that, a skinny white man with spindly knees replied, “I am Coach Hayes.”

Anyway, McSweeney survived at McNeese, but after two years I had enough and applied for a transfer to the University of Arkansas to train under the famous coach John McDonnell. The plan was also to team up there with my good friend Frank O'Mara from Limerick and fellow Irishmen Paul Donovan, Dave Taylor, Ronnie Carroll and Tommy Moloney.

American National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules meant I was ineligible to compete for one year. When competing under NCAA rules, it was also forbidden to compete in open road races, at least where prize money was on offer. I had no such issue as I was finished with McNeese State University, so I entered the Contraband 5-mile road race in Lake Charles and won easily enough in 24 minutes and 5 seconds.

Upon receiving the winner's trophy, the Mayor of Lake Charles congratulated me and asked if I was participating in the other two events, which were designed to make up the first-ever triathlon event in Louisiana.

I had never heard of a triathlon. But, delighted with my win, I was eager to know about it. The format for those competing was, first, the 5-mile road race, which I had just won, and a couple of hours later, at the Convention Centre, a quarter-mile swim in a 25-yard pool, followed at 3.00 p.m. by a 15-mile bike race along Lake Shore Drive. The person with the lowest aggregate time would be the winner.

I just about survived the swim and then won the cycling race, to my surprise. With that, I not only discovered a talent on two wheels, but I won my first-ever triathlon competition in what was the first-ever triathlon event staged in the State of Louisiana. In the process, I suspect I became the first Irishman to participate in a triathlon.

It all made for one crazy day in the Deep South. Indeed, had a college mate not been kind enough to drive me back to the university six miles away to borrow an eight-speed racing bike, I would never have sampled the triathlon experience as a still naive 21-year-old.

The celebrations were in Louisiana Cajun fashion – an outdoor feast of crawfish, jambalaya and lashings of Coors beer. I was as sick as a mad dog afterwards for three full days. A day to be remembered and forgotten all at once, and yet the biggest problem to come out of it was how to get the four-foot triathlon winner's trophy home to Ireland. If my memory serves me well, I gave it to the college mate who had helped me source the bike, as I reasoned no one in Ireland would appreciate me winning a run, swim and bike race in Lake Charles, Louisiana. They'd probably think I made the whole thing up.

Back in Ireland a year later, and a year before RTÉ held the first-ever All-Ireland Triathlon, a young chap by the name of Tom Heaney, from Newtownards in Northern Ireland, won a triathlon. That was September 1982, and the event that Heaney won in Craigavon is now recognised as the first triathlon held in Ireland. It consisted of a six-mile run, a half-mile swim, a nine-mile cycle, another half-mile swim and then a two-mile cycle. Like my Louisiana Triathlon experience in 1981, a triathlon in those formative years was more of a try-athlon than a three-event competition – swimming, biking and running in quick succession.

Heaney was an international swimming champion. He was three years younger than me, and, although he had been in triathlon from the very start, his star would be six years in the making before he too became an Irish triathlete of international standard. When he was at peak shape in 1987, he beat me fair and square.

By 1983, after studying Business Administration for four years in the US, I had moved back to Limerick. I was a young 22-year-old, still eager to pursue my running career while also working full time in my family's 120-year-old, fourth generation jewellery business at 2 Patrick Street in the heart of Limerick City.

There weren't many people in the early 1980s who were full-time runners or professional sportspeople. People worked five days per week, from 9.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., and any sport was fitted in around that.

After a couple of months back in Limerick living with my family, it was obvious to my parents and my three sisters that I was on a different timetable. Each morning I was up and out at 6.30 a.m. for a six-to-ten-mile morning run, and at 6.30 p.m. I trained again with Neil Cusack, a winner of the Boston and Dublin marathons, often racking upwards of 120 miles of running in a week.

I remember my dad took me aside one day and sat me down for a serious talking to: “You have had your four years in America. You must put the running aside and knuckle down to taking work seriously.” Little did he or I know about the bug that was about to take me by storm.

In February 1984 a chance viewing of the 1983 Hawaii Ironman on RTÉ stimulated my interest to enter the 1984 All-Ireland Triathlon to be held on June 17 in Sligo. To this day I don't know how my mother feels about her decision to rush out to the back shed to where I was feeding the dog and say, “Gerard, come in, there is a sports programme on TV which I think you would be interested in watching.”

I was interested alright; absolutely absorbed by it, in fact, and the lights did not go off in my head that night. I had found what I wanted to do. I just needed to buy a bike and get cracking on the training to be ready in four months' time for the challenge. Whatever about fitting running in twice a day before and after full days at work, I was now faced with training for three disciplines.

I trained with the mantra, “The more you do the better you get.” It involved getting out for a ten-mile run or two-hour bike ride at 6.00 a.m., to be back home for breakfast at 8.15 a.m. – a big double bowlful of Alpen to fuel the day – then a quick shower and straight back out to open the jewellery shop at 9.00 a.m.

The shop closed for lunch from 1.00 p.m. to 2.00 p.m., and most days I'd lock up the shop, jump on to the bike and tear up the city to St Enda's Sports Complex to squeeze in a one-mile swim. Then I'd rush back down to Patrick Street to make it back just as Cannock's Clock struck 2.00 p.m.

On occasion, I would do a few extra lengths of the pool to find I was running behind time, and, when I pulled up outside 2 Patrick Street, staff and customers would often be waiting for me to jump off my racing bike to open up the shop for afternoon business.

At 6.00 p.m. it was gear on and straight out the door for a two-hour cycle, followed by a six-mile run out by the river bank, arriving home by 9.00 p.m. for a meal covered in tinfoil, which my mother had made up and laid out for her now triathlon-focused son.

Travelling to Sligo for the All-Ireland Triathlon entailed a five-hour bus journey, with stops in every town en route. Yet my journey was nearly over before it began when the bus driver at Colbert Station refused to take my bike on board. A brainwave took hold of me. I dashed over to the train station to where I knew a fellow Limerick Athletic Club athlete, Freddie McInerney, was working. Freddie saw my distress, and whatever he said to the bus driver did the trick. My machine and I were Sligo bound.

The following morning, I woke up in Sligo with no doubt that I was ready to win the big race. My training had been meticulous, but now I had to check the course. In one of the wettest days I can recall, I cycled the 56-mile route and the following day, the day before the triathlon, I cycled the 6 miles out to Rosses Point from the Sligo Park Hotel to do a one-mile swim, leaving my racing bike hidden in the long grass on the rough of Sligo Golf Club grounds. That evening, I ran the 13.1-mile course to ensure I knew what was facing me the following day.

At 7.30 a.m. on the morning of the race, I was first into the dining hall for a gigantic meal to fuel up. After a few minutes, an elegant well-dressed man with a vaguely familiar face looked at me lashing and scoffing my face with food. It was Ronnie Delany. At the time, Ronnie Delany was the chairman of Cospóir, the Irish Sporting Organisation, and he had travelled to Sligo as a guest of honour to start the race and to present the awards. He asked me if I was in Sligo as a participant or spectator of the triathlon. I told him that not alone was I competing, but I was confident I would win the event. He smiled and wished me good luck.

When I did win the event and later met Ronnie again, he exclaimed that he had not expected me to finish the event, never mind win it. When he had seen all I had eaten for breakfast, he was sure it was the perfect recipe for an all-day stitch, or worse.

The 1983 winner Michael Walsh was gunning for his second national title, and he exited the swim ahead of me and powered his way around the cycle route. He had the experience and miles in his legs from long, tough days competing in the Rás Tailteann. I had to run like hell to catch him. Walsh had six minutes up on me as I started to run out of the Sligo racecourse.

I remember Brendan O'Reilly of RTÉ shouting out, “You are six minutes down. Do you think you can make it up?” On camera my response was captured: “You bet I can. I'm going to win this thing.”

Running at five minutes and ten seconds per mile, against Walsh's seven minutes per mile, I soon passed him just after the four-mile mark. I had gobbled him up – and I already felt like the admiral of the fleet, heading for the first of many wins. Running the half marathon in 74 minutes saw me cross the finish line down by Sligo's Garavogue River in 3 hours 57 minutes, with second place finisher Adrian Byrne, another cycling specialist from Dublin, coming in 10 minutes behind.

The faces of RTÉ commentators Brendan O'Reilly and Thelma Mansfield went into shock when they attempted to interview me. I ran through the finish line, straight over to the pier, took off my running shoes and sports top, and jumped into the river. You see, instead of wishing during the last miles of the run for an ice cold drink, I had visualised crossing the finish line and basking in the cold flowing river. I floated in the river for ten minutes. RTÉ's camera crew in the helicopter above captured the moment.

Ground camera crew, Justin Nelson, Brendan O'Reilly, Thelma Mansfield and a large crowd had deserted the finish line 100 metres away to watch and wait on the shoreline to see the new All-Ireland Triathlon champion. The interview was conducted and I was driven away to the Sligo Park Hotel, where a banquet dinner and awards were handed out that night. I never got to greet any of the athletes who finished behind me at the finish line.

On that day in Sligo in June 1984, RTÉ was not the only media organisation covering the event. The international magazine
Triathlete
had sent its feature writer from the US and the Irish Triathlon was given a five-page feature, with the photo of me crossing the finish line making centre spread. The new sport was catching on very quickly. Ireland also had its own triathlon magazine,
Triathlon Ireland
, edited by Edward Smith from Belfast, who went on to become a sports producer with BBC Northern Ireland. The
Irish Runner
magazine, edited by Frank Greally, also gave triathlon generous coverage in the early years, and Frank and Lindie Naughton of the
Evening Herald
also travelled to Sligo to pen articles on the race.

Then came something of a bombshell: after my first All-Ireland Triathlon win, RTÉ announced that the all-expenses-paid trip for the winners was not to Hawaii for the Ironman, but to Nice, in the Cote d'Azur, France, for the Triathlon World Championships.

Hawaii would be a far more attractive proposition for any true triathletes. The Ironman was the ultimate. It was the Mount Everest of the sport. I had watched the TV episodes of
Hawaii Five-O
, and felt I already knew Hawaii. But this time Hawaii would have to wait. The head honchos up in Donnybrook were taking the cheap option, I reasoned. Although, actually, this was not the case: by the mid-1980s the Ironman was truly established as the ultimate in endurance events, but triathlon, as a sport outside of Hawaii, was also establishing itself as a very capable and attractive sport. Indeed, the Nice Triathlon, organised by the Mark McCormack International Management Group and funded by the Ville de Nice, had a far better prize fund for the top-twenty professional athletes. Nice was vying for having the world's best triathletes competing in its event, which consisted of a 2-mile swim, a 77-mile cycle and a 20-mile run.