Born to Perform (4 page)

Triathlon had earned its stripes. People were now very clear that an Ironman competition meant a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run, and triathlon itself was any swim–bike–run competition under those distances. From a commercial perspective, triathlon was suddenly very hot. Bicycle companies wanted to be associated with top triathletes using their product. Running shoe companies and swim attire companies likewise.

The big steel Peugeot bike that I rode to win the All-Ireland Triathlon was like a rusty gate by international standards. Kieran McQuaid, brother of Pat McQuaid, now the president of Union Cycliste Internationale, and his business partner Shay O'Hanlon, a four-time winner of the Rás Tailteann, came to my aid. They operated President Cycles, a bicycle distribution company, and they kindly supplied me with state-of-the-art Vitus aluminium bikes and decorated the frames with President Cycles stickers. The Vitus frame was the exact same machine that Seán Kelly rode with the KAS Team, the professional Spanish-based team of which he was lead cyclist. It was super lightweight compared to my steel bike, which I still kept as a workhorse for winter riding. I had made my first rookie mistake. The new bike was top notch, but, in taking delivery of it days before travelling to Nice, it had not registered with me that it would take time to get accustomed to the new machine. Nice was not going to be so nice after all.

The 1984 Triathlon World Championship was a watershed for RTÉ, for me and also for the women's winner of the Irish championship, Diane Sloan from Belfast. The cycle course in Nice was a 77-mile route that ventured into the Maritime Alps, and up steep climbs and narrow roads with treacherous descents. Diane Sloan, Michael Walsh, Adrian Byrne, Dave O'Connor and I trained on the course a few days before the big event. On a tricky descent, Diane crashed into an oncoming car and hit the windscreen full-on. She had a choice: to pull hard left and hit the car or avoid the car and go over the cliff parapet, with the potential of falling down almost 500 feet to likely death. She broke her leg in several places, and that ended her involvement in the sport of triathlon. But she still raised a smile the following day.

This meant that, on race day, RTÉ only had its male Irish Triathlon champion to focus on. Fortunately, a group of Irish triathletes who finished in the minor placings in Sligo were given £500 each by RTÉ towards the trip to Nice; so, Adrian Byrne, Michael Walsh, Dave O'Connor, Ann Kearney and Donia Nugent also travelled and, in some ways, saved the day.

Some 35 miles into the cycle event, in my first season doing triathlon as Ireland's flag bearer in the Triathlon World Championship, I crashed head-first into a wall after breaking too late trying to negotiate a hairpin bend. The bend had come all too suddenly, and so too did the wall.

In complete shock, and still driven by adrenalin, I remounted the bike with my front wheel buckled and forks bent. I managed about a mile, weaving from side to side with fellow triathletes passing me and staring in disbelief at this crazy bloodied Irishman still riding on, like a drunkard trying to stay upright. I was oblivious that my bike and I were both badly banged up. I was soon lifted off the bike by two gendarmes and placed in the back of an ambulance. The tone of a siren of a French ambulance is a sound that still haunts my ears to this day.

I was rushed to the famous St Roch Hospital in Nice. The journey down the twisty mountain took an eternity. Sixteen stitches to my head, a broken collarbone and concussion were the end products of inexperience and applying the brakes too hard. If I had to take a driving test for cycling a bike on a straight road I would have passed, but I would have failed a test on a twisty road outright. At the time of the accident I was in 36th position and moving swiftly through the field, only for the accident to strike. Perhaps I was too young and too driven by adrenalin to make it a successful day.

My mother Thecla waited among the crowds at the finish line on the Ruhl Plage, on the Promenade des Anglais, for her son to finish. Sirens blared, everyone babbled in French, German or Italian. She knew something was amiss when I did not come across the finish line in the top twenty. She strained her eyes to see into the distance and each athlete looked like her son until they loomed closer. Panic bells started ringing. She enquired. Nobody knew. Eventually she was told that I, “Dossard 254”, had an accident and was hospitalised in the nearby St Roch Hospital. I was in pain and badly beaten up when my mother visited.

Later that night she met the winner of the race, Mark Allen of the US. He would go on to win a record seven Nice Triathlon World Championship titles and six Hawaii Ironman titles. The following day, Mark Allen visited me in the hospital and gave me a good luck card. He encouraged me to stick with the sport. That meant so much from one of the greats of triathlon.

The next day, Justin Nelson and Brendan O'Reilly and a dozen or so of the Irish competitors and their friends visited as well. RTÉ did not have much to cheer about. They went back to Dublin empty handed. Maybe Hawaii was a better option after all.

After three days in St Roch Hospital, I flew into Dublin Airport assisted by my mother. Instead of going straight home to Limerick, it was arranged to admit me to the Bon Secours Hospital in Glasnevin, Dublin to undergo a full medical with a CT scan, followed by a period of medical supervision because of the head injury. It was while in the hospital in Dublin, looking out a window each day for a week, that I decided to give triathlon a real go.

Regardless of the setback I had in Nice, irrespective of what my parents thought of this demanding and dangerous sport their son was involved in, neither they nor I had control over where it was taking me. I was gripped by the triathlon bug. I came to learn years later that it's not only athletes at the top of the sport who train day in and day out to reach peak shape, but the triathlon bug is a worldwide phenomenon. People from all walks of life, and of varying ages and abilities, get hooked on triathlon as a lifestyle and many get so gripped by it that it controls their lives; they become so obsessive that it is all they live for. In extreme cases, some allow the triathlon to upset the balance between family, work and other important aspects of their lives.

4

The 1985 All-Ireland Triathlon and My Ticket to the Hawaii Ironman

After a full week in the Bon Secours Hospital, I was home in Limerick with my arm in a sling for five weeks, under medical orders not to do any training for eight weeks. With plenty of time to kill, I started formulating training plans for the following year. I was thinking big: the plan was to defend my All-Ireland Triathlon title, and to compete with the very best in the business at the European Championship and World Championship events.

When I made my decision in the hospital that I was going to give triathlon a real go, a few things were clear to me: I had raw athletic talent but my swimming was a big weakness, and I was a danger to myself and others on the bike. I would have to learn quickly how to swim and cycle if I was to be a force internationally in this demanding sport. But I had a problem: in 1984 there was no 50-metre pool in Ireland.

In Limerick, there was St Enda's Sports Complex – now sadly closed – and Roxboro swimming pool, which is now also gone. These were the two swimming pools open to the public in the city. But there was another problem: there was no lane swimming. The Masters Swimming Club was not yet in existence. The elite Limerick Swim Squad, headed by Gerry Ryan and Mick Mulcair, trained at St Enda's each weekday from 6.00 a.m. to 8.00 a.m., but that was reserved for the serious competitive swimmers.

It was only in 1986 that it became possible for me to join in their training. I had to earn my stripes and gain some proficiency in swimming before being welcomed into their close-knit fraternity, where the average age of the young competitive swimmer was 14 and I was then a 24-year-old runner turned triathlete, with no formal swimming background.

The public open hours at St Enda's were a quagmire. Rather than swimming, people stood or walked about the shallow end. Those who swam did a width from side to side, and then stood by the poolside for minutes before attempting to cross over again. The only reasonable time to go, when the pool was not jammed full, was from 10.00 p.m. to 11.00 p.m., for what was termed “adult hour”.

The truth was, in the 1980s, very few people, with the exception of competitive swimmers, could swim properly in Ireland. A visit to a swimming pool was more of a social occasion, a good place for a chit-chat and dip followed by a scrub in the hot shower. To see a good swimmer glide up and down the pool was rare.

With no organised swimming, my strategy each night was to get in the pool, keep the head down and belt up and down like there was no tomorrow, trying to avoid crashing into people and just dealing with the random black eye, bloody lip or kick in the ribs encountered when a far larger man doing the breaststroke kicked a foot into me.

In those early days I surely caused some consternation, with my main target being to cover 80 to 90 lengths of the 25-metre pool – a mile and a quarter to a mile and a half – in the 50 minutes before the “get out” whistle was blown at 10 minutes to the hour.

Being eager to squeeze in another few laps, I always pretended that I didn't hear the whistle, and Paul Earls, the pool attendant, would have to tap me on the head to clear me out, sometimes being angry with me, other times giving me a big grin.

My swimming practice in 1984, and most of my training for triathlon, was more about survival, but at the same time it was ideal practice for the start of the swimming event in the World Championships or Hawaii Ironman, when 1,800 people charge into the water at the same time, all heading in the same direction. Imagine 1,800 people charging in and churning the water, jostling and fighting for space, two arms and two legs swinging, adrenalin pumping, all go at a frantic rate. Nowadays, with the exception of the Hawaii Ironman, events are begun in wave starts, with a limited number of people allowed in each.

Peter Snow was the manager of St Enda's Sports Complex in 1984. I badly needed him on my side. I met with Peter and repeatedly petitioned him to assist in making structured swimming training a reality. I requested a lane to be roped off for distance swimming. Peter agreed, but there was a catch. His dilemma was that most people paying to come in to use the pool could not swim a full length, with many not being confident to swim in the deep end. They mainly loitered in the shallow end and attempted widths. If Peter put down a rope for me and a couple of hardy triathletes then he would have been cutting off his nose to spite himself, as the 50 to 60 recreational users would not have been very impressed – and that was putting it mildly.

In the end he agreed to rope off one lane, the one furthest to the left, and he placed a sign poolside stating, “Reserved for Distance Swimming”.

The one catch which I had to work around was that this rope was only down during the hour 10.00 p.m. to 11.00 p.m. It was a start, and beggars can't be choosers. But it meant putting lights on my bicycle and cycling the three miles there and back in the darkness. At least on the very wet or wintry nights my dad would drive me up, and after a few trips he ended up getting into the pool himself and swimming a few lengths.

The other step in my triathlon plan was to join Limerick Cycling Club. Top Limerick cyclist Gearóid Costelloe, who won a stage of the Rás Tailteann in Tralee in 1984, introduced me to many of the intricacies of cycling: how to glue a tubular tyre, or a tub, as they are called, onto the wheel; how to distribute body weight when cornering; how to use the breaks so you won't go flying over the handlebars; pedalling technique; and bike set-up and position on the machine. It was all new to me, but I couldn't learn fast enough.

Arthur Caball, who owned the Burgerland fast-food restaurant in Limerick's William Street, was a sports fanatic. He had followed my exploits, coming from nowhere to win my first All-Ireland Triathlon. Arthur met me one evening and outlined a proposition that I found hard to refuse. He wanted to sponsor me £4,000 in assistance, and all I had to do was to endorse and wear the logo of Burgerland on my competition sportswear. I arrived home excited. But my parents were having none of it. There was no way their son would be paid to wear “Burgerland” on his kit.

It was my loss, as they say, and Limerick Cycling Club's gain. I mentioned it to Gearóid Costelloe. His eyes lit up. The club could badly do with some funding and new team jerseys. Arthur agreed to meet me with Gearóid. A deal was struck, and with that Limerick Cycling Club had a sponsor. The club was delighted, and I was voted in at the club's AGM as press officer of Burgerland Limerick Cycling Club, with a special agreement that I myself did not have to wear the Burgerland logo.

Besides, I had my own ideas. I wanted to form a triathlon club. At this stage there were a couple of clubs in Northern Ireland, but none down south in the Republic. The sport was still so new, still in its very infancy. At the time there was no training manual, no book on triathlon, no coach with triathlon knowledge. It was an era of discovery, mostly by trial and error. As a champion of the sport, people looked to me for direction. I had spent four years on an athletic scholarship in the US, and I had come home and gone straight out and won the National Triathlon by some considerable distance. Everyone looked to me for the answers, but the fact was I didn't have any particular knowledge, just a bigger engine. But that's not to say I didn't learn fast.

I asked Peter Snow if I could use one of the offices at St Enda's Sports Complex to hold a meeting. I wanted to form Limerick Triathlon Club and help establish an identity for the new sport I was already mastering. I hand drew a couple of posters announcing a meeting and inviting anyone interested in triathlon to attend, and put them on the noticeboards of St Enda's Sports Complex and Roxboro swimming pool. With that, Limerick Triathlon Club was formed on 25 October 1984 and the five people who attended are credited with being founding members of the club. We were, in no particular order: Gerard Hartmann, Peter Snow, Yvonne Snow, Tom O'Donnell and Albert le Gear. All we really got on the night was a show of hands, but at least it was a start and Limerick Triathlon Club was born.

That November of 1984 Justin Nelson's RTÉ coverage of the All-Ireland Triathlon received a top viewership, partly due to it being well advertised in the
RTÉ Guide
but also due to the fact that there were only two channels in Ireland at the time: RTÉ 1 and RTÉ 2. So 8.00 p.m. on a dark winter's night, with the GAA All-Irelands won and lost, was an ideal time to show a sports programme, especially when there wasn't much of an exciting alternative on RTÉ 1.

By June 1985, Limerick Triathlon Club membership had grown to about 50 people. Throughout Ireland, other clubs formed – in Cork, Galway, Sligo and Westport, and several in Dublin. For the true fitness fanatic, the next challenge and logical step up from the marathon was the All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo.

It was no coincidence that the All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo was a success. Pat Curley, the race organiser, was a dynamic individual with great vision and enthusiasm. At his core, he too was a true sporting fanatic, and a person who got things organised and done in his stride. In his own sporting days he was a formidable sprinter, and, along with being a physical education teacher in Sligo's Summerhill College, he coached and was a positive influence on many of Ireland's best athletes, including Irish 1,500-metre and mile record holder Ray Flynn, as well as international 800-metre runner Roddy Gaynor.

Pat was a dynamo who put his heart and soul into organising the All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo. With the help of his right-hand men, Tom Staunton and Aidan Anderson, and a hard-working organising committee, it was assured success from the start.

Pat had also been a local councillor and was highly respected in Sligo. Through his vision and connections he had the backing of the community, local governing bodies, the Town Council, the County Councils of Sligo and Leitrim, the Sligo Yacht Club, Sligo Golf Club, the local police, ambulance and medical back-up, plus the Civil Defence. Then, with RTÉ covering the event, it would get maximum exposure.

Pat Curley's vision was to put Sligo on the global sporting map. Where better in the world to host a televised triathlon than in Yeats Country, with Ben Bulben and Knocknarea as spectacular backdrops?

Rosses Point Beach was a perfect location for the 1.2-mile swim, and the scenic country roads around Sligo town and county were safe and ideal for a Half Ironman event. The 13.1-mile run had athletes run the length of Rosses Point Beach onto the Sligo Golf Club, across two fairways and onto third-class roads, before meeting the main Sligo–Bundoran Road running into Sligo, and then running the five miles out to the finish line on the wide promenade of Rosses Point, where thousands of spectators waited for the finishing athletes, while being entertained by music and race updates.

Unlike now, when there are some 140 triathlons of all distances in the country, the majority being the short sprint distances, in Ireland in the 1980s triathlon meant one thing and one thing only – the All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo or the “Sligo Tri”, as some people called it.

For the 1985 event Pat Curley upped the ante and invited several international top-rated triathletes to Sligo to make it a battle royal at the elite level and give it some international exposure. Nico Mul, from the Netherlands, had finished eleventh in the 1984 Hawaii Ironman, and we were told he ate rusty nails for breakfast. Mul did indeed turn up – he was going to put me to the test. The event sponsors, Premier Dairies and Puma, in alliance with RTÉ and Pat Curley's triathlon committee, made it worthwhile for him and a couple of foreigners to compete, and enticed them further with a first-place prize of £750. The stakes were high, as I had a title to defend, but RTÉ had confirmed that the men's and women's Irish champion would receive an all-expenses-paid trip to compete in the Hawaii Ironman that October. That was all the incentive I needed.

Another visitor blew in overnight to almost spoil the day. News from the meteorological office the day before that All-Ireland Triathlon, set for Sunday, June 23, 1985, warned of severe gale forces and inclement weather. Hurricane Charlie had blown up a storm of mass destruction along the south-eastern coast of the US, and also caused massive damage along the Gulf Coast.

Pat Curley and his organising committee woke up to their worst nightmare. Perhaps they should have had a plan in place, in case of a storm or emergency, to stage the race on an alternative day. But RTÉ cameras and crew were on hand; somehow the show had to go on. At 9.00 a.m., when I arrived at Rosses Point to set up my bike and gear for a big performance, it all looked very ominous. The starter's gun was set for 10.30 a.m.

Over by the car park at Rosses Point, everyone had clambered into a large rusty corrugated shed that had “Triathlon” painted on its roof. I met Pat Curley and he greeted me with his usual positive attitude: “Gerard, my man, don't worry, we're going to start on time.”

There was confusion everywhere; people were shaking their heads. It was still gale force eight, with thirty minutes to go, when Pat Curley's voice came on the PA system. Normally he would be heard loud and clear, but with the wind howling and rain lashing only a few heard his message. The sea looked rough and ugly. This was going to test the nerves and rumble the stomach. It was decided to cut the length of the swim from 1.2 miles to just short of a mile.

So the 1985 All-Ireland Triathlon began with a huge dash into the incoming waves. Within minutes, a dozen or more competitors had pulled out, abandoning the triathlon they had trained months for. Spectators on the beach watched the drama unfold, with support canoes bobbing up and down and often out of sight in the stormy waters. At the time, wetsuits were a luxury not yet invented for triathletes, although “rusty nails” Dutch champion Nico Mul was wearing the top half of a surfing suit. On such an inclement day almost all the participants exited the sea shivering; some were taken away by the medics to be treated for hypothermia.