Born to Perform (5 page)

Despite all the drama, most of the starters, with the exception of those who elected to bail out early, made it safely back to the shore. I came out of the water in eighth place, and took my time to change into full biking attire. Where was Mul? I didn't know.

It was just a matter of survival for the first twenty minutes on the bike. I was shivering and my teeth were chattering uncontrollably, and most of my energy went into simply holding onto the handlebars and battling against the wind that seemed to hit from all angles. Out on the Bundoran Road, the helicopter with RTÉ cameramen overhead, it was signalled to me that the leaders of the race were about a quarter of a mile ahead and I was closing in. In the lead were Tom Heaney and John Glass, both from the North. After I powered past them, with 30 miles to go, all I had was the lead timing vehicle in front of me to concentrate my mind.

I visualised the car as a competitor leading the race and I kept pushing on, not knowing who behind me was playing catch-up or how the day would unfold, except that I had no intention of relinquishing my title. The day that had begun so bleakly began to brighten up just as I started the run. When I got to the far end of Rosses Point Beach, I took one good look backwards and there was nobody in sight. I had a lead of at least the length of the beach, so I settled into my customary pace – five minutes, twenty seconds per mile. With five miles to go, I was just entering Sligo town and the run out to the finish at Rosses Point, when I saw my dad standing beside his car at the side of the road waving his hands and shouting: “Slow down, slow down, there's no need to rush!”

Running the half marathon course in 73 minutes ensured that I had won the triathlon in 4 hours, 4 minutes and 30 seconds, a massive 14 minutes ahead of Adrian Byrne who had been the runner-up the previous year. In third place was Drumbo's Desi McHenry – better known as Superman, as he sported Superman-like Lycra attire. Nico Mul finished fourth, and claimed afterwards that he never warmed up. Ann Kearney from Dublin was a revelation. Ann, a 36-year-old housewife who trained three times each day and won all the mini-triathlons in the run-up to Sligo, had exited the sea earlier in the day a shivering and forlorn figure, so frozen she could hardly walk up the beach. She thawed out and stuck in for a long day, finishing third behind new women's champion Juliet Smith from Malahide, whose winning time was 5 hours, 5 minutes and 30 seconds, and Donia Nugent from Galway, the Irish record holder at 24-hour and 100-mile ultra running distance events, and truly one of the toughest women in Irish sport.

It was a rough day all round, but I had won my ticket to Hawaii to compete against the best in the world in the most famous triathlon of them all – the Hawaii Ironman.

5

Ironman – The Ultimate Test of Endurance

Getting to participate in the Hawaii Ironman was one of the most exciting episodes in my career as an athlete and has had a positive influence on my life outside of sport. Above all, it taught me that the impossible is possible.

Imagine it's February 18, 1978 and you are one of fifteen supposedly brave people standing on San Souci Beach in Waikiki, Hawaii. You are looking out into the sea, casting your eyes 2.4 miles across to where your bicycle is waiting. The waves are rolling in and your stomach is in a knot. What have you signed up for? Are you stone mad?

After completing the swim, and in the event of no shark attacks, you will mount your bicycle and ride 112 miles around the island of Oahu in the midday sun – when perhaps only mad dogs and Irishmen would venture out. After finishing the mammoth bike ride, ideally unscathed, you then run the Honolulu Marathon course, a full 26.2 miles. If you finish all that, then you're an Ironman.

As it turned out, only twelve of those fifteen brave souls finished the first Ironman in 1978. Each received a trophy, handmade by its founder Captain John Collins, of a metal Ironman with a hole in its head. The same trophies were not to be awarded again until 2003, when each finisher of the 25th Anniversary Hawaii Ironman Triathlon, myself included, received a replica of the original trophy upon crossing the finish line, with the inscription “Swim 2.4 miles, cycle 112 miles, run 26.2 miles. Brag for the rest of your life.”

You vow,

You curse

And you chant,

I'm done.

No Way.

Never again.

Then the crowds,

The lights,

The Medal.

The pain is all forgotten.

And you hope you'll get the chance

To do it all over again.
¹

Gordon Haller won that first-ever Ironman, in a time of 11 hours, 46 minutes and 40 seconds, ahead of John Dunbar, who finished in 12 hours, 20 minutes and 27 seconds, and Dave Orlowski, who came in third at 13 hours, 59 minutes and 13 seconds. These first Ironmen were true explorers, pioneers of something they had no idea was going to explode and some day become a global phenomenon.

In 1985, at the age of 23, I did my first Hawaii Ironman. Like those first pioneers, I stood on the shoreline not knowing what to expect. I looked out over the ocean into the far distant horizon with excitement, fear and trepidation, praying to God that this day would go well, that I would survive and live another day. At the start line, in the water among 1,800 brave souls, you either stand or tread water, waiting for the blast of the cannon to sound the start.

You are surrounded

Yet so alone,

Alone to plan and dream,

To hope and pray

The day to come

Will have it all,

The highest highs

And the lowest lows.

The fact that it is hard

Is what makes it special;

It's also what makes it IRONMAN.
²

I was about to enter new territory in every sense. The Hawaii Ironman is different to any other test of endurance. It is swimming, biking and running large distances with a backdrop of intense heat, raging winds on the bike course and a marathon course with no shade.

Ironman was growing so fast that when I completed the event in 1985, and crossed the finish line in ten hours and four minutes – over one hour and forty minutes faster than Gordon Haller's winning time eight years earlier – twenty-three athletes had finished ahead of me. Nowadays, the thousands of enthusiastic Ironman triathletes and sold-out events worldwide indicate that what had started as a casual event among friends was actually the birth of a movement, and I am forever grateful that I was part of those early days. I experienced the Hawaii Ironman in an age when participants carried all their needs for the day on the bike ride, as if going on a picnic, as the aid stations served only bananas, quarter oranges, peanut butter sandwiches and a sports drink that was either plain water or de-fizzed Coke.

The Ironman is an event that changes people's lives, no question about that. There is something very special about attempting the near impossible. Obviously a lot of people see it all as plain crazy, and yet humans love a challenge: climb Mount Everest, run a marathon, swim the English Channel, do the Hawaii Ironman. The Hawaii Ironman is not so easily doable anymore, however. Ironman qualifying events are held on all continents, with over 30,000 people vying for the 1,800 starting places in Kona, on Hawaii's Big Island, every October. The dream of every triathlete is to do an Ironman, and the ultimate dream is to compete at the biggest party of them all in Hawaii. Crossing the finish line in Hawaii makes one a member of an exclusive club. It is a club where the dues are perseverance, dedication and a will to finish, and all that can test the toughest nut.

The mantra in Hawaii is: “To finish is to win and to win is to finish.” The natural forces on the island of Hawaii make it a challenge nobody can take for granted. In other triathlons and Ironman events, the top professionals have their race strategy and timing down to a science. In Hawaii that goes out the window. The best in the world have, at one time or another, been reduced to the brink of collapse, to walking the marathon. To change strategy is the secret, and being able to revert to plan B is almost a must.

Most top athletes will finish in daylight before the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean at 6.00 p.m., but a puncture or two out on the bike course, a stitch in the stomach, or a pulled muscle or leg cramp can leave the fittest struggling to finish. When the course marshal hands them the glow-in-the-dark neck band, their day continues. Instead of finishing in the top echelon, they are happy to be able to shuffle along, because the sight of the floodlit finish line on Ali'i Drive, with the thousands of spectators and supporters, is all that matters on Ironman day. Whether it is a run, a shuffle or crawl across the finish line, for any triathlete it means one thing: confirmation that the impossible is possible and the cheer from event announcer Mike Reilly: “You are an Ironman!”

To finish is to win, to win is to finish – only those who have crossed an Ironman finish line understand this completely. When you finish the Hawaii Ironman, you carry something deep inside yourself that you can call on whenever you need to. When life gets tough, you can cope with and handle whatever has been dished out, whatever bad deck of cards has been thrown your way, because you have completed the toughest day in sport. It is a badge you wear inwardly, proof of an inner power and self-belief that you can call on forever.

The Ironman has become my lifelong teacher. It teaches how to plan, how to efficiently manage time, how to have a balanced life – in terms of juggling family, work and training – if there is such a thing for an athlete. It teaches how to deal with adversity. Nothing else will teach you as much in one day about yourself as a day in the Ironman in Hawaii. You might have all the training done and bought the fanciest and fastest bike that money can buy, yet at that starting line you are all alone. Then, out in the lava fields, some 50 or so miles from Kona, with the trade winds blowing with all their might and the sun melting you to a frazzle, you find yourself pushing along on black tarmac so hot an egg would fry on it. At this point you may have to dig into your soul and ask a lot of questions of yourself. You find out who you really are. Curve balls are thrown at you to test your mettle as the endless road ahead shimmers into the horizon. And you still have a marathon to survive, with no guarantee that you will ever see the finish line.

To this day, I draw on the Ironman as my source of inspiration. When life gets hard, when it all goes wrong, when I face a day that is a struggle from the start, when people put demands on me that are unrealistic, when a flight is cancelled and I get stuck in an airport for a day, I stay strong. I draw on Ironman, knowing no matter what happens I can handle it. Ironman Hawaii has taught me well. I wear the badge and I will take it to the grave.

6

A Sponsorship Controversy

After winning my second successive All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo, I was on a high. I took the following day off, my first rest day in six months. Even the day before the race, I ran for one hour in the morning, swam for one mile and cycled for one hour in the evening.

There were only eighteen weeks to the Hawaii Ironman and, while I was only one full year training and competing in triathlon, I had no fears of the challenges ahead. I had never cycled further than 60 miles, yet now 112 miles was my challenge. I had never raced a full marathon, and in four months' time I would face a marathon in a furnace of heat that I had never experienced, not even in the heartland of the US when I was a student.

I contacted Con O'Callaghan, the president of the Irish Triathlon Association. Con was very politically involved in the development of the sport in Europe and he served as the inaugural chairman of the European Triathlon Union (ETU). He was a sport administrator and recreational triathlete, based at the House of Sport in Upper Malone Road, Belfast. Triathlon was growing fast, and was particularly strong in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Britain, and there was a lot of political wrangling in those days, with the powerhouse of the sport, the US, pulling the sport in one direction and the ETU also fighting its cause.

This was all very important on a larger scale, because the sport of triathlon was like a ship on rough water. It needed stability and Con O'Callaghan worked tirelessly in those early years to steady the ship. If triathlon was ever to be a mainstream global sport it needed to have its own world governing body, and it would be another four years before the International Triathlon Union (ITU) staged its first international distance World Championships – in Avignon, France in 1989 – and fifteen years before triathlon became an Olympic sport, at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

My only request to Con was to enquire if the Irish Triathlon Association could fund my way to any international events, in preparation for Hawaii. Perhaps, as a young 23-year-old, I was naive. The Hawaii Ironman was a financially lucrative event, and the most successful triathlon of them all, but Con O'Callaghan had no interest in the bit players. It did not concern him if I needed high quality races to improve my standard. He was a sports administrator and just another politician within the sport. I was on my own regarding preparing for Hawaii.

The European Championship Triathlon took place in Denmark on September 1, a few weeks before I was scheduled to travel to Hawaii. First, with the Ironman coming up, I had to arrange to take time off work for another event and then there was the concern of how I would fund the trip, and, indeed, how I would get there. Fellow Limerick Triathlon Club man Michael Carroll from Roscrea, whose best placing in the All-Ireland Triathlon was tenth, agreed to drive me to Denmark in his old Renault. The logistics of it were far from ideal. First, fitting two road bikes into the car was a challenge. Then came the drive to Dublin for a boat from Dublin to Holyhead, followed by an eight-hour drive to Harwick, where we boarded the boat for a twenty-hour trip to Esbjerg in Denmark, to arrive in Aabenraa after another two hours in the car.

Arriving in Aabenraa the day before the race, hardly able to walk with a stiff back, Michael and I jumped into the sea – only to get out as quickly as possible as we were both stung all over by large jellyfish.

The following day, I faced the European Triathlon Championships in a subdued mood, knowing that straight after finishing we would have the long haul back home, where, with no rest, I would return to work. I was deflated, exhausted and too drained to gallop. This was before the race.

In any case, in my first European Championship Triathlon I crossed the finish line in twelfth place overall, three minutes outside the bronze medal, wondering what the result would have been had the funding and support structure been in place for me to fly from Shannon. At the awards ceremony after the race, Con O'Callaghan approached me and said, “Not a bad effort.”

I walked away shaking my head, knowing that he had no interest in helping me reach the top of triathlon internationally. My best Half Ironman time of three hours and fifty-seven minutes would have won me that European title by four minutes, but there could be no regrets as it was all part of participating in a sport in its infancy.

Nonetheless, if Ireland was to have a presence on the world stage and get its top performers on victory podiums in international competitions, serious structures would have to be put in place. The approach of those governing the sport would have to change. Sometimes such people get confused and use their positions of power to self-serve and help their own climb up the political ladder. The administrators and sports governing bodies are there to govern and run the sport, and serve the elite athletes. They must always put the athlete first and facilitate them performing at the highest level. Many administrators have it backwards, and play the big and mighty, treating the athletes like dirt as if the athletes should be at their beck and call.

Working at several World Championships and the past five Olympic Games as a backroom staff member, I always put the athlete first. They need to be given every opportunity plus the platform and support to enable them to perform at their best.

When I travelled with teams in the early 1990s, the administrators and medical staff often got priority seating and accommodation, and this infuriated me. As an athlete, I saw firsthand how athletes were treated and I had a good yardstick when I travelled to international competitions and shared notes with athletes from other countries. The “blazer brigade”, as I called them – the officials and administrators on junkets for their own gain – are thankfully in the minority nowadays, as sport on the international stage has become such big business. It is highly competitive and results are what count.

After the European Triathlon Championships in Denmark, I was interviewed for a feature article in the 1985
Triathlon Ireland Annual
magazine, and my quotes at that time summed up my sentiment:

My experience in Denmark showed me that an Irish triathlete striving to reach the top is only bashing his head against a brick wall in comparison to the opportunities afforded to my counterparts on the continent. I was amazed to hear a Swedish competitor who finished six places behind me say that he was a full-time triathlete who spends upwards of seven hours training daily and belongs to a heavily sponsored team along with [getting] support from the national triathlon federation. My feeling from Denmark was that the standard will continue to rise and unless Ireland's top performers are given some assistance in terms of sponsorship or financial assistance then our standard in top competition will drop even lower.

In ways, nothing changed for many years, and the ongoing dilemma for some athletes is the same now as it was then. Athletes need most support on their way to the top. Once he or she has reached the top ten in the world in his or her chosen sport, the Government steps in and gives out the maximum funding of €40,000 per year – but the athlete who reaches that level already has commercial sponsorship deals, and prize money to boot. It is at the stage when the athlete shows potential, and is on the way up, that finance and coaching and medical support are most critical.

In my seven years as Irish triathlon champion, I never had any input from the Irish Triathlon Association. The association worked on an administrative level only, and it felt to me as if the athletes were inconsequential, mere bit players. That was most unfortunate as there was so much potential. In the 1980s, Ireland had international-level potential in Ann Kearney, Tom Heaney, Noel Munnis, Kevin Morgan, Erwin Cameron, Eamonn McConvey and Eugene Galbraith – all very accomplished athletes, but they had to fend for themselves.

The net result in any sport where there is no performance structure in place is that top results do not happen. World-class high-performance sport in the 21st century is now an intensive, exhausting occupation where athletes are fully embroiled in sophisticated training regimes, utilising scientifically developed technologies that create long-term physiological and personality changes, as they progress through the higher levels of the sport to the ultimate prize of an Olympic gold medal. Lord Sebastian Coe, a double Olympic 1,500-metre champion and one of the finest sports administrators around, is a man I greatly admire. I meet him on occasion through my work, and I always listen intently to what he has to say. He has his finger on the pulse. When the Great Britain Olympic Team, of which I was a backroom member, had a hugely successful Olympics in Beijing in 2008, Coe stated:

What we have witnessed here is the amalgam of good administration within governing bodies, world-class coaching, elevated levels of funding and hungry and motivated competitors. If you bring these four things all together you tend to get people up on the rostrum. It is very important that we now recognise that there is no happy accident out there in the sports arena.

I had learned a big lesson in Denmark. Never again was I going to travel halfway around the world to arrive so tired that a day in bed was all I was able for, not a championship event.

Hawaii was indeed more than halfway around the world. When I looked for it on the world atlas it took me ages to find it: there it was, way off from the west coast of America, a speck of small dots. It was going to be another long journey to get there, maybe an Ironman journey in itself, even before the big event.

I was keen to know what the actual deal was going to be in terms of the “all expenses paid” trip to Hawaii. I reasoned that, to be able to do justice and represent Ireland in this toughest of events, I should get out to Hawaii at least two weeks before the race, to get over jet lag and the nine-hour time difference, plus to acclimatise to the heat and humidity. Everyone I spoke to agreed: “Wouldn't that be nice, two full weeks in paradise?”

What they didn't realise was that I was effectively going to jump into the sea and swim two and a half miles, jump on my bike and cycle from Limerick to Dublin, and run the Dublin City Marathon – all on the hottest summer's day you've ever seen in Ireland, plus another twenty degrees. An all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii back in 1985 was the ultimate trip and a free ride for some, but not for me.

I contacted Justin Nelson in RTÉ: “Justin, Gerard Hartmann here. Yes, the training is going great. I'm just phoning to find out what date has been organised for travelling to Hawaii?”

The Hawaii Ironman was scheduled for Saturday, October 26. I came off the phone scratching my head and totally confused. The plan was for me and the Irish contingent of seven athletes to depart from Dublin Airport on Tuesday, October 22, with the RTÉ personnel of Justin Nelson, Brendan O'Reilly and camera crew. The planned itinerary would involve almost two days of travel to get to this speck of an island on the Thursday, two days before the race.

I was fuming. Denmark and the Half Ironman weeks earlier did not seem too bad after all. I phoned my good friend in Sligo, Pat Curley. Pat completely understood my plight and put in a few phone calls for me, but they fell on deaf ears. The budget for the RTÉ programme televising the 1985 Hawaii Ironman had been decided and there was apparently no room for manoeuvre.

I put pen to paper and wrote to the Irish event sponsors Premier Dairies and their head man Frank Nolan. Premier Dairies had pumped over £20,000 into the Sligo All-Ireland Triathlon, as they were its key sponsors along with Puma. The requirement was that every competitor in the All-Ireland Triathlon had to wear a competition shirt emblazoned with a large Premier Dairies logo on the front and a smaller Puma logo. Premier Dairies agreed to sponsor us for the Ironman and the deal would be the same as for the triathlon: the Irish competitors would wear the gear provided and live by the mantra “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

That was fine, but I was the star athlete. Nice, the previous year, had been a watershed, when I had ended up in hospital because of an accident. So, this time I risked my trip and made it clear to them that I would not compete in Hawaii unless a reasonable deal was struck to fund me to go to Hawaii two weeks beforehand. I had no reply to the letter I sent to Frank Nolan at Premier Dairies or the copy of it I'd sent on to RTÉ. I'd kept a photocopy, so I sat down and put pen to paper again and sent off the two letters as if the previous had never been sent, only this time registering both. I reasoned that if these boys were messing with me, while I was breaking my arse training three and four times per day, then they were fooling no one. After a couple of weeks waiting for a reply, I phoned Frank Nolan and explained that if Premier Dairies did not fully fund my trip to Hawaii on the earlier date that I requested, I would seek additional sponsorship myself to fund it. Their loss was going to be someone else's gain, and there would be red faces galore for all the wrong reasons.

I knew John O'Donnell, one of the stalwarts of Limerick Athletic Club, who worked for many years with Guinness. John had qualified for the 1948 Olympic Games as a sprinter but missed out due to administrative issues. He knew firsthand how vital it was to travel early and acclimatise. John made an appointment for me to meet Guinness's head of marketing PJ McAlister.

PJ and I struck a deal: Guinness would fund me £2,000 and in return I would wear the Guinness logo on my competition kit. It did not matter that, back then − and to this day − I was one of the few Irishmen who had never even tasted Guinness, never mind drank a full pint of the black stuff. What ructions would develop did not become apparent until a couple of days before the race in Hawaii.

After what happened in Nice the year before, my mother was not going to let her 23-year-old son travel to the remote island of Hawaii on his own. The day before travelling, I cycled from Limerick to Kilkee in Clare and back, a full 112 miles – the same distance I was going to cycle in Hawaii, though of course I knew the experiences would be worlds apart. Cycling for five and a half hours on a wet September day in the west of Ireland bore no similarity to cycling 112 miles in temperatures close to 100°F across lava fields on a windswept paradise island. After getting off the bike in Limerick, I then ran thirteen miles. I came home, had a good feed and spent another hour taking the bike apart and packing it safely into a big box padded with Styrofoam that had been kindly made for me by a factory in Askeaton, without charge.