Born to Perform (7 page)

My words alone would not have had the same impact as the handwritten evidence. Premier Dairies and Frank Nolan received a stiff rebuttal from the Irish Triathlon Association, who stood up for its leading competitor and stated: “This type of behaviour from a large organisation is unacceptable.”

Still, the loss of the sponsorship was a blow. However, Pat Curley, the All-Ireland Triathlon organiser, was unfazed. RTÉ producer Justin Nelson once again committed to covering the 1986 Sligo event – so all was not lost. As it turned out, a new sponsor was announced within months, in the form of Sligo–Leitrim-based North Connacht Farmers Co-operative Society (NCF). Like Premier, NCF was a dairy business – and the 1986 event would be titled the NCF All-Ireland Triathlon.

The NCF sponsorship was actually a far better fit: it was a north-west business supporting the biggest sporting event in the north-west region. Their head of marketing Michael Hughes saw the potential of having me on board as a flag bearer for their dairy and meat products. He travelled to Limerick and we agreed a contract.

8

The Magic of Lasse Virén

Kilkee is a sleepy west Clare beach resort that comes alive every summer, and has served as a holiday retreat for many families, mostly Limerick people, for over 100 years. As I mentioned, ever since the age of three I have holidayed in Kilkee, and it has a special place in my heart.

My family own a home on the promenade, and on summer Saturday evenings in my triathlon training days, I would regularly lock up the jewellery shop on the dot of 5.30 p.m., gear up and ride out of Limerick on my road bike, head west past Ennis, on towards Kilrush – nearly always against the prevailing west wind – and arrive in Kilkee in two hours and forty minutes. Then I'd have a quick meal and bed down in preparation for my biggest training day of the week.

Getting up and out early on a Sunday morning in Kilkee is like waking up to a deserted village. At 7.00 a.m. the only semblance of activity is young people heading home from a hard night on the town. My normal routine had me in the water by 8.00 a.m. for my first of two one-mile swims that day. The second swim, after Mass, would be followed by lunch, and then it was time to gear up and cycle the 56 miles back to Limerick, 20 or so minutes faster than the cycle out with some assistance from the wind, to arrive at my home on the Ennis Road. Then I'd quickly change into running attire – as speedy as I'd have to be in a triathlon – and tackle an eleven-mile run back out the Ennis Road towards Cratloe and to the back gates of the Cratloe Forest. I'd touch the gate as a marker that I made it, record the split time on my Timex Triathlon watch, and keep the momentum going until I reached home, often clocking through 10 miles in 54 minutes and breaking the hour for 11 miles.

It was on one of my many swims in Kilkee Bay that I drummed up the idea of hosting a triathlon there. The Limerick Triathlon Club Committee agreed that it would serve as a great event, especially as we were to do it four or five weeks before the Sligo Triathlon. On a good summer's day in Kilkee, there is nowhere better in the world to be than participating in the Kilkee Triathlon, but on an inclement day, with west winds howling, just finishing the Hell of the West becomes a challenge in itself.

The race has been run every year by Limerick Triathlon Club since 1985, and starts and finishes in front of my family's summer home on the promenade, just beside the band stand. Every triathlete in Ireland wants to do the Kilkee Triathlon, with its 1,500-metre sea swim, 45-kilometre bike ride and 10-kilometre run.

I was fortunate to have won five Kilkee Triathlons in my prime, and when I think back on the success and enjoyment of that event, I am reminded that my involvement in sport very nearly didn't happen at all.

As a young boy, I was full of energy and always getting into trouble. I was tall and lanky, and had two left feet, as they say. I was cast aside in the school I attended as being a “messer”, and too goofy and clumsy to be any good at sport. I hung around the school with fellow troublemakers, dragging on cigarette butts at the back of old prefab buildings. I was a real messer alright and needed an outlet for my energy.

One day I was called up to the front of the classroom for eating sweets during class. The teacher reached into his cassock and withdrew a long leather strap. I received four of the best on my right hand, four of the best on my left, four of the best across both knuckles and a full belt of the leather strap across both sides of my face. In total hostility I drew my right leg back. I was hardly able to kick a football but I propelled my leg forward and kicked with great force the front of the teacher's leg. I was immediately suspended, and I never set foot inside that school again.

It was in Kilkee in the summer of 1972 that I was saved from impending trouble. I was staying at the Strand Hotel with my parents and sister. My parents had their hands full to keep tabs on me. Every afternoon and evening, people crowded into a large function room to glue themselves to the television to watch the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. As an eleven-year-old, I was hardly interested. I had never even heard of the Olympic Games. Olga Korbut of the USSR team was the star of gymnastics. The North American swimmer Mark Spitz was the sensation in the pool.

Then curiosity took hold of me when I witnessed the Russian sprinter Valeri Borzov win the 100 metres. A Northern Irish woman was also interviewed and she had won the Olympic gold in the pentathlon. The commentator was a young Brendan O'Reilly and the athlete being interviewed was Mary Peters. Over and over again, they showed the pentathlon competition in which Mary Peters had beaten her rival, the German Heidi Rosenthal. Then came Finnish athlete Lasse Virén, who tripped on the track with a Tunisian runner. He got up immediately, having lost twenty metres, but he just gave a quick glance to the lead runners ahead and bridged the gap within half a lap. That impressed me to no end. He was down but not out. He went on to win that 10,000 metres.

Just like that, I had found something to eat up my energy. My parents looked out the hotel window at their son and daughter playing Olympics on the beach. A line was drawn in the sand and I'd take off, sprinting like hell, and my sister would measure the performance. Barefoot, I'd run two lengths of the beach and sprint the last 50 metres, pretending I was Lasse Virén, and collapse into the sand. I did not need a coach or teacher to show me the way. I had found a sport myself that I could enjoy. Seven years later, the boy who was a “messer”, who was too clumsy for sport, was bound for the US on a running scholarship to chase his dream.

I often wonder what would have happened if I had not witnessed those Olympic Games in 1972. One thing I could never have guessed back then was that my talents in another area would take me to several Olympics, working with the best athletes in the world.

What this experience shows is the importance of environmental conditioning, how it affects us both positively and negatively, and the importance of role models and encouragement. When I see TV programmes that are distasteful, violent and showing anti-social behaviour, I cannot but think of the negative impact that they can have on young children in particular.

I believe we are all born to be positive but conditioned to be negative. We all need encouragement and good role models. If we mix with people who are positive, cheerful, enthusiastic and expecting the best; if we are lucky to have parents and teachers who are supportive, encouraging and fair, then we have a good chance of being positive, cheerful and successful.

In my young life I was somehow conditioned to dislike school and to dislike sport. I had a bad experience at the hands of a teacher. Watching a small black-and-white TV in 1972 changed my life. Lasse Virén, Mary Peters and Valeri Borzov ignited a flame in me which still burns strong to this day. Being involved in sport gave purpose and meaning to my life. At the same time, it relieved a lot of pressure on my parents, as they really had no idea what to do with their hyperactive son.

Sport has shaped my life, has helped me to form values and has given me something very purposeful to do, and, indeed, dream for. One thing I am sure of is that every human being has been born with God-given talents. As an athlete, and now as a physical therapist, I feel blessed to have found my talents. At the same time, it frustrates me to see individuals with talents not using them or, worse still, squandering, abusing and disrespecting these talents. Everyday I am grateful for the talents and the opportunities that I have been given. These things can never be taken for granted – they give me reasons for appreciating them every day, but also to encourage youth, and people of all ages, to get involved in sport.

In 1979 I dreamed all year of winning one race in the All-Ireland Schools' Track and Field Championship. I had finished second the previous year, but I felt this was to be my victory year. I was beaten on the day by a very talented runner. He was a class act. Sometime later, at the 1986 World Triathlon Championships in Nice, he spotted me sitting in a restaurant. It had been seven years since we'd last met. He was overweight, and he explained to me his story − how he regretted not pursuing his athletic dreams.

In 1980 he was offered an athletic scholarship to the US, and, even though it was what he dreamed of doing, he instead went straight into his family business. It was obvious to me, sitting in the restaurant in Nice, that he was not happy.

A couple of years later, he took his own life. His sudden death shocked me. Here was a young man who had more athletic talent than me but did not follow his dream. I thought hard. I prayed hard. I made a pact with myself that I would use my talents to my best capability. I would always follow my star and do in life what was right for me.

Not long after this, I sadly witnessed the tragic death of one of my primary school friends. In fact, I saw him fall to his death from a window on the fifth floor of a building. I was standing twenty feet away when he impacted the street. The scene will live with me forever: looking up to where he had fallen from, the window wide open.

Moments later, a window three floors lower opened, and I saw his mother looking down at her son on the pavement. Within a minute, she was on the street covering her son's dead body with a blanket. To this day, a cold shiver goes down my spine when I recall that dreadful tragedy.

Sadly, of my 28 classmates from primary school, 3 ended their own lives. I have known nine men who have taken their lives. I think about them every day and wonder had they no hope, no vision or no purpose. Was their darkness so great they could see no light? Was the burden of life or self-imposed expectation too great? Were they not lucky enough to find their talents, their calling in life? I can only imagine the pain that they went through, and that of their families and friends. Suicide is a complex and perplexing subject, and is one that, unfortunately, is not going away.

I encourage people to follow their dreams, to go with their hearts. Invariably, if they do something that they love and are enthusiastic about, they are most likely to be successful and, more importantly, happy.

I think back on a poem I used to insert in my training diaries:

Follow Your Star

Follow your star

Whatever it is,

Don't be easily put down

By the pessimist's frown.

The goal that you set

In whatever line,

If you believe you can do it

Hope must never decline.

Though others may try

To push you aside;

Be steadfast, be resolute,

Go with confident stride.

To some measure of failure,

You may have to succumb.

No distress, no depression,

Success will soon come.

Your very own person

Resolve now to be,

And your Star you will reach,

Just try and you'll see.

(
Author Unknown
)

Now, more than ever, it is important to follow your star. The Celtic Tiger created havoc in people's lives. It created a false sense of being invincible. There was no reality. People took things for granted. The simple things in life lost meaning. It stormed in and people lost faith, direction, hope, and their values and ideals. Materialism ruled and the simple ways of life suffered. From reading the newspapers, anyone can see that the drink and drug culture has reached epidemic proportions, with many people using drugs to escape from pain and depression, and many more to make up for a lack of meaning and purpose in their lives.

I believe that sport and recreation are the ways forward. Everyone at some stage builds up frustration and anger – but whether it is triathlon, running, swimming, tennis, a game of five-a-side soccer, a bike ride or whatever sport, there is no better antidote, no better stress and anxiety reliever, than physical activity. It clears the mind, rids the body of unwanted stress and completely recharges the batteries.

9

The World Championships in Nice, 1986

Pat Curley was the master of drumming up interest in the Sligo All-Ireland Triathlon. He would phone me regularly and tell me how big the race was going to be this year and who he had coming in from abroad to challenge me for the title. He phoned me up in the first week of January 1986 to tell me that Tom Heaney, Noel Munnis and Eamon McConvey up North had given up their jobs and were training full time. He did not need to do a sales job on me − I was already wired and eager to win the three-in-a-row − but nonetheless his gamesmanship pressed my buttons further.

In April 1986, I received a written invitation to travel to Japan for the Japanese International Triathlon. The Japanese were famous for their fascination with marathon running and were now taking triathlon as seriously. They invited the top-30 finishers from both the Hawaii Ironman and the World Triathlon Championships from the previous season to their event on July 20, 1986. It was an honour to have been invited, but politics in sport intervened and showed its ugly side again. The policy was that the national federations were also informed of the invite. Thus, Gerard Hartmann, who had been placed 24th in the 1985 World Ironman Championships, received an invitation from Con O'Callaghan of the Irish Triathlon Association to compete in an international distance triathlon – a 1,500-metre swim, 40-kilometre cycle and 10-kilometre run – in Lurgan, Co. Armagh on May 17, along with the top 20 male triathletes and the top 10 female triathletes in Ireland, to determine who would go to Japan. I was 25 years old and working full time in my family's business earning £60 per week. I did not own a car and now I had to get myself to Belfast. My ever-reliable club mate Michael Carroll agreed to drive the forty miles from Roscrea to collect me in Limerick and take me on the five-hour journey to Belfast. The event was scheduled for the Saturday morning, with a 10.00 a.m. start at Lurgan Swimming Complex. We arrived late the night before and I put my bike together. I arrived at the start the following morning wearing a poker face, wanting to get the race started and won, and then to clear out of there as quickly as possible.

Tom Heaney, the Northern Irish star, was a Commonwealth swimmer and had been winning all the short races in the North. This was the Irish Triathlon Association's chance to put Hartmann up against Heaney, on his turf, and to try to give him a lever up to an international event. Tom Heaney, with his swimming proficiency, including the fancy tumble-turning, meant one thing only: he was going to make mincemeat of me in the swim and build up a huge five-minute advantage, which I surely could not make up.

Sure enough, Tom exited the swimming pool a full five minutes ahead of my poor swim performance. I pulled back two minutes on the bike and started the run three minutes behind him. Almost straightaway I was on his tail, and I caught him at the three-mile mark. With that, I kept the momentum and finished five minutes ahead. Michael Carroll put my bike in the car while I showered and we cleared out of the place as quickly as possible, just as we had planned.

Unfortunately, the Kilkee Triathlon was on the day I was due to fly from Shannon to Amsterdam for a long-haul flight to Narita Airport, Tokyo. But I could not miss Kilkee, so I took part and won the event by nine minutes, with my dad on standby to drive me to the airport. I had used my training bike in the race. We just about made the check-in. Had I thought too much about the logistics, I would never have chanced taking part; but, when you are young and eager, everything and anything is possible.

In Japan, the triathletes were treated with the utmost respect. All the athletes stayed in Tokyo for one night and the following day we were put in a five-star private carriage on the bullet train to Sendai. I had the Kilkee Triathlon in my legs, plus jet lag and travel tiredness, but Japan was wonderful and I finished in sixth place.

The NCF All-Ireland Triathlon was five weeks later and, true to his word, Pat Curley had lined up a top challenge. Mike Harris, the British triathlon champion, and a 2-hour-and-17-minute marathon runner, had the pedigree to win. Jim Bell from Florida had finished 32nd in the Hawaii Ironman, so he was going to be tough opposition too. Rick Conway, a top-class American, was quietly confident. Philip Gabel from Australia had the impressive credential of being their triathlon champion in a country where triathlon was already very popular, and he had just come from winning an elite event in Perth. And then there were the Northern athletes, who badly wanted to get their hands on the silverware and take it across the border. Suffice to say it was an anti-climax. I had trained too well. In Sligo that day I felt invincible. I had completed the full Half Ironman course in 4 hours, 4 minutes and 41 seconds – cycling a full 10 minutes faster than the finisher in second place, the British champion Mike Harris. I was in peak shape, and I couldn't wait to get back into training for five weeks' time when I would compete in the World Triathlon Championships in Nice.

The top athletes from all over the world were signed up for that event. It was the first time that the “big five” of the sport would face one another: Mark Allen, Dave Scott, Scott Tinley, Scott Molina and Mike Pigg. These five athletes dominated the sport of triathlon and Ironman. Then there were a dozen more American professional triathletes, headed by Ken Glah and Jeff Devlin of Team Foxcatcher. The French had their star in Yves Cordier, and the Dutch had European champion Rob Barel and their new star Axel Koenders. Also present were the British duo of Glen Cook and Bernie Shrosbree, and athletes from Australia, New Zealand, Japan and, of course, the top Germans Yogi Hofman, Jurgen Zack and Dirk Aschmoneit.

Nice had not been nice to me two years previously. This time I travelled there two weeks prior to the event in order to cycle the course a couple of times and ensure I got to know every twist and turn on the notoriously demanding and technical route. The two-mile swim in the ocean meant my weakest sport would lose me up to ten minutes on the top professionals. Triathlon was changing rapidly. It used to be that each athlete had a weak event, but now the top triathletes were training full time and any weaknesses were being shored up.

My running, off a strong bike ride, was my ace card, and I genuinely planned on running the twenty-mile race in under two hours. If I could run sub-six-minute miles for the whole distance, surely I would record the fastest run and get up into the top six.

On the Sunday before the event, I cycled back the coast to Cannes to watch cyclist Seán Kelly compete in the Grand Prix des Nations. At the time, this was the world time trial of professional bike racing. A time trial is where cyclists race against the clock. I leaned over a fence and beckoned at Monsieur Jean de Gribaldy, the
directeur sportif
of the KAS cycling team, and babbled out a few French words – and moments later Seán Kelly rolled over to say hello, just before he rode out on his warm-up lap. Laurent Fignon showed up on his special low-profile bike, all high tech looking. He was the man to beat. Seán Kelly was on his conventional road bike and still wore toe straps; he rode around the four laps grimacing in pain. Yet he won the race outright, to add another Super Prestige trophy to his status as the world's leading cyclist.

A couple of months later, Seán was to undergo a scientific physiological test. His measurements came up as lower than many of his professional cycling counterparts. Scientists puzzled over how he could ride so fast. Seán was never one to talk up and he listened to all their gibberish. In the end he just asked one question: “Does that fancy machine measure suffering?” Classic Seán Kelly! Whenever he did speak, he always made sense.

To Seán Kelly, suffering was just another subjective word. One person's description of suffering may pale in comparison to another true disciple of suffering. Seán Kelly earned a good fortune out of suffering, greater than most of his fellow talented professional cyclists.

The first Olympic champion I ever treated as a physical therapist was Anthony Nesty from Suriname, the first black athlete to win a gold medal in swimming. His distance was the 100-metre butterfly, just 2 lengths of the 50-metre pool. Anthony was on a swimming scholarship at the University of Florida where I was doing my sports injuries practicum. He opened my eyes to the true meaning of suffering. I sat down by the pool side for two hours and witnessed Anthony follow a 1-kilometre warm-up with 100 x 100 metres, coming in at 60–62 seconds for every 100 metres, and taking off again every 70 seconds, barely getting 8 to 10 seconds to recover between each 100 metres. That was 200 lengths of the 50-metre pool at very, very high intensity. To witness commitment like that was truly amazing.

I asked Anthony what was the purpose of such a body-and-mind wrenching regime, and he answered: “To go where I or nobody has ever gone before − that gives me the confidence and edge to believe I am unbeatable.”

I also had the pleasure of working with the Algerian athlete Noureddine Morceli from 1993 to 1996. At the time, he was holder of the 1,500 metres and the mile world records, and he became Olympic champion of the 1,500 metres in 1996, in Atlanta. I sat trackside at the University of Florida to witness him run 8 x 400 metres, running each 400 metres at under 52 seconds. Most amazing was that, after each 400-metre run, he stood in place for 60 seconds, hands on his knees, grasping for oxygen to recover. Then off he would go again, like clockwork.

He suffered like I had never seen any runner suffer. Most athletes jog 200 metres between hard efforts. That has the physiological effect of distributing and dispensing accumulated lactic acid. In effect, you make it easier when you jog between fast efforts. Not Morceli. By standing on the spot, he was incurring acidosis and lactic acid at the highest level. His strategy was to make it so demanding that it was mind over matter, suffering at its most severe, and he mastered it better than any of his competitors.

Kelly Holmes would also double over in pain during intensive track training speed sessions. Paula Radcliffe pushed herself to a point of suffering so intensely that her heart rate would reach 211 beats per minute, and the world would wonder at how the English girl with the nodding head could run the marathon in 2 hours and 15 minutes − a staggering 5 minutes, 11 seconds per mile − for 26 miles back-to-back. This was the product of pure suffering. Maybe non-believers of true, clean human performance should witness such suffering. Then they may become believers.

A number of years ago, Seán Kelly invited me over to Belgium and we joined the greatest cyclist of all time Eddy Merckx in a 90-mile cycling event. Merckx was nicknamed “The Cannibal” in his prime, and now he was in his fifties. Off the bike, he looked a healthy size of a man, probably 15 kilogrammes above his heyday racing weight. On the bike, he sat in the middle of the group like a grand marshal watching every move. With twenty miles remaining, all hell broke lose. The race for the finish line was on. Each cyclist was fixed to the rivet and there was big Eddy Merckx dishing out the pain. Going at 28–30 miles per hour, he had suddenly come alive. He was in the territory that excited him. His domain was pain and suffering, and he could call upon it when it counted.

On the physio table I have dished out plenty of pain to my clients over the years, and I have put athletes through seriously tough prehabilitation and rehabilitation programmes, to both prevent injury and expedite healing. I am frequently asked who of all the athletes I've worked with can take the most pain. From 1996 to 2003 I had the pleasure of putting the great giant of Irish rugby Keith Wood through many torturous treatments. On each occasion, I had to muster up all my strength and resolve to treat the great man, as the harder the treatment the better he responded − and he always won. He'd often shatter me, in fact, and I'd have to rest up and ice my hands after squaring up to him. Indeed, nobody I've met could come even close to the level of pain Keith Wood could take. Now that he is eight years retired and a little softened up, I can get the better of him, but in his day he would have gone through a brick wall for Ireland. Paula Radcliffe is well known as one of the toughest of all the great runners. She can suffer on the physio table like no other woman, and take it all in her stride.

I had to put myself through some pain and suffering at the World Triathlon Championship in Nice that October of 1986. It started and finished along the Promenade des Anglais, and I was having a cracker of a race.

The two-mile sea swim had been a rough affair, but I had a respectable performance. The 77-mile cycle course was one of the most demanding and technical in the sport of triathlon. I had one of the leading bike times, and arrived at the bike-to-run transition in 33rd position. Running out across the timing mat, I started my own stopwatch to time each mile of the twenty-mile course, and I tried to run just a shade under six-minutes per mile. I went through the ten-mile marker at just under sixty minutes – right on target. Running past athletes who had overcooked themselves gave me tremendous encouragement. The sun had risen high in the sky and the temperature was 82°F.

It was 2.00 p.m. now, with six miles to go, when I started getting dizzy. I had neglected to drink fluid, and, with the ocean breeze wiping away the sweat, I did not realise how dehydrated I had become. The famous Negresco Hotel, with its pink dome, loomed in the distance. It was a landmark I knew well from training up and down the promenade. It was still a good three miles to the finish and I was running, but slowly. I crossed the line in fourteenth position, having run the twenty miles in two hours and eight minutes. It was a good run by anyone else's standard, but at least eight minutes down on what I planned, which meant the difference between finishing fourteenth and being placed in the top six. I was hard on myself. My expectations were high but, on reflection, I consoled myself that I had progressed from 24th place the previous year to 14th – a significant improvement. “Roll on the winter,” I thought, “so I can get my swimming weakness sorted out.”