Born to Perform (8 page)

Mark Allen won the race. His running time was two hours and three minutes, and he once again proved that, in Nice, in his prime, he was unbeatable.

10

Reaching the Top of My Game

I have worked with over 60 Olympic medal winners over the past 21 years. Some I would not waste away the time of day talking to – and yet for most I would down tools straight away and value every moment in their company.

On December 1, 1956, Ronnie Delany won the Olympic gold medal for the 1,500 metres, and five years later I was born. Growing up, I would never have imagined that a man who I had never witnessed competing in the flesh would have such an influence on me.

As I mentioned, I first met Ronnie Delany in the Sligo Park Hotel on June 17, 1984, just a few hours before winning my first All-Ireland Triathlon. Ronnie sat watching me scoffing my face with a breakfast fit to serve an army, and he quietly chuckled to himself. It was several years later when he first explained to me that he reckoned we had something in common – and it wasn't the gold medal.

At age 22, when Ronnie was a student at Villanova University in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, he was often invited out for Sunday lunch to the family home of a fellow student. Yet, for an hour beforehand, Ronnie would have a full meal, unknown to his hosts. He'd then play hungry and eat another full meal.

That similarity aside, I was fortunate to meet in Ronnie a kindred spirit, a man who has helped me over the years as both a mentor and role model. Men like Ronnie Delany are something of a dying breed. He has the elegance, the poise, the diplomacy, the polished voice to carry being a champion of his people, and, quite frankly, he is the perfect gentleman.

I got to compete in Japan on several occasions and, aside from enjoying the excellent hospitality and triathlon competition, I gleaned a very important lesson from the Japanese people − I witnessed firsthand the respect and value they have for their elders. Even the poor old man on the street is respected and, indeed, streetwise, with an interesting story to tell and a lesson to share. Ronnie Delany is the elder statesman of Irish sport – it's sometimes hard to believe that he is Ireland's most recent Olympic gold medal winner on the track, now 55 years ago. He is a wise old owl, with so much wisdom to offer the listening ear.

I later started meeting Ronnie on a more formal basis at his office in Fitzwilliam Square in 1986, and he not only helped me with some sponsorship contacts, but, more importantly, he gave me confidence to think on global terms rather than on a parochial level. It was clear to Ronnie that if I could finish fourteenth in the World Triathlon Championship, while training in Ireland and working full time, I should give triathlon a full-time shot. Ronnie was thinking big, and thinking way outside the small boxes of sponsorship available in Ireland.

During his years at Villanova University, Ronnie got to know the American billionaire John E. du Pont, an heir to the DuPont chemical fortune. Du Pont had funded a new basketball arena at Villanova University, which was opened in 1986 and aptly named the du Pont Pavilion. He also built the state-of-the-art Foxcatcher National Training Centre on the 800-acre Foxcatcher property in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania – which was the original du Pont family homestead. Within the facility was a 50-metre Olympic swimming pool for the exclusive use of the Foxcatcher Swim Team and Foxcatcher Triathlon Team.

Ronnie brokered a contract with John du Pont to include me on the Foxcatcher Triathlon Team of 1988. I would be fully supported by the team, including having residence on the site. Two of the top athletes who I knew from Hawaii and Nice, Kenny Glah and Jeff Devlin, were already Team Foxcatcher athletes. It was all very interesting and promising. A few loose ends had to be tied up, but I started looking forward to the 1987 Triathlon season with renewed vigour. I believed that, with a structured training programme, away from the duress of fitting training in around a full working day and standing on my feet serving customers, I could certainly go a lot further in this sport.

In the spring of 1987, I increased the training volume and took part in two short course triathlons – which I won easily – before going back to Japan for the Japanese International Triathlon. One of those short course triathlons was the Cork Triathlon, three weeks before the trip to Japan – and such was my focus that, on the morning of the Cork race, I cycled the 60 miles from Limerick to Cork, won the triathlon by 4 minutes, and cycled 30 miles back towards Limerick, before eventually taking a lift home the rest of the way.

The Japanese Triathlon was on June 28, 1987, three weeks before the Kilkee Triathlon and nine weeks before the All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo. The event was staged in the city of Nihondaira, and I set a new record for the fastest 10-kilometre run in a triathlon yet recorded. After a sluggish but much improved 1,500-metre swim in 20 minutes flat, still 3 minutes behind the leaders, I cycled strongly to move up to ninth place after the 40-kilometre bike ride, then ran the race of my life to record 31 minutes and 4 seconds for the 10-kilometre run, and with that finished in third place overall, just half a minute outside winning the race outright.

I was reaching a new level and the future looked bright. The athlete one place behind me, Scott Molina, later went on to win the Hawaii Ironman, although shortly afterwards dramatically failed a drugs test. He also revealed a special piece of equipment in Japan that the world had not seen beforehand. Thankfully, Molina did not introduce me to performance-enhancing drugs, but he did spend time showing me his peculiar cow-horn handlebars on his bike. At the time I thought they looked hideous, but I was intrigued. They were total prototypes, made from plumber's piping and simply welded together, designed by Boone Lennon of Scott USA. Lennon worked as a designer of downhill skiing equipment for Scott USA, but he also had a fascination with cycling and time trial events, and trying to pioneer equipment to cheat the wind.

Lennon made up a prototype of the handlebars and tried to get local cyclists to experiment using them, but most of these cyclists were too moulded in conventional ways and sneered at these cow horn contraptions. But not Scott Molina. Triathlon was getting very competitive and very fast, and, legal or not, Molina tried out the cow-horn aerodynamic handlebars – which later become known as tri-bars or time trial bars.

Molina gave me Boone Lennon's phone number in California and ten days later a delivery came to my door from DHL. My handlebars had arrived. My local bike mechanic John Loughran, at Siopa Rothar in Limerick, wasn't convinced, but he fitted them to my bicycle stem, having to cut up an old can of Coke to use as shimming, as the copper pipe was narrower than the circumference of the stem. But, with that, they were attached to my bike, and I was the first triathlete in Europe to sport these tri-bars.

Two years later in the Tour de France, French man Laurent Fignon had a 52-second lead on Greg LeMond going into the final day, which happened to be a time trial. LeMond was the blonde American, the outsider, and he had a secret ace up his sleeve that nobody saw until he rolled out on the time trial course. He cheated the wind with his clip-on time trial bars, clawed back the time deficit and actually won by eight seconds – the closest margin in Tour de France history.

LeMond, a world road-race champion in 1983 and 1989, and a three-time Tour de France winner, became an icon of the cycling world. He has shown to me how small the world is when connected by sport. LeMond and his wife Kathy have come to Limerick for the past four years. He rides the BDO charity fundraising cycle from Limerick to Doonbeg, stays and holidays at Doonbeg Golf Resort and walks the promenade in Kilkee, a stone's throw from Doonbeg. We have named the fitness studio beside my sports injury clinic at the University Arena at the University of Limerick “The Greg LeMond Fitness Suite”, and he recently donated ten LeMond revolution cycle trainers to the centre – a champion in sport, a champion in life.

Cycling is rooted in rules and regulations. The world governing body of cycling, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), has actively and consistently stymied the march of technology in recent years, hiding behind the argument of the Olympic ideology that it should be the man, and not the machine, that determines the outcome of the race. The UCI clamped down on bike design – famously banning monocoque frames and the “Superman” position, following Graeme Obree's famous homemade bikes with which he claimed several world titles and set world records.

Despite limitations, aerodynamic technology marches on. It is a never-ending pursuit and improvements can always be made. The prototype aerodynamic bars that I unveiled in 1987 were not the most advanced, and yet, ever since then, thanks to the aerodynamic advantage of such aero handlebars, saving time, wattage and drag in the time trial became the raison d'être for many serious bicycle manufacturers.

I turned up in Kilkee in 1987 for the “Hell of the West” Triathlon and, for the first time in my triathlon career, I exited the water first. I then produced a course record on the bike ride and won the race by over ten minutes. I was on fire, as they say – although it was to be short-lived. One of life's great ironies is that, just when everything is going well, things can fall apart very suddenly.

Edward Smith, then editor of
Triathlon Ireland
magazine
,
wrote this article in the lead-up to the 1987 All-Ireland Triathlon in Sligo:

Will the sun shine and the seas roar at Rosses Point? Which of the competitors will be last off the dance floor at the Sligo Park Hotel? Will Superman Desi McHenry arrive on his microlite and do the biathlon before the triathlon? Will ITA president Maurice Mullins really grow a beard if Gerry Kelly passes him or visa-versa? Will Yeats again turn in his grave as the All-Ireland Triathlon “tour” streaks past his tombstone?

All these are of course burning issues. But of secondary importance I think to the ultimate question of the 1987 All-Ireland Traithlon. Can anyone stop the unstoppable and prevent the Limerick locomotive Gerard Hartmann from winning his fourth title in a row?

I am in a good position to make an assessment, having travelled to the far-flung places of Clare and the sleepy resort of Kilkee for the Munster Championships last month to make copious notes, and I have to tell you that things don't look good.

They call the Munster Championship the “Hell of the West” triathlon. It was well named, but such was the hospitality and the bonhomie that there was little time for note taking. But the message was clear at a Kilkee event that is a son of Sligo and perfect staging post on the way to the All-Ireland Championship. Hartmann, not only helped organise, instruct and start the race at Kilkee, but he found time to win without ever using fifth gear by a huge ten-minute margin.

I can reveal further information which will give you food for thought. The great man unveiled a new secret weapon – a handlebar extension to his Raleigh triathlon bike which is undoubtedly the first of its kind in use in Europe and perhaps further afield. If the top American pros gave us the upturned handle bar, this goes further [by] providing a place to rest your arms – the idea being to further cut down the wind resistance. Hartmann reckons it could save him 2 minutes in 25 miles over conventional racing handlebars. From the front it looks like a charging bull and after watching it in action in Kilkee I have no reason to doubt its effectiveness.

For those who seek to topple the King from his crown they must realise that [as] his superb third place in Japan (which saw Scott Molina placed 4th) proved, he never rests in terms of perfecting his performance. But simply he is getting better and there is no reason why the triathlete who has put Ireland on the global compass should not make a top placing in the World Championships in Nice come October.

Now, being from the North, I'll be accused of bias by suggesting that his main threat will come from that quarter, but first let me deal with the talent emerging from the Limerick Triathlon Club as glimpsed at Kilkee. They again look very strong to retain their title in Sligo with Victor Hurley and Frank Nash who finished third and fourth but those are not yet within shouting distance of their inspirational leader.

No, it is to the North we must look and the person of Ards triathlete Tom Heaney. He has been a revelation this season following a fine 14th at the European Sprint Championships in Marseilles earlier in the year. He has been unbeaten in local competition and is now a very talented triathlete. The one question mark is whether he has yet the stamina to sustain the sort of effort he'll require over the Half Ironman distance.

The other factor is the American and English challenge. […] Watch out […] for Rick Conway and Philip Gabel from America.

But no one prepares better for Sligo than Hartmann and the best view the rest of the field may have of him is a rear view.

11

Injury

Limerick City quickly embraced the triathlon – and in many ways Limerick, or “Sporting Limerick”, as it is known, is the spiritual home of triathlon in Ireland. With over 300 members, Limerick Triathlon Club, since its inception in 1984, has provided champions on the competition and political front. An amendment to the Irish Triathlon Association constitution ensured that the role of president of the association would move each term from province to province. Con O'Callaghan handed over to Leinster and Maurice Mullins of Dublin. Towards the end of his term, Maurice contacted me. It was going to be Munster's stint to provide a president, and in fact Maurice looked to me to take on the role. If it was not assumed by a Munster delegate then it would revert to Ulster. I was uneasy about taking on a political role. As Ireland's leading competitor, I did not want to wear two hats, and I was also waiting for the season to end to go to the US to start my new venture with Team Foxcatcher.

Maurice Mullins was pressurising me more. When travelling down from Dublin with Limerick Triathlon Club member Tom O'Donnell, a Limerick solicitor and now Judge Tom O'Donnell, I put it to him whether he would consider taking the role. After much persuading, Tom agreed to take the baton, and with that became president of the Irish Triathlon Association.

At this stage, the International Triathlon Union had not been founded. There were growing tensions between the US triathlon organisation, the Triathlon Federation USA, and the European Triathlon Union and its chairman, Con O'Callaghan. Globally, the sport of triathlon was almost growing too fast, and the politics at the international level operated on a knife edge. The Europeans were leading the way in getting their organisation in order, but the Americans were not exactly too impressed. They considered triathlon their sport, indeed their baby, and there was no love lost between the two organisations. A sort of tug-of-war ensued, distracting the sport from the real issues necessary to move it forward. Tom O'Donnell was later elected president of the European Triathlon Union, and Limerick Triathlon Club was the top club in the country. In me the club had the best triathlete in the country, and it also had a group of athletes who'd won All-Ireland Triathlon team and relay titles.

As I said, when things are going too well, it is time to watch out. I was 6' 2” and weighed 11 stone, 4 pounds – I was at my fittest. I had honed and chiselled myself into shape by training harder than anyone else in Ireland. On a Sunday morning, three weeks before the 1987 All-Ireland Triathlon, I was finishing up an 80-mile cycle. I was within four miles of Limerick City on the main Dublin–Limerick road, at what's known as the Richie Clifford Railway Gates, where the railway tracks cross the main road at a perpendicular angle. It was wet; I had my head down propelling my machine at a moderate 22 miles per hour on a routine over distance spin. All of a sudden, I was skimming across the tracks from left to right, and I fell down on my side. I was grazed and gashed, and I was shaken and a little shocked. But, within minutes, I'd licked my pride and saddled up again for the short ride home.

I realised almost straight away what had caused the crash: when lorries and general traffic stop at the railways gates, they keep their engines on and oil and petrol seep onto the road. I had hit a skating rink. To this day, I still bless myself every time I cross those tracks, as the man above was looking after me that day. It was a small miracle that on the main, busy Limerick–Dublin road there was no traffic heading outwards.

Within days, I knew I was in trouble. With any attempt to run, I had severe pain in my pelvis and hip. I could swim and I could cycle, but even standing in the same spot, while working in the jewellery shop, I was twisting to one side to avoid the pain.

One week before the All-Ireland Triathlon, I managed a three-mile run, but I was hobbling. I didn't have a coach; I had nobody to explain my plight to. I stayed positive. I assured myself that I could wing it on the day. I could swim and cycle at full capacity and build up a lead of ten minutes, and even with an 80 per cent effort on the run I would somehow manage to win.

In Sligo, before the start of the triathlon, I was interviewed by Brendan O'Reilly of RTÉ. I told him there wasn't any competitor in the race that worried me. That much was true − I was not worried about another competitor; I feared my own ability to run. The invincible athlete I had been just weeks earlier was replaced by a façade, an outward face of confidence. Inwardly, I was unsure if I could even run the half marathon on a course that I previously made light work of.

Tom Heaney from Newtownards, Co. Down was having a blinder. He stormed into the run with a four-minute lead on me, probably wondering why I was taking so long to catch him but suspecting I'd gobble him up on the run.

Mile after mile, Heaney was given a time check. He knew he was no great runner, but after ten miles, when the four-minute time difference was still the same, he must have said to himself, “Keep it going now, Tom. Another three miles and you are All-Ireland champion.” Well, Tom deserved to win that day. He had been training hard since winning the first-ever triathlon held in Ireland in Craigavon in 1982.

Should I have started, knowing I was carrying an injury? That is the same question I face frequently in my professional career. Should Paula Radcliffe have started the 2008 Olympic marathon in Beijing, coming off a sixteen-week injury? (She finished 26th.) Should Moses Kiptanui, unbeaten in steeplechase races, have competed while suffering with brucellosis in the 1996 Olympic Games? (He finished second.) Should Kilkenny Manager Brian Cody have played Henry Shefflin and John Tennyson, both nursing cruciate knee injuries, in the drive for five-in-a-row All-Ireland Hurling Championships in 2010? (Kilkenny lost.) Champions take risks and what makes them great can also break them.

Crossing the finish line in second place in the 1987 All-Ireland Triathlon was unfamiliar territory for me, but I had no idea that I was going to be eighteen months out of the sport I so loved, looking for a cure for my injury. It was to be two years to the date before Tom Heaney and I would do battle again.

Ronnie Delany phoned me to say he had some update for me regarding Team Foxcatcher. He was going to be in Limerick the following evening, presenting awards as chairperson of the Irish sports governing body Cospóir at a sports awards function. I was invited to meet Ronnie for breakfast at the Ardú Ryan Hotel on the Ennis Road – a stone's throw away from my family home. I was down but not out, although I had no idea that my injury was a chronic one that would put all my plans on hold.

I listened to Ronnie intently. It all sounded fascinating. I would be living on an 800-acre farmstead with trails to run on, a 50-metre Olympic pool and a gym. Plus I would have a triathlon coach. This was the stuff I dreamed of. In tying up the conversation, Ronnie drew closer and spoke in hushed fashion: “There is something you need to know about John du Pont. I don't know if you will have any dealings with him on a day-to-day basis, but I should explain to you that it is widely known that he is somewhat eccentric.”

Later that evening, in the excitement of telling my parents all about my breakfast meeting with Ronnie Delany, I mentioned that John du Pont was “something of a strange man”. My mother saw red, and discreetly made some inquiries stateside to decide if I was making a good choice in joining Team Foxcatcher.

John du Pont was a brilliant man, but he was unwell in the mind. Aside from sponsoring and owning Team Foxcatcher Swim and Triathlon teams, he himself was an accomplished athlete in wrestling, swimming, track and modern pentathlon. He was an ornithologist and wrote two books on the subject of birds. In fact, he is credited with the discovery of two dozen species of birds. He founded and funded the Delaware Museum of Natural History, which houses within its cabinets 2,500,000 seashells, innumerable skins and skeletons, and the preserved carcasses of 75,000 birds. He was also an avid stamp collector and in a 1980 auction he paid $935,000 for one of the rarest stamps in the world, the British Guiana 1856 1c black-on-magenta.

I never did get to meet John du Pont. My good friend Frank O'Mara, a two-time world indoor 3,000-metre champion and my college mate from the University of Arkansas, suggested I speak to David Swain. David ran track when I was at Arkansas, and he actually competed for Team Foxcatcher, running in triathlon relay events.

David Swain explained that the funding from Team Foxcatcher was fantastic, but that he personally had to stand all night in du Pont's bedroom, video camcorder in hand, videoing the floor as Mr du Pont was sure Gremlins or little creatures were coming out of the ground while he was sleeping. I had heard enough. Triathlon was my life, but I was getting a creepy feeling. The truth was that John du Pont suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

On January, 26 1996, du Pont shot dead wrestler and Olympic gold medallist Dave Schultz in the driveway of Schultz's home, which was on du Pont's 800-acre estate. Schultz's wife and du Pont's head of security both witnessed the crime. He was out of his mind. After shooting Schultz, du Pont barricaded himself in the steel-lined library of his three-storey mansion. SWAT teams descended as negotiators tried to persuade him to surrender.

He was known to have an arsenal of high powered weaponry. He held police at bay for two days, until they disabled his heating system from outside. In the cold January weather, they effectively froze him out. Du Pont was convicted of murder and pleaded “not guilty by reason of insanity”. He was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison. In his book
Off the Mat: Building Winners in Life
, John du Pont wrote: “All my life I have tried to demonstrate – probably because I had to – that I could achieve and win on my own as though my last name weren't du Pont.”

John du Pont was found dead in his prison cell at Laurel Highlands State Prison, PA on December 9, 2010. He was 72. In 1999, Schultz's widow had won a $35 million settlement in a civil suit against du Pont.

I was injured; I was no longer Irish Triathlon Champion. The Team Foxcatcher opportunity was put on hold − fortunately so, as it turned out. But all this had scuppered my plans to be a professional triathlete.

Injury, no matter what sort, is the bane of all sportspeople's lives. But sportspeople are resilient. They find ways to get over their injuries faster than mere mortals.

In 1988 and into 1989, I travelled up and down the country, visiting countless sports medics and orthopaedic specialists, from bone setters to faith healers, to try to rid myself of my hip injury. One local jokester suggested that what caused it might cure it: “Go out and fall off your bike again and it might correct itself,” he suggested.

When an athlete is injured, they will travel to the far side of moon to get their injury looked at. They will also listen to every mad hatter on the street if desperate enough. Mentally, I was in pieces. Everyone had an opinion; everyone was the one to fix it. My confidence and self-esteem were kicked in the teeth. I looked in the mirror and didn't see an athlete anymore.

Eventually, a phone call to Pat Curley in Sligo put me in contact with Peter Coe, father of double Olympic 1,500-metre champion Sebastian Coe. He suggested I see a podiatrist in Henley-on-Thames to evaluate my leg alignment. Inserts for my shoes were customised for me and I was sure they would do the trick. Month after month passed, and I would walk the half mile to the canal bank where the surface was flat, and there I'd try to run. Within three minutes, pain would make me stop to a walk. No improvement! Despair set in and the tears of frustration would come. My head was getting more wrecked with each attempt.

A full year had passed. Triathlon was moving on without me. Tom Heaney returned to Sligo and won a second All-Ireland title at his ease. He had competed in the World Triathlon Championships in Nice the previous September. He finished 85th on the same course I'd finished 14th, and his time was over 40 minutes slower. He still had a long way to go, but at least he was running.

I was up and down to Dublin for several physiotherapy appointments before Christmas. I'd get the train up twice a week, take a bus into the city and arrive for my physio appointment. I'd get hooked up to an electrical stimulation device and be left in a cubicle for twenty minutes. Then I'd have six minutes of ultrasound on my hip at the site of the pain. There was no way I could see these fancy machines fixing my injury, but who could I speak to, who would put me in the right direction? Surely someone could help?

On one occasion, I arrived early to Dublin for a physiotherapy treatment. I walked over to the changing rooms at Trinity College, sat down and waited for almost an hour. I'd been told Noel Carroll came by a few times a week to do his lunchtime run. Noel was first and foremost an athlete. He worked as the public relations officer for Dublin Corporation, but he had been a scholarship athlete at Villanova University in the 1960s, won three European 800-metre indoor titles and competed in the 800 metres in the Olympics. He was one of the father figures of running in Ireland, responsible for helping to set up the Dublin City Marathon. For a man in his forties he was fit as a fiddle, still running 800 metres in 1 minute, 52 seconds, and winning European and world veteran titles. Somehow I felt the inkling that Noel would direct me.

Noel arrived sure enough, and he gave me the direction I needed. “Physiotherapists are good for soft tissue injury, muscles, tendon and ligaments,” he said. “But, judging by what you are describing, I think you have a bone out in your lower back and pelvis. Teran Synge around the corner from College Green is your man. He's an osteopath, and he may help you.”

Indeed, Teran Synge was the man with the golden hands for me. He found that my sacrum was completely out of line and my pelvis had shifted, all due to the crash on the slippery railway lines.

By January 1989, I was back running some easy five-mile runs. My swimming had kept me fit, and somewhat sane, through 1988. I had been invited to compete in the Annual Heineken Galway Bay Swim from Clare to Salthill in Galway, the longest competition sea swim in Ireland – a distance of nine miles. I finished second to David Morewood from England, who had swum the English Channel over and back without stopping.