Born to Perform Read online

  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. “Ro
ll on the winter,” I thought, “so I can get my swimming weakness sorted out.”

  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 yea
rs, 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?