Just crazy about a ridiculous sport

TRIATHLON: LOOKING TO LONDON: The lure of the Olympics has proven a great spur for a dedicated bunch of Irish triathletes

‘TRIATHLETES ARE crazy. It’s such a ridiculous sport, really. Why would anyone want to put so much time into this? Six or seven hours a day. Not just of swimming, cycling and running. But the gym work as well. On a Monday, Wednesday and Friday it could be four sessions a day.

“And then the sacrifices. I’ve almost entirely given up tea. I would have had 10 cups a day. I just love tea and a bun.”

Why is Aileen Morrison admitting all this? What is it that’s driving her so determinedly in this sport if she can’t even enjoy the simple things like a cup of tea and a bun? “Because we wouldn’t do it if we didn’t love it,” she quickly adds. “And I do love it.”

And then of course there’s the small matter of the London Olympics. After a breakthrough season last year, Morrison is well within the top-55 world ranking necessary to qualify for London next summer, and for a sport like triathlon, there’s still nothing to rival the pride and glory of making the Olympics. Having tasted success on the World Championship circuit Morrison knows this better than anyone.

“It’s an absolutely amazing chance, and I would love to be there. To qualify, for me, really means maintaining my ranking position. If I do this season what I did last year I’m going to the Olympics. So it’s about staying healthy, staying injury free. I know that’s sounds really boring, and I love making the podium at world events and coming home with some prize-money in the pocket, but to make London really is the big goal.

“And I know I can compete at that level. If you’re in the best shape of your life, and have the bit of luck, well I know I can compete with the best. And I just have to keep reminding myself of that.”

To many people triathlon is a crazy sport – and they might never get to love it. Yet participation levels continue to soar, and Ireland is no exception. The 2011 TriAthlone on July 2nd has already drawn 2,500 entrants, and Triathlon Ireland reckon 15,000 took part in at least one event here last year. There are 140 triathlons on the Irish calendar in 2011, and last month the governing body secured its first major sponsorship with a three-year deal with Vodafone.

At the elite end Ireland is, in the sporting parlance, punching above its weight. Three years ago in Beijing, Emma Davis became Ireland’s first Olympic representative, and despite recent setbacks with illness and injury, is still in the hunt to join Morrison in London. Gavin Noble, from Enniskillen, just missed out on Beijing, and after some excellent performances already this season – including a silver medal at the Asian World Cup in Japan last weekend – is also well within the necessary ranking.

However, there are no guarantees. Cork’s Bryan Keane emerged as possibly Ireland’s best Olympic hopeful in 2009, and then last September – while riding his time-trial bike on the main Cork to Cobh road at about 40kph – he was hit, side-on, by a car travelling at a similar speed. Next thing Keane remembers he’s being driven by ambulance to Cork University Hospital.

Over the following days he underwent reconstructive surgery on a shattered kneecap, plus stitch-work in other areas of his legs. “I was 10 weeks in a leg brace,” he says, “with two steel pins and wire in the kneecap. I’d just come off seventh place in World Sprint Championships, and really was in the best shape of my life, in such good form. That made it hard to accept, but I never thought for one minute I wouldn’t get back.

“It’s a big setback for London, obviously, but that’s still the target, and not beyond me just yet. Had the accident happened this year I would have been out, but I’ve tried to see it as an opportunity, to improve my swim while doing rehab on the knee, and just playing the cards I was dealt.”

Despite undergoing another operation in January to have the hardware removed, Keane was back competing last month: “In an ideal world I’d have waited a full year after the accident to come back. But my world ranking had slipped so I needed to race, just to get the rankings to allow me back into the big races. So I went to the Philippines, Korea and China. That’s really when it hit me, in those races, realising I wasn’t near my previous ability. It was great to race, fantastic to be back eight months later, but also realising I couldn’t be up where I wanted, having people run away from you and not being able to catch up. That’s the challenge for me now.”

What makes the exploits of Morrison, Davis, Noble and Keane all the more significant is that they all work closely within the so-called Irish “system” – as in the high performance programme of Triathlon Ireland. Although Morrison is different in that she’s a “product” of the system, and says she owes her entire career to her coach and Triathlon Ireland’s high performance director Chris Jones. “I really do owe it all to Chris, and without him I don’t know where I’d be. Three years ago I just about knew how to sit on a bike and move my legs. And you just can’t afford to have any weakness in this sport. You can’t win a race with a good swim or bike. But you can certainly lose a race. Cycling, maybe, would be weakest leg, but then I would put the most effort into that. And over the last year my biking has improved the most. Swimming can be nasty, you have to be prepared, it’s not always about being the best swimmer. You have to have your wits about you, stay calm, and there’s also an element of luck.”

Like most successful triathletes, swimming was Morrison’s first sport. Growing up in Derry, the family would spend most summers at Malin Head and the surrounding beaches, and thus were inevitably drawn to the water. “So I can blame my dad,” she says. “He wanted us all to learn to swim, my brother and sister and I, just wanted us safe around the water. I also did some athletics at school, mostly cross country. So I suppose triathlon was the natural progression.”

What sparked it was it a short schools triathlon, which Morrison tried “purely for fun”, and on a borrowed bike. That was her approach throughout her college days at the University at Jordanstown, where she qualified as a PE teacher, but when she won the National Triathlon Championships in Lough Neagh in 2007 suddenly her perspective changed – and a year later she was competing as a full-time professional.

“At the end of that summer, Triathlon Ireland had their first development camp and Chris just asked me on board, said he would be my coach. So I was discovered, I suppose. People like Gavin had been on the scene a long time, and I was always looking up to the likes of Gavin, thinking what he was doing was amazing, but it was beyond the realms of possibility for me. Emma Davis came up through the British scene, and Bryan Keane started out in Australia. But I came up through the ranks here.”

She lives and trains now in Lisburn, which keeps her close to the facilities at Jordanstown: “And I’m getting support from both the Northern Ireland and the Irish Sports Council. It’s fantastic. I’m not going to turn it down. I also have a super supportive boyfriend here. So I mean why would you want to live in Australia when you can live in Lisburn?”

Keane is a little different to most triathletes in that he came from a running background first, competing with Leevale AC in Cork and winning a bronze medal with the Irish junior team at the European Cross Country, then moved on to cycling – spending three seasons as a semi-pro with the Seán Kelly Racing team in Belgium. It was only when he spent a year in Australia in 2008 to pursue his freelance photography career than he caught the triathlon bug, “purely as a social outlet”.

Like Morrison he was soon brought under the wing of Chris Jones, and by 2009 had three podium finishes in World Cup events, and won the European Cup leg in Athlone. His background in running and cycling have him the necessary stamina and endurance, but he quickly realised too that triathlon was a different beast than most other sports. “I think like most elite athletes we’re addicted to the training,” he says.

“But the volume of training in the triathlon is really at a level of its own. For the first four or five months in the sport I struggled to fit three or four sessions a day. Every week you’d be doing 30km in the pool, 100km running, and 400km on the bike. And maybe five gym sessions. Unlike just one sport, it’s not about the two or three key sessions a week. With triathlon you’re trying to tick the two or three key sessions in each sport, so that’s nine or 10 key sessions and week, plus trying to recover. So it really is about time management more than anything.”

Keane had a little more time on his hands than he would have liked after his crash, but he didn’t sit around feeling sorry for himself: he couldn’t afford to. “After 10 weeks I was back in the water, giving a lot more to my swimming, and that could actually benefit me in the long term. It was a case of trying to work harder on what we could, while we had the opportunity, such as my range of motion in swimming.

“I’d say I’m back to 60 per cent now. My swim is good, but I don’t have the power on the bike, or the run. Even now if I hop on the good leg compared to the other it just doesn’t have the same bounce. But London is such a huge incentive for us all. “Even family and friends are saying they’re going to London, buying the tickets already, assuming I will be there. There’s a fantastic energy that comes with that, everyone knowing it’s the closest we’ll get to home Olympics. You just try to tap into that energy as best you can.”

“Our aim is to get three athletes qualified for London,” says Jones, “and one of those to finish in the top eight. And I think we’re well on target. We know too we’ll always be a small sport, in terms of Olympic medal potential.

“Unlike athletics and cycling and boxing the medal tally will never be that big. But the IOC are also keen to expand the sport, to include a mixed team relay, and the sprint distance. So instead of six medals in the event there would be 18 medals.”

OLYMPIC QUALIFICATION: HOW IT WORKS

Come June 2012, the top 55-ranked triathletes, men and women, will be nominated for London, based on their 14 best results over the previous two-season period. The first season went from June 2010 to the end of May 2011, and the second season is now underway, until the end of May 2012. Six results count from season one, and eight from season two – so the crucial season is now up and running. Ranking points are garnered from the various tiers of competition, starting with the World Championship Series (the top six races in the world), then the World Cup (the second tier competition) and also the regional competitions, such as the European Championships in Spain later this month. Only three triathletes per nation can qualify, and the rankings are adjusted accordingly, and ultimately positions are qualified, rather than names – so if Gavin Noble qualifies a position for Ireland but can’t compete due to injury then Brian Keane can still compete provided he also has world-ranking points.

IRELAND’S TRI’ERS: THE WOULD-BE OLYMPIANS

Aileen Morrison

Age: 28

Based: Lisburn.

Current Olympic ranking:13th.

Her fifth place on home soil at the ITU European Championships in Athlone last year was the best result ever by an Irish triathlete for two years, until round five of the 2010 World Series in Hamburg, where she won bronze – the best ever result by an Irish triathlete to date. 2011 form has backed that up with a silver medal at the Ishigaki World Cup in Japan in April.

Gavin Noble

Age: 31

Based:Stirling, Scotland.

Current Olympic ranking:38th.

The elder statesman at Triathlon Ireland, just missed out on Beijing qualification, but several good results since then, including gold at the Hong Kong Asian Cup in September 2010, and silver at the Asian World Cup in Amakasu, Japan last weekend has put him well within reach of London.

Emma Davis

Age:25

Based:Montpellier, France.

Current Olympic ranking:84th.

Born and raised in Surrey, with a father from Bangor, Co Down, Davis was Ireland’s first triathlon representative in Beijing in 2008. Has recently relocated to the south of France to help ease her allergy problems, now traced to a food allergy, and is targeting the London test event in August to help bring her back into Olympic ranking.

Bryan Keane

Age: 30

Based: Dublin

Current Olympic ranking: 125th.

After his exciting breakthrough season in 2009, and key results in 2010 including a bronze medal at the ITU Strathclyde European Cup, a serious biking accident last September has left him playing catch-up on the Olympic ranking list, but not without hope of the most glorious comeback.