John Menton is not your typical Olympian. Talk to him about qualifying in the discus for Sydney and you learn as much about e-commerce and the limitless Internet as you do about what it takes to throw 63 metres.
He's one of the great contradictions of modern sport. Works up to 60 hours a week with Arthur Cox solicitors in Dublin, and for three years ran their office in New York. Most people with that sort of responsibility wouldn't find time for the abmaster, yet he's kept the Olympics part of his ambition.
Visit his home in Dublin's south-side and, just home from the office, he's working up a sweat on the 800lb of weights neatly assembled in his dining room. Earlier this month he threw 63.70 metres in New Jersey and booked his A-ticket to Sydney by the length of his hand. Now he's back into heavy training for the peak of late September.
It's said that the only people obsessed with discus throwing are discus throwers themselves. Menton is not obsessed. He treats it as sport and nothing more. Ask him about going full-time or about the lack of facilities or the sacrifices he's made to get this far and he just shrugs. "Of course I'm serious about the event, and the Olympics are something very special. But I still just see it as sport. Training full time was never an option for me, and I can't imagine a situation where your next pay-cheque depends on your last throw. If I want to quit in the morning, that's fine. It isn't going to hurt me financially.
"I mean, there are two different courses you can take in sport. I decided I was going to sort out my career first. Unless you're going to get a medal at a major championship there are no financial rewards to think about. And only three guys get medals, so that's a tight enough shot."
Once his career was on track, Menton started squeezing out a little more time for throwing. In New York, he linked up with former Russian coach, Roman Feldman, who had defected to America in the late 1980s. He fixed up Menton's technique so that he wasn't "playing golf with a hurley", and told him that with four year's work he could throw 65 metres. That was 1996. When he transferred back to Dublin last September to head e-commerce at Arthur Cox, he adjusted accordingly. Bought a US video camera and sent tapes of his throwing back to Feldman. Built a throwing circle behind his clubhouse at Donore Harriers. Shipped all his weights back from America and bought a house with concrete floors.
Menton always had the strength to become an Olympic thrower. At 14, he was 6 ft 7 in and playing rugby at school in Terenure, until a neck injury forced him to switch sports. There was no family tradition in athletics, but he soon hit 16 st and needed a means of keeping fit. A year after joining Donore and taking discus advice from coach Phil Conway, he had won a national junior title.
He finished his exams in UCD in 1992 and a bunch of the lads from Donore headed over to Barcelona for the Olympics. He sat right next to the discus and the guy who won threw 65 metres. Then he started to think big. Started thinking beyond the national championships.
"There was no way I was going to be looking back in 20 years and saying I could have been a contender. Everything was geared towards this year, so I sat down with my employers and agreed a timetable. The deadline was the 25th of July to get the qualifier, and so I relocated to New York in June and worked off my laptop."
It was 89F with a slight breeze in Oakhurst, New Jersey, on July 5th. Perfect conditions. In previous meets, Menton had thrown impressively far in his warm-ups and then tightened up a bit in the competition. Here he just stretched, loosened up and ran around the place and treated his first throw as a warm-up. Hit it. 63.70 and the A-standard is 63.50. Did a couple of laps of honour in the circle and his heart rate was about 150. Didn't throw well again that evening.
"Throwing that A-standard was my Olympic gold medal. But seriously, if you throw 62 metres in Sydney you've got a real shot at making the final. Either way, I'm going to be throwing for a few more years yet. As long as I can walk I'll throw. "And Al Oerter threw his best at 44. That's inspiration if you're ever going to need it."
