Unbowed Gillick moves on from Beijing nightmare

ON ATHLETICS: Ireland's reigning European Indoor 400 metres champion looking to the future

SHORTLY BEFORE four o’clock on Wednesday afternoon, his main training session done for the day, David Gillick switched on his laptop to check his email: No new messages.

So he scanned the Irish websites. RTÉ.ie. Irishtimes.com. He’s three years now living at Loughborough University in England, but he still misses home, and even if it is mostly bad news these days, Gillick still wants to hear it.

Straight away he noticed the headline: “Olympic review highlights lack of direction and unity.” He scrolled down, and those haunting words jumped out: underachievement; failure; not arriving in peak condition; unprofessional.

Jesus, he thought. Will I ever escape this? In the six months since Beijing, every reminder of how the Irish athletes fared plays on his mind like a catastrophe. Because he knows who they’re talking about. He wishes sometimes they’d just spell it out: D-A-V-I-D G-I-L-L-I-C-K F-A-I-L-E-D!

What could he have done different? Where did he go wrong? He’s spent enough time thinking about it since Beijing but he found himself thinking about it again. That’s how it is when your one ambition in life disintegrates.

From the moment he won the European Indoor 400 metres as a 21-year-old, they said David Gillick had the potential to make an Olympic final. He thought so too. It became the purpose of his life.

There were setbacks, but when he moved to Loughborough in the autumn of 2006, immersing himself in the professional environment he couldn’t get at home, the ambition was reinforced. He defended his European Indoor title in 2007, and that summer ran the fastest 400 metres in Irish history: 45.23 seconds.

As Beijing approached almost every walking hour was consumed by it. Every training session, every race, was geared towards the morning of August 18th. In June he improved his Irish record to 45.12.

Wow, he thought – and I haven’t even peaked yet.

At Crystal Palace in July he ran his last Grand Prix race and finished third in 45.35. Plenty left in the tank.

Gillick was on a high that evening, and hardly noticed the small rash on the inside of his left foot. Just a marking from his spikes, he reckoned. After a final block of training he left for Matsue in Japan, the Irish athletics camp prior to flying into Beijing. It had worked well for the World Championships the year before. No reason to suspect it wouldn’t work again.

The first few days were about getting over the jetlag. Getting up every morning he felt knackered. That was to be expected. He didn’t expect to feel knackered for the rest of the day.

At the end of the week he did one last hard session – and barely came through. Sweating like a maniac. Exhausted. You’ll get over it, he thought. It’s the climate. You’re still jetlagged. This is the Olympics.

Then on the morning he left for Beijing he felt several small ulcers inside his mouth. This was a bad sign. He knew that. He only got mouth ulcers when he was sick. Don’t panic, he thought. Don’t raise any concern. So he didn’t mention it to the team doctor. It was nothing. A few mouth ulcers.

When he finally got into the Athletes Village he was able to relax. Now, erase all negative thoughts. That’s the basic psychology of the Olympics. Get out there and perform.

The start time for his 400-metre heat – nine o’clock in the morning! – was a pain but he’d prepared for it. He didn’t feel great warming up, but few athletes at the Olympics ever do. He went to the start blocks. Ready. He eased around the first 200 metres, then pressed on the accelerator. There was nothing in the tank. Flat out of gas.

He hauled himself across the finish line, exhausted, drained. Fourth, in 45.83 – his slowest time of the season. David Gillick’s Olympics were over.

He was stunned, hadn’t even begun to explain it to himself when he found himself walking through the mixed zone.

He spotted a miserable bunch of Irish journalists, recognised about half of them. Explain that?

He’d sat at home enough times and watched Irish athletes interviewed in the mixed zone. Making excuses. Lame excuses, he thought. He wasn’t going to be one of those. So he held up his hands.

I ran like shit, he said. I’m the one who has to deal with that.

Now let me out of here.

But we want answers? We want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.

By the time he got to the warm-up track he was no longer stunned. Just angry. He saw his coach Nick Dakin, who had shared every training session at Loughborough over the past two years. Gillick looked him squarely in the eye.

Why do I fu**ing bother? I’ve trained my whole life for this moment. And I’ve just run crap.

Now is not the time for those thoughts, Dakin told him. Not now.

So what now? He wanted out of there. Out of the Olympics. It was 10 o’clock in the morning. His whole family were in Beijing. Aunts and uncles. His girlfriend. Several of his best mates, three of whom had spent the previous six months cycling there. He checked his phone and there was a message from one of them.

In a bar in a quiet area of Beijing.

I’ll be right down, he told them.

He didn’t get mad drunk but he did release some of the madness. It was two days later before he walked back into the Athletes’ Village. He’d felt the mood was tense there to begin with. If someone had said the wrong thing he would definitely have flipped. Easily. Ripped the head off them.

When he faced his family he’d calmed down. They didn’t know what to say. Some threw an arm around him, that kind of thing. This is like a death in the family, he thought.

Physically, he was still a wreck. He explained it all to the team doctor to help understand what went wrong. A couple of blood samples didn’t reveal anything definitive.

Back at home he spent a week on Inishbofin to help clear the head. A few days around Balinteer were consoling too. People saying well done. Congratulations. He felt they meant it.

He went to see his nutritionist, still trying to explain his exhaustion. Gillick mentioned the mouth ulcers.

And you wouldn’t have a rash on the inside of your foot?

Gillick recalled that evening in Crystal Palace. How the rash was slow to clear.

You need a few more blood tests, he was told. A week later he was informed he had the human strain of hand-foot-mouth disease, a relatively mild virus – and not linked to the more serious animal virus. But serious enough to debilitate an Olympic athlete.

There was no explanation as to how or where he got it – but deep down, Gillick always knew he wasn’t physically right. But he was already moving on. Beijing had been a crushing experience, but he was determined to survive it. For as long as he could remember, his ambition had been to run in the Olympics. He had at least achieved that.

He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he allowed this force him away from the sport. If he allowed the hurt get to him. He loves athletics too much. A few days back on the training track and he felt like the luckiest man in the world. He would carry through to London in 2012.

Besides, there is more to athletics than the Olympics. Chasing a third European Indoor title in succession, for a start