The quest for the retrieval of the Olympic spirit begins in earnest here on Sunday morning when a British athlete, a man whose principles honour the fraternalistic ideals that used to infuse the Games long ago, plunges from a pontoon into the waters around the Opera House.
There is something primeval and purifying about the sharp-pronged trident of ordeals that 52 pioneering triathletes will endure. And triumph to Simon Lessing would give the rest of a Britain team that plumbed depressing medal depths in Atlanta inspiration for the fortnight ahead.
Matthew Pinsent, Steve Redgrave and the rest of the coxless four may be the flag-bearers for their nation but even if their arrival at Penrith Lakes earlier this week was described in biblical cadences with talk of sun emerging, wind dropping and waters flattening, it still falls to Lessing to give the lead.
He is the clear favourite to win the inaugural Olympic gold medal in the men’s triathlon, a medal that will carry all the hope and symbolism of victory in an unsullied event. If bestowing Olympic status on events like synchronised swimming, baseball and synchronised diving gave the impression that the intensity of the Games was dissipating as its sports fragmented into a jigsaw of banana republics, the inclusion of the triathlon has been relatively free of cynicism.
Little wonder. It would be churlish to decry the efforts of athletes who swim a mile in 16 minutes, rip off their wetsuits and cycle 25 miles in less than an hour, and then pull on their running shoes and run 10 kilometres in a 30-minute dash. Not for nothing is the most famous triathlon competition known as the Ironman.
It was that kind of exertion, that spirit of pushing a body to the limit, that helped to define the Olympics before the rot set in. Lessing will not just be competing against his rivals but the currents and the tides, too, and the burning pain that will make his muscles scream. Fire and water were two of the themes of today’s moving spiritual odyssey of an opening ceremony - Cathy Freeman walked through a pool to light the Olympic flame - and now Lessing must complete his own epic journey through them as well.
Lessing, in fact, must have relished the ceremony and the emphasis it placed on the brotherhood of man and the unity of nations in sport. If, in the run-up to these Olympics, Australia has seemed like a country trying to make amends for the wrongs it did to the Aboriginal peoples that Freeman now champions, Lessing is an example of someone who, in some way, stood up for the oppressed in a difficult time.
Perhaps you will hear in the days to come that he is not really British, that he is only using the country as a flag of convenience. Take no notice of that. It is carping semantics. His mother is English and he has not lived in his native South Africa for 11 years. More importantly, the way he acted as he grew up a privileged young man under the apartheid regime makes him the kind of competitor of whom we should be proud.
He was raised in a liberal family and quickly recognised the iniquity of the system that surrounded him. He stole books from his own school’s library and redistributed them to a school for blacks that had no books. When a gifted black athlete was barred from competing in his home town of Durban, Lessing withdrew in protest. His actions incurred the displeasure of the authorities but he was intent on obeying his conscience.
"In my little way," Lessing said, "I was not ignorant of the fact that there were political problems in South Africa at that time and that basically things were not fair. Judging people on the basis of their colour was not right.
"I was at a fairly liberal school in Durban. I would not really call myself an activist but I was involved in sport all my life and I was running cross-country and competing in athletics, and these were sports where you did have the opportunity to mix. That made me realise, 'Hey, we’re all the same'.
"I distributed a few pamphlets and I took some duplicate books out of our library and gave them to another school. I was never caught or found out. I realised I was very fortunate to be in the situation I was in. Fundamentally, I realised there was a problem from an early age and that there were injustices being done. I left because the chances of having an international sporting career under that regime were non-existent. I feel British now and I can honestly say that when I go back to South Africa, I don’t really feel part of that country any more."
Sunday will bring an end to anonymity for Lessing and his sport. A pariah first because of apartheid, he has felt like a sporting outcast, too, as triathlon has fought for Olympic recognition and respect from the rest of athletics. Until now, the exponents of the sport have been dismissed as jacks of all trades and masters of none. Now that perception has changed and the spectacular setting for Sunday’s race and its placement at the start of the Games will give its profile an enormous lift.
The minutiae of it is fascinating. Not only does it involve swimming, cycling and running quickly, it requires the ability to slip out of a wetsuit fast and be a dab hand at tying shoelaces in the blink of an eye. A race can be won or lost in the "transition area" between disciplines. Daley Thompson has been strutting around Sydney cutting a pathetically brash figure, insisting on being called not just "a decathlete" but "the decathlete". Now, though, men like Lessing, marathon men in three sports, can claim to be the new supermen of the Olympics.
"The most spectacular part of the race is the start," Lessing said. "You've got 52 athletes diving in off a pontoon at the same time. It is very important to get a good start. If you don’t, you can easily get pushed under water and if you get pushed under, you basically get swum over from the back. On this course, after 400 metres, there is a right-hand turn which really doesn’t give us a lot of space. There will be a bottleneck effect at that buoy.
"After the first 600 metres the swim will settle down and you will probably find a long line of swimmers swimming one behind the other. For somebody like me, the idea is not to lead the swim but it is at least to come out with the lead swimmers. You come out of the swim, it takes you ten to fifteen seconds to change, you take your wetsuit off and jump on your bike. This is a key point because if you have a slow transition you could be left behind.
"There are a few athletes who have very strong swims and are good on bikes but are not good runners so they need to have made a break by the end of the first two stages. Hopefully, I will able to stay within that group. Once again, when you come off the bike, that is very fast. Takes maybe ten or fifteen seconds to put your running shoes on and off you go. From then on, quite honestly, it is flat out."
These Olympics are flat out, too, now, event chasing after event. It has fallen to Lessing to try to light the British flame.
Oliver Holt
The Times
Dressing a race in its own right
Every day, almost without fail, most of us do a part of a triathlon. We may not swim, cycle or run but getting dressed is routine in our daily lives. For the elite triathlete, dressing has become an Olympic race. “It’s what I call the fourth discipline and it’s critical,” Bill Black, one of the Great Britain coaching staff here, said. How critical was made clear some 15 years ago when the sport banned nudity.
"People trying to win races suddenly realised that, rather than wrap a towel around them, the quickest thing to do was whip down the costume and bang on the cycle shorts,” Dave Bellingham, the Great Britain team manager, said. A fast or slow 'transition’, the changeover from swimming to riding and riding to running, is now so important at elite level that it can be won or lost at the drop of a helmet.
When the British squad arrived on the Gold Coast for their pre-Olympic holding camp, one of the first jobs for Black was to help organise a police escort for a transition practice. “We did a mini triathlon, linking the three disciplines but concentrating on transition.” Why slog through 25 hours of training a week looking to gain a few seconds here and there if your race comes apart at the seams because you cannot get your wetsuit off in a hurry?
"Although you might lose only a couple of seconds, that could be the end of your race, Simon Lessing, the Briton who is favourite to win the men’s title on Sunday, said. “If you are at the end of a group coming out of the water and have fumbled your transition, all of a sudden you are on your own either trying to catch up or waiting for the pack behind.” Cycling alone is out of the question, given the benefits of slipstreaming.
"As you are coming out of the water, you are thinking about the transition step by step,” Lessing added. “In other words, you are running up getting your wetsuit off down to waist level, getting to your bike, pulling your wetsuit down and, at the same time as you are stepping out of your wetsuit, you put on your helmet. From there you grab your bike, run out, and jump on with the bike shoes clipped onto the pedals. From the run out of the water to getting on your bike will be about 18 seconds.”
The second transition, from bike to run, is less time consuming. Some 200 metres from the end of the ride, the triathletes slip their feet out of their shoes and pedal barefoot to the dismount line, leaving the footwear in the clip pedals. “You step off your bike, rack it, take your helmet off, put your running shoes on and off you go.”
The Journal of Sports Science and Medicine has published research which shows that 12 per cent of the time that the sub-elite athlete loses to the elite competitors is in transition. “Eighteen seconds is good, 24 seconds will lose you a medal,” Black said. A second to put on sunglasses before going off on the bike has nothing to do with macho image, which was how triathlon caught on after its birth 22 years ago.
"They wear glasses on the bike mainly to keep the debris and flies out of eyes,” Black said. “At the end of the ride, they do not stop but dismount in a moving fashion. It is a flowing action, getting off with both feet on straight onto the floor and then running in with the bike.” Andrew Johns, the European champion and another British contender for a medal tomorrow, was timed by Black here at 2.5 seconds taking off his wetsuit.
"Then he has to put on his helment and goggles and we are looking at a very fast transition, about 10 seconds at the station. People who have never seen an elite triathlon are usually taken aback at the speed of transition. Blink and it could be over. One minute there is this creature in blakc coming out of the water and, before you know it, they are disappearing into the distance on two wheels.”
Some competitors even rehearse at home. “They practise in their bedroom - helmet, clip - helmet, clip - helmet, clip,” Greg Millet, the Great Britain performance director, said. Not for everybody, though, modern triathlon. There is a race, annually, in California which breaks the rules by going all-nude from start to finish. When the going gets tough, the tough get an all-over tan.
David Powell
The Times
McDonald: From hero to villain
This is the weekend that Les McDonald has been dreaming of, plotting for, manoeuvring towards, ever since he had the idea that triathlon should be an Olympic sport. Yet the Geordie who built the platform for Great Britain, with its strong squad, to make a medal-winning start to these Games will not be thanked by his home country for any success. "The story of hero to villain" was how Dave Bellingham, the British team manager, referred to McDonald today.
McDonald is the Primo Nebiolo of his sport, the autocratic - many say bullying - president of the International Triathlon Union (ITU) who, through alleged vote rigging and other manipulative tactics, has managed to hold onto his position through the 11-year history of the world governing body which he formed. However, while his political skills may be compared to Nebiolo’s, the late president of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, his commercial shortcomings have made him many an enemy among those who seek to professionalise the sport.
The ITU is more than £1.4 million in debt, the World Cup has failed to attract a significant sponsor, and McDonald has fallen out with the three athletes who have helped to keep Britain as the most successful men’s nation over the last decade. Simon Lessing, Andrew Johns and Spencer Smith are all at odds with him, as are several of the ITU’s member nations. The day after the Games finish, McDonald is due in court to defend himself against a petition that the presidential election in April was unconstitutional.
"Les pushed for our sport to get into the Olympics and we need to give him credit for that," Lessing, an elite triathlete for ten years and favourite for the men’s gold medal on Sunday, said. "Unfortunately, I think the sport has lost its direction. I am speaking as an athlete who is trying to make a career out of this and, to a certain extent, we have not managed to attract title or major corporate sponsors. We should now be asking questions like why, what have we done wrong?
"We need to look at a way to manage our sport in a professional manner. I do not do many World Cup races and I have not had a conversation with Les in years." Lessing has competed in the World Cup only as often as was necessary to qualify for the Olympics. It was a clever, if unpopular, stroke which McDonald pulled when he put in place a three-year Olympic qualifying process which made it impossible to get there without contesting the World Cup.
"Simon has raced in the World Cup without appearance money because he needed to," Laurent Boquillet, Lessing’s manager, said. "Even now, if World Cup organisers want to pay Simon they have to find a hidden way. Les fights with me because I represent money." Boquillet, as director of the Golden League athletics meeting in Paris, saw qualities in Nebiolo missing in McDonald. "Primo knew money was important and could manage both, the politics as well," Boquillet added.
McDonald, a former North-East shipyard worker, has lived in Canada since the Fifties. His early interest in triathlon was as a competitor; he raced seven times in the Hawaii Ironman, where the sport was born in 1978, setting age-group records for the gruelling 2.4-mile swim, 112-kilometre ride and 26-mile marathon. Yet, when it came to getting triathlon into the Olympics, McDonald realised he had to make it shorter, sharper and more appealing to television. The Olympic event has a 1,500 metre swim, 40 kilometre ride and 10 kilometre run.
"McDonald was the driving force who knew how to jump through the Olympic hoops to get into the Games," Bellingham said. "Many purists in triathlon did not think the Olympics were important but he did. It is phenomenal to think that, in 22 years, we have gone from nothing to the Olympics."
McDonald has survived several attempts to oust him from office but he may not last much beyond these Games. He is alleged to have denied voting rights to 12 countries he knew would reject him at the presidential election. "McDonald kept us out of the Congress because he knew we were going to vote against him," David Rudd, the Venezuela delegate, said.
Seven countries have petitioned against the ITU and the case is due in the Supreme Court of British Colombia next month. They are seeking new elections. Erika Koenig-Zenz, the defeated Austrian candidate, accused McDonald of "doing anything to cling to power". His Olympic job done, McDonald’s departure now would be his second great contribution to the sport.
David Powell
The Times
