PAUL PALMER

© ALLSPORT

WEEK 1
Date: July 31

Conditioning in the right conditions

"Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Time is counting down in its inexorable way towards September 15, sporting D-day for the year. In just over six weeks' time the Sydney Olympics will begin and the dreams of thousands of athletes world-wide will either be realised or cruelly shelved - left to gather dust for another four long, lonely years.

For the armchair viewer, the interval between each Olympic Games may seem to last an eternity. The sporting calendar is so tightly packed nowadays that the memories are lucky to last four weeks, let alone four years. The events of the Atlanta Olympics will, by now, only be recalled by the most ardent of sports fan.

For me, though, the Sydney Olympics do not begin in mid-September; instead they began on a balmy evening in July 1996. I had just finished the last length of a rather forgetable, and all too painful, 1500m swim that signalled the personal end of another Olympics. The overall result had been a rewarding silver medal in the 400m freestyle, and with that my thoughts immediately turned to the alchemists' perennial problem of turning silver into gold in time for Sydney - after all, there were only four short years in which to improve.

This has not been easy; a change of training venue, from the basic facilities of a Lincoln school pool to the world class conditions (utilised by athletes from all sports) in Bath has been a major boost. The much needed introduction of Lottery funding enabling potential world class athletes from Britain to devote their full time and energies into pursuing that elusive Olympic gold has also been essential (and remember, in Atlanta only the seemingly invincible duo of Pinsett and Redgrave brought home that bounty).

On top of that, my attitude to how elite sport should be approached has changed. I used to have a laissez faire way of doing things - training hard but giving little thought as to how I could improve that training, or how life away from the pool can affect the results in it. It was a quintessentially British approach - that of "It'll be all right in the morning, don't worry about it ..." and it had to go.

So, with fantastic facilities, adequate funding and a more professional outlook, the job should be relatively straightforward.

Only it isn't.

Whilst I may have used the last four years to the best of my abilities, the rest of the world has not sat around sipping pina coladas and making merry of the occasion. They, too, have worked harder, longer and smarter - becoming stronger, tougher and quicker. It is in the nature of all men to strive to improve their lot, not simply the private domain of a nation that once built an empire. The end result of this is that the Sydney Olympics will be the most fiercely competed ever. We witnessed in Atlanta just how far Britain was form being Great and whilst the country has started to make inroads into righting that wrong, come September 15 it is going to be up to the individual athletes themselves to prove it.

Four years have flown by and I hope, come Sydney, to be one of those athletes that helps to build on the foundation of pride that the likes of Redgrave and Colin Jackson have begun to lay."

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 2 ...

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 3 ...

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 4 ...

Read Paul's diary for WEEK 5 ...