Award Ceremonies

Some people think that the Oscars or the Grammies or the Q Annual Bash are the world’s most important award ceremonies. I would beg to differ. The most important award ceremonies are, of course, connected with sport!

So, last Saturday I was a guest at the British Triathlon Federation Annual Prize Giving at Loughborough in the East Midlands. I had helped them out with spots of commentary at their races during the year in England, Scotland and Wales. Last year I had to sing for my super and do MC but this year I could relax and drink in the atmosphere..... I had to also keep quiet, difficult, I know.

I have been at a few Awards doo’s over the last few decades, a highlight of which (of course!) is Limavady’s annual Bean Feast. This year it is on April the 3rd at the Drummond Hotel in Ballykelly with the guest of honour being UK’s Track Cycling Olympic Silver medallist Wendy Houvenaghal. (There are some tickets still available!)
A few years ago young Patrick Jack and I were at the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in Birmingham. It was the first time the event had been held outside London.
Whilst it was a good night, I shall always remember the patronising attitude of Adrian Chiles while interviewing the Cycling Super Star, Nicole Cooke, then World Champion. It was quite obvious that Chiles – and the BBC – didn’t give a monkeys’ about cycling. This year the supremely talented Ms. Cooke jump started the UK’s record Olympic medal with a superb victory in appalling conditions in the roads of Beijing. She was the catalyst for what was to follow. The fact that she followed it up with yet another victory in the World Championships in Itlay in September with another superb tactical race of controlled aggression, will of course be conveniently ignored when it comes to this year’s ceremony on December the 14th (sorry BBC, I can’t make it, I will be organising the Wo/Man-v- Bike-v- Horse competition in the Cam Forest the same week-end). Incidentally the prize in 2006 was won by a horse – or was it Princess Zara instead?! - who narrowly beat our own Darren Clarke.

This year will be won by Lewis Hamilton who beat about 5 other blokes in the Formula 1 World Championship in fairly good cars. Lewis of course had the Worlds quickest car namely a McClaren Mercedes. Chris Hoy will probably get second for his three golds (despite having no engine on his bike) and golden girl Rebecca Adlington will come third (despite having to supply her own horse power in the pool).

Meanwhile back in East Midlands my £50.00 BMI Baby flight landed at 12.00 noon. Looking at a map a few weeks previously I quickly realised that you could catch a bus from the Airport direct to either Leicester or Nottingham or Birmingham or Stoke or Coventry to watch a footie match. I plumped for Derby County (mainly because the were at home!) I hadn’t bothered to buy a ticket of course and hoped there would be a few left. I met some young blokes wearing their Rams black and white scarves and followed them off the bus when we alighted on the outskirts of the town. Derby used to play at the Baseball Ground (so called 100 years previously when they actually played the American sport inside) but now they play at a super dooper new stadium called Pride Park, it is a 33,000 seater and regularly attracts crowds of 30,000 making it the best attended stadium in the Championship. I ran over to the box office at 2 .56 p.m. and was about to purchase a ticket when this venerable gentlemen asked me if I wanted a ticket. I had been similarly lucky when outside Manchester City’s ramshackle stadium (you can tell I am a United fan!) in August 2002 when I was over to commentate for the BBC at the Commonwealth Games. I ended up getting a first class view for a tenner from a season ticket holder who wanted to go to the bar instead! Six years later this bloke wasn’t going to miss the action but I asked him why he had a spare (and he replied “When we were coming back from the Leeds game on Tuesday night, my mate Ian died of a heart attack and I have this ticket, Still, we won 2 – 1” he cheerfully replied. “Would his widow mind if I took his ticket?”. “Not at all son, you follow me”. So three minutes later I am sitting beside my new benefactor Norman in the front row beside the pitch adjacent to the goal. It had the best view in the entire stadium! My middle name is Lucky, but you knew that anyway. This got me thinking on my usual trip to to Old Trafford where the view is the same an eagle has of an unsuspecting dormouse (except when Harry Lynas got me tickets on the touch line for a match which was ironically against Derby County).

I asked Uncle Norman how long he had supported his local team. He sucked in his false teeth, leant on his walking stick and replied “Since 1939, we played Villa, then they declared War and there were no more matches that season”. I am not quite sure if Adolf Hitler knew just how bad the consequences of marching on Poland would actually be. Never mind the blitz kreig what about the effect on the Baseball ground faithful instead? I asked Norman what was the best match he had ever seen in 69 years of supporting his team.

“It were eight years ago when we beat the scum of Old Trafford 3-1” through gritted teeth, I asked him who scored, “Paulo Wauchope with a brace and Sturridge with the other”. This guy knew his stuff!

His mate beside him was equally devasted to hear of the Rams favourite supporter passing away a few weeks previously. “ I remember the day my Dad died... “He said to me unprompted. “We beat QPR away”. Ah well, behind every cloud there is a silver lining etc.

We i.e. Derby County went one up with a goal scored by an ex Notts Forest player. I am not quite sure how Kris Commons was allowed to wear the black and white of Derby having exchanged the red and white of Forest. Every Derby County fan I spoke to hated Forest with a passion. The two clubs had played each other three weeks previously and ended up one all and the Derby County fans were seething. It was all the Refs fault of course that a goal had been disallowed. During the match I was at they even had a song about the Ref asking him if he was the same Man in Black from the Forest Match in disguise. On the Sunday morning my taxi driver was an avid Forest fan and looked at me with complete disgust when I told him I had been to Pride Park the day before. It’s not quite as bad as United -v- City, or Liverpool –v- Everton but it’s not far from it.

At half time buoyed by a pint and a Balti chicken pie I sat down beside my new mates as Derby started to really hammer Sheffield’s finest. Two more goals were scored including a left foot cracker from 30 yards just in front of me. Everyone erupted deliriously. It all made for a splendid afternoon. I waved good bye to my buddies and sprinted for the bus weaving past the disconsolate Sheffield Wednesday supporters. The Rams really had devoured the Owls.

Two hours later I emerged from my hotel room in the Hilton suitably booted and suited. It was downstairs for a champagne reception – somebody had to do it! What a drag it was to bump into some of the athletes that I had met at the Corus Series, oh look there is Helen Tucker from Bridgend, recently crowned World Champion in Vancouver in August with her new hubby Marc Jenkins (Olympian in 2004), there was Will Clarke (Beijing Olympian and well known for his moves on the dance floor), we were sharing the same table. There was Alistair Brownlee who led the men’s Olympic Triathlon up to the 7K mark and he was responsible for making the watching Princess Anne very excited indeed. There was somebody who just had to drink the pink champagne and drink in the views i.e. me. These people are my heroes I thought, not the overpaid prima donnas who won’t dream of kicking a foot ball for less than a 120 K a week. These people train 30 to 40 hours a week and if they were strapped to the National grid they could power several small villages with their watts output. These people are in the pool at 6.00 a.m. (like Rebecca Adlington). They are on their bikes at 11.00a.m. (like Chris Hoy) and they are on the running track, (like Kelly Holmes) at 3.00 p.m. They live breath and dream their sport, they are also very nice people. I bumped into Chrissie Wellington. I am sorry I am completely biased here but I believe she is quite simply the World’s finest distance athlete by a mile. In 2007 she won the toughest race of all the Hawaii Ironman on her first attempt. She swam, biked and ran 146 miles and make it look like an afternoon stroll down to Tescos.

This year she had all the pressure of trying to prove it wasn’t a fluke. She did three Ironman races in the build up to Hawaii and won them all. This year on the 11th October she was leading the race on the bike when disaster struck. She punctured, her CO2 canisters didn’t work and she sat on the edge of the lava field awaiting a miracle as 10 minutes came and went – as did her rivals who passed her. Eventually one competitor took pity on her and threw a life line – and a spare canister. She fired up the CO2 and got her tire inflated and running (or least turning). She then succeeded in overtaking
her rivals one by one and ended up with a substantial lead going in to T2. Could she run a marathon in the heat and humidity though? No problem, she ran a titanic 2 hours 59 mins. to win the race by 15 mins. What a star!

Despite this stellar performance Chrissie is as down to earth as they come. We compared notes on our respective sore throats. She said she hoped to still have a voice the next morning as she was due to appear live on Radio 5. We swapped shoes, hey I have worn an Ironman champion’shoe. It was a pity it was a high heel and not a running shoe, but anyway....

Later on when she was awarded the Long Distance Athlete of the year award we brought the house down for her.

The guest of honour was Simon Lessing MBE. If Triathlon Gods were rock stars, then Simon would have been the Bryan Ferry of the triple discipline sport. He was always fairly cool, quite aloof and sometimes didn’t look interested. But boy when it was show time he was imperious usually leading from start to finish. When the race started he went on the ‘B’ of ‘Bang’. He dominated his rivals at the Olympic Distance and won 5 world championships as well as 3 Long Course titles. He didn’t like the elite drafting system and felt that as a great swimmer he was being disadvantaged when his rivals were allowed to bike together to reel him back in. So he moved up ot he Ironman distance and won Lake Placid in New York in a course record of 8 hrs. 25 mins. and qualified for Hawaii – just like Anne Paul. It was the biggest regret of Simon’s career that he didn’t do better at Kona when he finished top 10 twice but never really threatened the podium.

I remember seeing him at the Olympics in Sydney when I was perched in front of the Opera House. There were 250,000 spectators that day and Simon finished a disappointing 9th. I was in Manchester in 2002 when he finished 4th in the Commonwealth Games, but when it came to the World Championships he had few rivals. Sometimes for him it wasn’t a case of “Alright on the Night”.

He gave a very self deprecatory speech when he looked back at his career. He left South Africa because of the apartheid regime and ended up representing GB, but raced in France to earn his livelihood. He was prepared to risk an uncertain future by living off his wits not knowing where his next pay cheque was coming from to pursue his dream. If he won, he was able to eat a three course meal. If he didn’t finish in the top three, it was a bowl of pasta and camping in a tent and catching the next train back to his base in the South of France. He said he made the classic mistake which I made, when speaking in France after winning a competition. The French word for champions is very close the French word for a vegetable so there is there is the real danger of saying as I had proudly declared to our French twins in Vigneux Sur Seine, “We are the Mushrooms!”

Simon was an entrepreneur and he knew he had to speculate to accumulate. Most of our society is averse to taking risks. His attitude was “If you have got a God given talent, then use it now and follow your dreams. If it doesn’t work out you can always get back to education and pursue a career later”. The former World Champion announced his retirement earlier this year and is now setting himself up as a top class Coach and is also putting together a project for Chief Executive Officer for Companies who want to participate in Olympic Distance and Ironman races. I was able to talk to Simon afterwards and he was very generous with his time and expertise.

There was so much left unsaid after the official ceremonies completed. We all felt it would be a splendid idea to retire to the bar to see how we could plot to become better athletes, better coaches, and better event organisers for the 2009 season. ...
It all seemed to make perfect sense at the time. If only, I could remember about the final action plan that we had drawn up! Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to back to next year’s Awards Ceremonies in Loughborough to sort it all out again.

I am hoping that the next Awards Ceremony I attend will be in the Drummond in April for Limavady Sports Council. One every six months is enough. I hope you will join me then to hear Wendy talking about her Olympic experience. I am quite sure that she will prove to be a champion speaker and person as she is as an Olympian medallist.