The Highs and Lows of Top Class Sport

If there was any justice in the world whatsoever, the back pages of all of the province wide dailies i.e. the Newsletter, the Irish News and the Belfast Telegraph, would have photos of a beaming Wendy Houvenagle, a girl from Maghera who conquered the Track Cycling World at the week end by winning the Individual Pursuit and the Team Pursuit in the World Cup race in Manchester – and setting a new World record in the process.

Of course we don’t live in a just world, which is why we normally have wall to wall coverage of three different ways of kicking a bit of pigs bladder up and down a muddy field i.e. Rugby, Soccer and Gaelic.

Wendy’s achievements are just phenomenal. Those of us who were privileged to meet her when she was a guest of Limavady Sports Council in March realised that this was the young lady who came to track cycling relatively late in life and yet she has won an Olympic Silver medal, she is the reigning World Team Pursuit Champion and she has now won the first World Cup race of the season in style. This quiet lass from Maghera, although living in Cornwall and training in Manchester and married to a Dutchman, hasn’t lost her local accent or been swayed by the fact that she regularly has gold and silver medals put around her neck. She is still the same quiet unassuming modest girl, who left Upperlands a decade ago to qualify as a dentist and join the RAF and has been flying high to follow her dreams. She has combined the best of both worlds – a top class career as a dentist (now obviously put on hold until after the 2012 Olympics) which she can go back to later on when she retires from World class sport. In the meantime she has the opportunity of living out her dream.

All in all, it was a brilliant three day Meet for the entire British Track Cycling Team with Sir Chris Hoy dominating his events and Victoria Pendleton gaining another gold and every other gold medal (10 out of 17 different events) was won by a cyclist wrapped up in a (very tight) red, white and blue lycra skin suit. Nearly as note worthy was the performance of Heather Wilson, a local cyclist who won a point in the 80 lap event which is definitely not for the faint hearted. Heather had won her heat and qualified for the final and finished 14th overall which was just tremendous.

The bikes that these cyclists use would be very unfamiliar to most of us because:-

(a) They have no brakes,
(b) They have only one gear
(c) They are as light as your little finger and
(d) If you stop pedalling you will actually be thrown off as they are “fixed gear”.

The British Cycling team leave nothing to chance. Under the expert leadership of Dave Brailsford (whom the Aussies tried to poach after the last Olympics by offering to double his salary), the team utilises the professionalism and knowledge of many experts including Chris Boardman (yellow jersey wearer in several Tours de France and a visitor to Limavady 7 or 8 years ago) and even employs a psychiatrist (Dr. Steve Peters) so that athletes can talk through any issue which concerns them.

What can local sporting people learn from a team like the BCF Track Team which has a huge budget and access to an unlimited pool of knowledge and resources? Well, it starts with professionalism and preparation. Owen Kearney has transformed Limavady United into a team capable of challenging for honours on a shoe string budget. Limavady Ladies Hockey Club have shown that with a proper astroturf surface beneath their feet that their skills can be honed and they can shine on match day.

It’s not easy for local sports to compete when the armchair sports fan has a choice of Sky, Espn, Setanta etc. showing top class sport as it sometimes make watching our local teams a difficult proposition. But if we realise that we can’t all be world class, but that it’s better to try and not succeed, than not try at all, then we can put in an effort that is at least honest. There is nothing that I love better than a solo training session where I just give it heaps on the bike or while running and I end up with my hands on my knees after a lung bursting effort knowing that I couldn’t possibly have given 1% more. It’s a wonderful feeling you can’t buy it off the internet, you can’t achieve it by reading about it in a magazine. You can’t do it by fantasying about it, you’ve got to get out there despite our lousy weather and “Just Do It”.

I tried very hard to take a week off training and boy did it prove difficult. I enjoyed however attending my local athletic clubs handicap’s race in the Springwell Forest organised funnily enough by the Springwell Running Club. There were athletes from Ballymena, Ballycastle, and the Glens competing in a four way club event, but it was great for me to see that at least three of the first finishers were triathletes from the Triangle Triathlon Club, Colin Loughery, Anne Paul and Alison Rankin. We swim and bike as well, so it shouldn’t be an even contest when matched against pure runners but Colin and Anne just ran away from their respective fields. I was on the mountain bike supposedly doing a marshalling job and to make sure that the runners didn’t take a wrong turn, but it was a much as I could do to try and stay ahead of Colin! He was running like a ‘Man on Fire’ and he left the rest of the field in his wake on the 5 mile hilly course.

In the Women’s race it was great to see another slip of a lass from Maghera i.e. Anne Paul, come home with a smile on her face in first place because I am quite sure there was no smile on her normally sunny face three weeks ago when she crossed the line at the Hawaii Ironman in a time 3 hours slower than expected due to the disastrously inappropriate timing of the return of a very painful leg and back injury. Many would have thrown in the metaphorical white towel, but women from Maghera, as Wendy Houvenagle also exemplifies, know better than that. They just put their head down and they fight their way through the bad times. Wanting to stop with every pedal stroke of the last 60 miles of the 112 mile bike and then wanting to stop for each pain jarring foot strike during the marathon, Anne thought about the only thing that mattered at that time – the finish line. She made it in an industrious display of Guts even when there was no Glory so that she could call herself a Kona Ironman finisher. Anne shares many qualities with her near neighbours Wendy i.e. resilience, endurance, determination, courage and an ability to see it through. Their finish lines may have been 12,000 miles apart but they both knew the importance of them. Wendy got to her finish line ahead of her opponents in a televised prestigious World Championship event and Anne made it to her finish line in a televised prestigious World Championship event. The results may have been widely different but the end feeling of joy and relief was the same whether you were standing in a Velodrome in Manchester – or beside the Pacific Ocean drenched in sweat and humidity. My hat goes off to both of these sporting warriors who are a first class example to the rest of us to get off the sofa and to get out that back door and to break down some barriers of our own.

I had a very quiet sporting week but I was able to watch Limavady Grammar School take on a high fancied Regent House side in a brave display at the school Rugby pitches last Saturday morning. Decimated by Swine flu and injuries, the team dug deep to make sure that these city slickers from the big smoke weren’t just in Limavady to give their country cousins a kicking. LGS refused to read the script and put in a very brave performance which gives them hope for the future that David occasionally can beat Goliath.

My sporting weekend was further enhanced by the Red Devils beating Blackburn 2 - 0 despite us not playing very well – however the joy of this victory was tempered by the defeat of Ulster down in Thomond Park in Munster to knock us off the top spot in the Magners League. About 12 years ago when I was President of Triathlon Ireland I made a point of travelling to every major club in the country and one of my trips was to Limerick where it coincided with my former Rugby Club, Ballymena, playing Shannon in a ferocious encounter. I used to get a call to play for Ballymena 5th XV late on a Friday night, when funnily enough the next day we had an away trip to Newry. My Rugby days ended however when my increasing myopia was matched by an equally dodgy appreciation of mathematical skills. I remember leaving a filthy pitch at Eaton Park and said to our skipper “Well that wasn’t too bad – a 12 all draw”. He looked at me as if I had completely lost my marbles and he hissed “We lost 13 – 12!” Oops, is it any wonder I wanted to take on three sports where you could wear prescription lenses and also where you didn’t need to be able to count!

All in all it was a fairly good sporting weekend for British sporting stars. The newly crowned World Champion Jenson Button finished on the Grand Prix podium in Abu Dhabi. Ross Fisher won the World Match Play golf tournament and Wendy and her mates trounced the rest of the cycling world. My heart however went out the Queen of long distance running, Paula Radcliffe who in her first marathon in a year finished in unfamiliar position i.e. 4th. I have always been a big fan of Paula’s ever since she replied to a letter sent by then 10 year old daughter Hannah for a project which Hannah was doing at the time. It was the only marathon outside the last two Olympic Games which Paula has failed to win. At least however, like Anne, she finished and didn’t quit. Unlike Wendy she didn’t have a gold medal put around her neck on the finish line. Paula, like Anne, will be back as you don’t count out champions on one bad race. While form may be temporary, class is permanent.

We can’t all be World Class Champions like Wendy or Paula, but what we can do is to train diligently and to race occasionally. I ended my week with my own version of sporting torture – 10 x 1 kilometre in under 1 minutes 30 seconds on the gym bike with 1 minute recovery. I managed to succeed in 9 of them but failed for some reason on rep number two, so it’s back to the drawing board. There is no point in completing several of the kilometres in 1 minute 20 if I slip to 1:32 in one of them – consistency of excellence is the watch world for any wannabe world champion and also for an old bloke who is desperately seeking a new goal and at present who is as clueless as Rafa Benitez was at Fulham was last Saturday...

After the bike ride I went on to the running machine and put it up to its maximum incline of 15 to duplicate walking up the side of the mountain to try to get ready for my latest sporting project – but that, dear reader, is another tale for another day......