Free Born to Perform by Gerard Hartmann Page A

motivated competitors. If you bring these four things all together you tend to get people up on the rostrum. It is very important that we now recognise that there is no happy accident out there in the sports arena.
    I had learned a big lesson in Denmark. Never again was I going to travel halfway around the world to arrive so tired that a day in bed was all I was able for, not a championship event.
    Hawaii was indeed more than halfway around the world. When I looked for it on the world atlas it took me ages to find it: there it was, way off from the west coast of America, a speck of small dots. It was going to be another long journey to get there, maybe an Ironman journey in itself, even before the big event.
    I was keen to know what the actual deal was going to be in terms of the “all expenses paid” trip to Hawaii. I reasoned that, to be able to do justice and represent Ireland in this toughest of events, I should get out to Hawaii at least two weeks before the race, to get over jet lag and the nine-hour time difference, plus to acclimatise to the heat and humidity. Everyone I spoke to agreed: “Wouldn’t that be nice, two full weeks in paradise?”
    What they didn’t realise was that I was effectively going to jump into the sea and swim two and a half miles, jump on my bike and cycle from Limerick to Dublin, and run the Dublin City Marathon – all on the hottest summer’s day you’ve ever seen in Ireland, plus another twenty degrees. An all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii back in 1985 was the ultimate trip and a free ride for some, but not for me.
    I contacted Justin Nelson in RTÉ: “Justin, Gerard Hartmann here. Yes, the training is going great. I’m just phoning to find out what date has been organised for travelling to Hawaii?”
    The Hawaii Ironman was scheduled for Saturday, October 26. I came off the phone scratching my head and totally confused. The plan was for me and the Irish contingent of seven athletes to depart from Dublin Airport on Tuesday, October 22, with the RTÉ personnel of Justin Nelson, Brendan O’Reilly and camera crew. The planned itinerary would involve almost two days of travel to get to this speck of an island on the Thursday, two days before the race.
    I was fuming. Denmark and the Half Ironman weeks earlier did not seem too bad after all. I phoned my good friend in Sligo, Pat Curley. Pat completely understood my plight and put in a few phone calls for me, but they fell on deaf ears. The budget for the RTÉ programme televising the 1985 Hawaii Ironman had been decided and there was apparently no room for manoeuvre.
    I put pen to paper and wrote to the Irish event sponsors Premier Dairies and their head man Frank Nolan. Premier Dairies had pumped over £20,000 into the Sligo All-Ireland Triathlon, as they were its key sponsors along with Puma. The requirement was that every competitor in the All-Ireland Triathlon had to wear a competition shirt emblazoned with a large Premier Dairies logo on the front and a smaller Puma logo. Premier Dairies agreed to sponsor us for the Ironman and the deal would be the same as for the triathlon: the Irish competitors would wear the gear provided and live by the mantra “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”
    That was fine, but I was the star athlete. Nice, the previous year, had been a watershed, when I had ended up in hospital because of an accident. So, this time I risked my trip and made it clear to them that I would not compete in Hawaii unless a reasonable deal was struck to fund me to go to Hawaii two weeks beforehand. I had no reply to the letter I sent to Frank Nolan at Premier Dairies or the copy of it I’d sent on to RTÉ. I’d kept a photocopy, so I sat down and put pen to paper again and sent off the two letters as if the previous had never been sent, only this time registering both. I reasoned that if these boys were messing with me, while I was breaking my arse training