Free Born to Perform by Gerard Hartmann Page B

three and four times per day, then they were fooling no one. After a couple of weeks waiting for a reply, I phoned Frank Nolan and explained that if Premier Dairies did not fully fund my trip to Hawaii on the earlier date that I requested, I would seek additional sponsorship myself to fund it. Their loss was going to be someone else’s gain, and there would be red faces galore for all the wrong reasons.
    I knew John O’Donnell, one of the stalwarts of Limerick Athletic Club, who worked for many years with Guinness. John had qualified for the 1948 Olympic Games as a sprinter but missed out due to administrative issues. He knew firsthand how vital it was to travel early and acclimatise. John made an appointment for me to meet Guinness’s head of marketing PJ McAlister.
    PJ and I struck a deal: Guinness would fund me £2,000 and in return I would wear the Guinness logo on my competition kit. It did not matter that, back then − and to this day − I was one of the few Irishmen who had never even tasted Guinness, never mind drank a full pint of the black stuff. What ructions would develop did not become apparent until a couple of days before the race in Hawaii.
    After what happened in Nice the year before, my mother was not going to let her 23-year-old son travel to the remote island of Hawaii on his own. The day before travelling, I cycled from Limerick to Kilkee in Clare and back, a full 112 miles – the same distance I was going to cycle in Hawaii, though of course I knew the experiences would be worlds apart. Cycling for five and a half hours on a wet September day in the west of Ireland bore no similarity to cycling 112 miles in temperatures close to 100°F across lava fields on a windswept paradise island. After getting off the bike in Limerick, I then ran thirteen miles. I came home, had a good feed and spent another hour taking the bike apart and packing it safely into a big box padded with Styrofoam that had been kindly made for me by a factory in Askeaton, without charge.
    The following morning my mother and I flew from Shannon to New York and on to Minneapolis, where we had to stop over for the night. Next stop the following day was Los Angeles Airport. Looking out the window of the airport, my thoughts went back to the previous summer and the Los Angeles Olympics, and I thought that if John Treacy could win a silver medal in the heat of California I should be able to survive the heat of Hawaii. The flight from mainland US to Hawaii was all of five hours, almost the same distance as from Shannon to New York. “Lord,” I remember thinking, “these Hawaii Islands really are in the middle of the ocean, actually the most remote group of islands in the whole world.”
    When we stopped at Honolulu Airport we had a three-hour wait before boarding our next flight to the Big Island. I was jumping out of my skin and eager to get out for a run. I had my running shoes on and I had a singlet and shorts in my hand luggage – ever the athlete, always ready for a run. I changed in the toilets and went out squinting into the glaring midday sun, as I had not even thought of the need for sunglasses. Before even starting to run, I was soaked in sweat. The heat was like a furnace as I ran laps of a car park at the airport in the 95°F heat for some 45 minutes.
    We arrived in Kona Airport in darkness and waited at the luggage carousel for our luggage to arrive. With the little airport deserted, we realised we had arrived empty handed, with the exception of small carry-on bags. We were told that our luggage and my bike had to be re-routed and would probably arrive in the next day or so. Whatever about plans to get out and train on the course, at least I had my running shoes and sweaty gear − fortunately so, as the bike and luggage took four days to arrive. We were given $300 by the airline to purchase some clothes and necessities, and of course the first thing I did was buy a pair of