Public humiliation

SOMEHOW it seems a lot more than a few months ago. Athens. The Olympics. Ireland's most promising young athlete is just about to take part in his biggest competition yet. The vibes have been good about this guy. He thrives on the big occasion, he's been in excellent form all season, he's one of those confident youngsters who won't be fazed by the task at hand. This could turn out to be something special. And it does turn out to be something special. Only not in the way anyone would have wanted. Probably it's best to let Adrian O'Dwyer tell the story of his Olympic high jump experience. "Two metres ten isn't even my usual opening height in a competition, 2.20 is. To come in at 2.10 was undignified enough, but to knock it was terrible. I was the first jumper. My warm-up didn't go well and I didn't have time to sit down and concentrate on what I needed, faster feet, more rhythm. All I could think of was, 'is my number on right?' and 'there's the clock'. It was unreal. "I'd told my coach beforehand that I'd open at 2.20 and when he saw 2.10 he knew that there was a problem. I thought '2.10 is a safe height, I'll pop over it.' I did it in my tracksuit in the warm-up. Then I knocked it. I was going 'shit, shit, shit,' then two more jumpers jumped and I was up again. "I was thinking 'OK, OK, OK, do it this time Adrian,' and I slapped myself on the side of the head to wake myself up. But I knocked it again and I said, 'this is just going to be my bloody luck to knock it again.' When I knocked it for the third time I just wanted a great big hole to swallow me up. "I haven't watched the video of it yet. I took it out one time but I switched it off before it came to me jumping. I put it back in the box and threw the box under the bed. I don't even feel like I competed, I was there, yeah, great, but I could have been one of the people in the stands. I'm not even an Olympian when you think of it." The guy who was really understanding to me was from Finland . . . he said 'listen dude, you're 20, relax, it's your first Olympics' He's a remarkable young man Adrian O'Dwyer. His failure to record a clearance in the Olympic high jump was probably as great a public humiliation as any Irish athlete suffered this year. For an experienced competitor it would have been hard enough to bear. But for a 20-year-old it must have been absolutely soul destroying. Yet he's able to look back at it dispassionately a few months later and patiently and politely explain to a journalist just where it went wrong. There's no self-pity, no whingeing, just an examination of how what should have been the highlight of his career turned into the nadir. The skull and crossbones silver jewellery which cover his fingers from base to tip rattle as he pounds the table for emphasis. Posterity can be cruel to athletes. Declan Hegarty was a world-class performer in the 1980s but he's mainly remembered for throwing the hammer into the cage at the Los Angeles Olympics. Mary Decker-Slaney was one of the outstanding runners of her generation but the mention of her name immediately evokes a beaten athlete lying on the track after that infamous clash with Zola Budd. At the moment, when people think of Adrian O'Dwyer, it's those three failures at an easy height in Athens which come to mind. He's young enough to change this perception but to do so he's got to recover from the kind of experience which can crush a young man. The months since the Olympics have been all about recovery. And that process of bouncing back began almost immediately, thanks to the intervention of one of his fellow jumpers. "The guy who was really understanding to me was from Finland. He'd already cleared 2.10, I'd jumped against him in the World Indoors. He came over to me and said 'Listen dude, you're 20, relax, it's your first Olympics, it's my third. I was jumping 2.10 at your age, you can jump 2.30, don't worry, it'll be grand.' That helped me a lot." O'Dwyer's nightmare almost seemed symptomatic of a poor games for Irish athletics. On radio talkshows, in newspaper columns and in pubs people seemed only too happy to sound off on our runners, walkers and jumpers. Jerry Kiernan got stuck into James Nolan, James Nolan bit back and we had the unhappy sight of the Irish public in one of its periodic fits of sporting outrage. The athletes, it was agreed, had let us down. It must have appeared to be a less than propitious time for young O'Dwyer to return home. "Yeah, I was slightly paranoid about coming back because they made such a deal about it in Kilkenny when I was going to the Olympics. You get these people who come up and say 'what happened,' and I have this phrase more or less memorised. Then you get these guys running out of pubs shouting a bit of abuse but I don't mind that, they're just ignorant people. My friends were supportive, my family were too, they understood." When he says he doesn't mind the people who shout abuse at him from pub doorways, O'Dwyer seems to mean it. He just presents the abuse as a fact, not whingeing about it, not bemoaning the cruelty of the human race. My own feeling is that these people deserve to be kicked from one end of the Marble City to the other but he's inclined to give them a fool's pardon. He may look like Marilyn Manson's first cousin (six foot six tall, sky-blue cosmetic contact lenses which give his eyes a glaring appearance, enough jewellery to occupy an entire airport's metal detectors) but O'Dwyer is what an older generation would have called a "dote." He's open, generous and determined to focus on the positive. All of which makes his Greek tragedy even more heart-rending. THE great Athenian dramatists reckoned that character was destiny and perhaps O'Dwyer's character had a lot to do with his misfire. For all his talent, he's just an ordinary decent 20-year-old. Stagefright was an understandable emotion. "It was unreal, the Olympics. It was massive. I was in the food quarters, they were the size of a football stadium, and you could be sitting down to eat and Ian Thorpe sits down beside you or Paula Radcliffe is running around the place. You're almost starstruck just looking at people, world-class athletes, seven foot six basketball guys walking beside gymnasts who're four foot nothing. And in the competition, half the guys I was jumping against I'd only seen them on television. Sitting in the calling room, I'd see someone with a PB of 2.40 and go 'wow, I'm jumping against him.'" There were other problems along the way. A foot injury disrupted his season and he feels he trained too hard when he recovered, perhaps over-compensating. There were problems with Asics, his sponsor in the run-up to the Games, who couldn't provide him with satisfactory high jumping spikes (he switched to adidas just before the Olympics). And shortly before the Games his coach Maeve Kyle had a heart attack and was unable to travel to Athens. It was an unsettled Adrian O'Dwyer who faced up to that 2.10. The question now is what long-term effect such a visible failure will have on the rest of his career. Because O'Dwyer is a long way from being Eddie The Eagle or Eric The Eel. He remains one of the most exciting prospects in Irish sport. His 2.30 clearance earlier this year in Algeria makes him the second ranked under 23 in the world though he's not 21 till next month. 2.40 won the Olympic gold, 2.34 would have won him a medal. Less than 30 years ago, his personal best would have been a world record. The Olympics may have been a disaster but already he's looking ahead to a busy 2005. "I start with the European Indoors in Madrid, then there's the European under 23s in Germany and the World Championships in Helsinki. And the high jump is in the Golden League this year so it would be really cool to get into a couple of Grand Prix events. It should be fun. I'd be hoping to get a medal in the under 23s, to get into the top five in the indoors and to train well and be in good nick and head to the worlds in perfect shape. I'd like to break my national records indoors and outdoors as well. If I can do those things, I can put the Olympics behind me." 2005 will also be a big year for O'Dwyer because he's moving out of home. In fact he seems almost as excited about this as he does about his athletic schedule. And the only criticism that really seems to upset him is the suggestion that his love of outlandish jewellery takes away from his high jumping. "How the Hell can that be, I don't wear it when I'm jumping. This is me and I have the thing going with the lenses now as well, devils eyes, cats eyes, I'm trying to get adidas to get me ones with three stripes." Once more it's brought home to me how young the kid is in a sport where top performers usually reach their peak in their late 20s or early 30s. The expectations which he had to shoulder before Athens seem even more unreasonable. And they seem downright insane when he tells me that the Sports Council's financial contribution to his Olympic preparations was a princely ?4,600, the kind of money an ostensibly amateur GAA manager would regularly pocket as petrol expenses. In fact, the story of Adrian O'Dwyer and money indicates just why Irish athletes find it so hard to shine at the top level. "If we had the kind of support Sweden have we could be on a par with them, there's nothing wrong with Irish people. When I jumped 2.20 indoors it got me on the programme. I was supposed to get ?4,600 but I didn't get a penny so we rang up one day, six months later, to see what the problem was, and they said I'd failed to sign one form. First I said 'could you not have told me this at the time,' but then I remembered that I'd signed everything and I told her that. "She said, 'I'm sorry, Mister O'Dwyer, you're right, you did, the cheque'll be in the post.' It still didn't come for another month. I was due to get ?5,000 from the Athletic Enhancement Programme before the Olympics and it still hasn't come. I'm owed so much money, my head is wrecked. At the moment I'm waiting for a ?1,025 cheque that's well overdue." To Hell with it, I'm young, I've got three, maybe four Olympics ahead of me. It was just part of the learning curve . . . Next year O'Dwyer should get ?19,800 which is the grant given to athletes who are in the world top 16. He is 16th in the high-jump rankings in terms of heights cleared. However, he is 20th in the ranking which takes account of placings in various events (largely because of his Olympics mishap.) If the letter of the law is strictly applied, his grant will be ?11,800 instead. It's a yearly wage most League of Ireland players would turn their noses up at, one which puts into context all the carping about taxpayer's money being wasted on athletes who didn't win Olympic medals. We're getting what we pay for, perhaps even a bit more than we deserve. Still, I suspect that it will take more than a lack of money to stop O'Dwyer. He talks enthusiastically about finally working with a dietician. "I was the heaviest guy in the high jump competition, I can't have huge quads and a big ass, man. There were guys there six foot nine and six foot ten, I shouldn't be heavier than them." This is despite the fact that the Kilkenny man doesn't have a pick on him and will look positively cadaverous if he loses the six kilos he reckons he needs to shed. But this is what world class athletics is about at the top level, the pursuit of every possible physical advantage, reducing everything to the smallest margin of error possible. The road back has begun. "When I came back from the Olympics my foot was still sore but I went down to Scanlon Park. Nobody was there and I felt a bit pissed off . . . here we go again, the same old story. But then I snapped out of it, told myself that if I trained tough here I wouldn't have to go through what I went through in the Olympics. To Hell with it, I'm young, I've got three, maybe four Olympics ahead of me. It was just part of the learning curve . . . now it's time to pick myself up and start again. "High jumping is such a technical event that even if one little thing goes wrong, you're screwed. It's such a finicky, awkward event. And Goddamitt, I love it." He'll be back. - Eamonn Sweeney

Confident Kidney keeps the faith for Bourgoin rematch

LEINSTER coach Declan Kidney has named an unchanged side to face Bourgoin in the Heineken Cup at Stade Pierre Rajon tomorrow night (kick-off 7.30 Irish time). Unsurprisingly, the Leinster mentor has kept faith with the starting 15 who rattled up all sorts of records in the 13-try, 92-point demolition of the club currently lying second in the French championship at Lansdowne Road a week ago. There is some concern over the fitness of lock Leo Cullen who retired at half-time with an injured shoulder in that game. Cullen has been named to play and according to manager Paul McNaughton is almost certain to line out. "We are confident that Leo will be okay but we will give him a final fitness run over there. Ben Gissing will be on standby just in case," said McNaughton before departure yesterday. Gissing is one of ten replacements named but on the assumption that Cullen comes through unscathed then whether it is Ciaran Potts or Aidan McCullen to cover the backrow would appear the only issue still to be addressed. So with Kidney set to name pretty much the same match day squad, will motivating the players be a problem given what transpired in the Lansdowne mismatch a week ago? "When you've been playing in Europe for ten years and you've only won once in France then there's a big challenge ahead," said Kedney. "Last week was a bit surreal in that you don't often get 92 points but I think there's a bit of Irishness in it as well because if it was the other way around - as it has often been in the past - we'd be talking about how bad we were and about how good the French were," added the coach. "We know for example we had a few passes that went to hand the last day that don't always go to hand. Between David (Holwell) and Felipe (Contepomi) we had two great inside passes and they were both held very well but on another day you mightn't catch those but in creating chances I thought it was quite good. Now we're going to have to create those and be as good in our execution on Friday night. "I've been there in the past with Munster and I know how tough a place it is to win. In the South of France they play with an enormous amount of pride." Was he surprised at the Bourgoin attitude in Dublin? "A lot has been made of it but we had to make as many tackles as we did in any other game. In fact we missed more than we have in any other game this season. If we repeat that on Friday night we're going to be beaten. They are going to be so much fresher this week." Following their equally impressive drubbing of French opposition in the shape of Montpellier (56-3), Connacht have made just one change for tomorrow night's European Challenge Cup second round, second leg tie at the Stade Sabathe (kick-off 6.30 Irish time). Coach Michael Bradley, never slow to rotate his squad, brings in Pieter Myburgh to the second row in place of Christian Short who drops down to the bench. Meanwhile, there was a nasty surprise for members of the Munster squad when they returned to their dressing room following a training session at University of Limerick. They discovered that a break-in had taken place with mobile phones, money, jewellery and other personal belongings stolen. Entry was gained through a window in the shower room. Munster play Castres in a crucial Heineken Cup game this weekend. LEINSTER (v Bourgoin) - G Dempsey; S Horgan, B O'Driscoll, F Contepomi, D Hickie; D Holwell, G Easterby; R Corrigan (Captain), S Byrne, E Byrne; L Cullen, M O'Kelly; E Miller, S Jennings, V Costello. Subs (from): R Nebbett, P Coyle, D Blaney, C Potts, A McCullen, D Dillon, B O'Meara, G Brown, K Lewis, B Gissing. CONNACHT (v Montpellier) - M Mostyn; T Robinson, P Warwick, J Downey, C McPhillips; E Elwood, C Keane; R Hogan, B Jackman, S Knoop; P Myburgh, A Farley (Captain); M Swift, J Muldoon, J O'Sullivan. Subs: J Fogarty, D McFarland, P Bracken, C Short, B O'Connor, C O'Loughlin, M Walls. - Tony Ward