Frontline fighter on track in battle for hearts and minds

"Punch. YOU don't grab the rim, you punch it. If you are looking for the perfect strike you hit at one o'clock, you come off at seven. You're punching with your knuckles. Just two fingers, punching, punching, punching."

- Patrice Dockery

Patrice Dockery was steaming down Lesson Street, punching. Head down, beating out a rhythm. The crowd were on her case, cheering, coaxing the athlete towards the tickertape finish at St Stephen's Green. The announcer, keeping the spectators informed as the record holder rose over the Lesson Street Bridge into the final straight, was calling out the ticking seconds. A will-she-won't-she make it countdown. Problem was the time called was different to the one the athlete saw on the lead car. In her head she couldn't work out if the record was on or off - had the lead car made a mistake or had the announcer been given the wrong information? His echoing voice, drifting up between the Victorian facades either side of the road, told the spectators that the athlete was outside the course record time, that she wasn't going to make it.

When she beat through the tape she was a second inside the old time of 29 minutes 50 seconds. The officials didn't know. Nor did the crowd. Only her coach seemed to understand that she had a new course record. By the time the cloud of confusion had lifted, Catherina McKiernan had bounded in to trigger a media convulsion. The rest of the field washed in behind in a surf of limbs. Another Women's Mini Marathon had finished. Somewhere in the confusion the moment was lost for Patrice Dockery. She hung around and chatted. Went up to get her prize. Sat down with her Waterford Crystal trophy and a voucher for a pair of adidas runners. A pair of runners for a wheelchair athlete. Punch.

"I wrote back to them asking if I could change the runners for something else," she says. "I haven't heard anything back yet."

Ireland's three-time Olympian wonders how she can evangelise her sport and gain wider acceptance as an athlete whose equipment is a wheelchair. Slights are part of life, being marginalised by the sporting world an everyday hurdle. But she doesn't have to take it. And she won't.

"I've two reasons for being marginalised," she says. "I'm disabled and I am a woman. I train six days a week, as hard as any able-bodied person does. I'm a wheelchair athlete. My racing wheelchair is my racing apparatus, the same as Sean Kelly's bike was his racing apparatus, Terry McHugh's javelin is his . . . I think the organisers see us as a section, but I don't think they see the high calibre of athlete that enters it. I'm para-Olympic. That means parallel to the Olympics, not para as in paraplegic.

"The only difference between me and Catherina McKiernan is that I don't use my legs to perform my sport. I push and she runs. She goes for a jog and I go for a jog, we just use different body parts."

Dockery was 17-years-old when she pushed her chair into fourth place in the 1988 Seoul Olympics 100 metres final. At Barcelona, in 1992, her mother died 12 weeks before the games began and by way of dealing with the turmoil, she over-trained and the year spiralled into disappointment. Three years ago, in Atlanta, she again came fourth in the 100 final, beaten out of a medal by .01 of a second in a photo-finish. "People have said to me that fourth place is the loneliest place in the world. Okay, so I bawled my eyes out afterwards. But I succeeded. I pushed the hardest I can and set an Irish record. I went in there ranked 8th. I finished 4th," she says.

With the Sydney games just over 12 months away, Dockery has already qualified for the 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,500, 5,000 and Marathon and in all of those distances she carries Irish records. Her dilemma now is selection.

In a recent trip to Toronto she set new marks in the 200, 400, 1,500 and 5,000. She also holds the Irish record of two hours 14 minutes 53 seconds for the marathon, set earlier this year in London where she finished third overall. The only Irish record not set this year is the 17.6 seconds 100 mark of 1997. Dockery is on a roll.

"Obviously you'll be better at some more than others and my strength has been over the sprinting events. What you are looking for is arm speed. We have these specialised rubber gloves and you're punching with your knuckles. The force coming off drags your arm right up at the back so it comes up pretty high and then you're punching in again," she says.

Now 28, Dockery became an athlete as part of the rehabilitation process following an operation. As a young girl she had a double spinal fusion to straighten her back, having been born with spina bifida.

To get to the position she now holds as one of Ireland's most successful elite athletes has demanded a drive and commitment that has been largely unsupported by sponsors. The Companies Registration Office where she works have been "brilliant" in easing the burden, but reality still bites.

Her main opponents will be resting while she is working. Her custom-made carbon fibre chair is logo-free. She is given runners for winning big races. She doesn't want to be patronised. She wants to get on with it. Even that is proving difficult.

"It's funny," she says, "everyone who sees me training on the roads thinks I'm training for the Dublin City Marathon. I got fourth in Atlanta and more people come up to me for winning the Marathon."

Efforts in urging corporate Ireland to show some invention and bottle to help her cause have repeatedly failed. Corporate Ireland simply doesn't have the stomach for wheelchair athletes. Worried that the run into next year's games will be curbed because of lack of money, Dockery's fear is that she will be forced to downgrade her preparations for Sydney.

"I'm just scared. I'm scared that if I'm not competing in all these events that my standard of pushing will drop. I only learn about techniques when I'm away racing. You learn it from the Americans and Australians. "I use full rubber to punch. I don't need that. I only need it on two fingers so I cut all the rubber off and it made my gloves much lighter. It's made my pushing stroke a little bit faster and I've more control because there is less bulk in my hand. You always learn something new."

In addition to the ongoing demands, training can occasionally present itself as a hazard. This time last year, pushing along the coast road at Clontarf in Dublin, a car turned out and hit her.

"Complete accident," she says. "I hurt my left shoulder and my chair was smashed. I'd to get a new one. Custom-built in Florida, three-and-a-half grand."

Her regular training partner, John Fulham, is a fellow traveller. Two peas in a pod. Relentless trainers. Tunnelled vision. Mean. Determined. Calculating. The genetic makeup of elite athletes is remarkable in its similarity.

Dockery would add honour to the list. It is important to her that races are played out properly, that things are right. Last year, in the Great Northern Run, she sprinted for the line against her rival and friend, Britain's Tanni Grey. The organisers believed that Dockery had won the close finish and wrote the winner's cheque in her name and lined up a BBC interview. Dockery felt she had been beaten, wouldn't do the interview and insisted on a photo-finish. Her instincts were correct. Grey had beaten her by an inch. "She is a perfectionist in all aspects of her life," says her coach, Mairead Farquharson. "Sometimes that causes problems because she is not easily satisfied."

And it shows. March: St Patrick's Day Road Race - winner. April: Dublin Track Championships - winner of 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1,500. May: Irish National Championships - winner in the same five events. June: Mini Marathon - winner; Cork City Sports - winner. British Trials - winner 200; July: America Series Track Meet - winner 800 and 1,500.

Part of the rump of Irish sport cursed with the minority tag, Dockery is a jewel. There are others. Neville Maxwell and Tony O'Connor amongst several in rowing. Ian Wiley in canoeing. Sarah Kelleher and Mary Logue in hockey. All have a vision for their talents and all have difficulties realising them. Dockery will argue that it is her athletic ability that defines her life, not her disability. Her argument is powerfully persuasive.

In Britain, they are attempting to persuade through an advertising campaign which knocks rather than coaxes people out of their preconceptions. In a poster campaign the scene is of a brooding disabled woman in a black jacket being hugged by her sister. In big, bold print above the picture are the words Kathy is hard to control. In smaller print, at the bottom, it reads: "If it's leather, I just have to have it." In another poster a man in what appears to be a Man United shirt is hugging his teenage son. Again both look a little menacing and the son disabled. The big print is Family life is often difficult for David. The small print reads: "He's a City fan."

The message is simple. See the person.

"I think we've gone past being patted on the head and being told we're wonderful," says Dockery. "People can see that wheelchair athletics is a sport. I'm just looking for equality. No pat on the back or anything.

"Just equality."