Glory or grief takes 90 seconds

CANOEING/INTERVIEW WITH EOIN RHEINISCH:AS HE walks towards you, few things mark out Eoin Rheinisch as a top-class athlete. He is fit-looking, but not particularly tall (just over 5ft 11ins), and drifting past them in a loose-fitting T-shirt and jeans he draws no stares from the diners. He seeks none. This is a world-class sportsman. Top 15 in the world in an Olympic discipline and a contender for a medal in Beijing. But he's not talking up his chances, because it works better that way. In many ways this is the most impressive thing about this 28-year-old Kildare man.

After two hours of intense conversation, you are fully on board with the insider who tips him as our best hope of a medal in Beijing. But how come so few others have twigged? "I like to keep a low profile," he says.

At 24, he went into the last Olympics in the world's top 10 and on the back of a World Cup win, and underperformed. "I made a huge error on my first qualification run on the bottom of the course. I almost pulled it back. Just over a second; I didn't pull it back. That was it, I was out before the second day. It was a disaster for me. I finished 21st, out of, I think, 25. And I went in there in my best form."

The sting of it is clearly a huge motivation - "I thought: I'm not going out like that!" - and has led to a very different strategy in his preparation for this Games.

In the World Cup series in recent weeks he has had mixed results (13th, 32nd and 21st) but rounded off his time in Europe with a seventh placing in the pre-World Championships event in Spain. It was "a nice little confidence booster", but no more. He has no doubts where his focus is this time out. "Only the Olympics. I've been in Beijing four times since August. I've sacrificed results and races to do that."

Those results were important, as he had to nail down his place as the Irish paddler for the Games. But his schedule since he qualified the boat at the World Championships in Brazil last year has been frenetic.

In addition to those stints in Beijing, he trained in Australia and competed in the United States and Europe. The travel took its toll and he was ill for the European Championships. But his thoughts have been mainly on the other side of the world.

In effect he has made China a home from home. "I like it. I'm glad I spent so much time in it. I'd say I'm one of the few on the Irish team who knows exactly what to expect. I know where I'm going; I've been at the course plenty of times. I'm not worried about that; I'm not worried about acclimatisation."

The results of competition in Europe "don't necessarily reflect how happy I am with the progression of (my) training," he says. "The speed is coming at the right time now, and it's all building in the right direction.

"This will be the first year - or one of the few years - where I will have gone for just one peak. The last time I tried that was for the Europeans last year and it worked very well for me. I was sixth - and they destroyed my race boat before it."

He draws strength from the whole drama around those championships in Liptovsky in Slovakia. He arrived at the airport at Krakow in Poland to find his race boat had been destroyed in transit.

One option was to try to use his training boat. It was a completely different animal - and it was back in Ireland.

"I jumped on a plane straight away - I had to fly back through Frankfurt, because I couldn't get a direct flight. I spent five hours waiting in Frankfurt, then flew back to Dublin. Got home at 11 o'clock at night and then stayed up til three in the morning with my younger brother Eamon trying to make the training boat a bit more like the race boat - or the best it could be."

He flew back at seven - four hours later - to Krakow with the boat. "That was a great mental-toughness test for me. The couple of days left for training was very difficult. I knew the boat was sub-standard. But I raced it. I took one touch (on a gate) and without that it would have been a medal. I was delighted with that result, considering what had happened.

"That whole experience taught me an awful lot. Sometimes things happen and you have to deal with them because the race doesn't come around again."

Last year was an extraordinarily bad one for the tools of his trade - five race boats were destroyed on aeroplanes. "Thankfully this year I've built up some good karma! I haven't had any incidents," he says.

He acquired two boats this year and made a remarkable decision. "One I was really delighted with. We went to a training camp in April in Beijing. I got it there in one piece and I said 'y'know what? I'm leaving it here!' I'm not going to take it home to Europe and race it, even though this is the better of the two boats.

"So I left it in Beijing; went back there in June and used it - and that's my Olympic boat now."

Canoe slalom is an intense, technical, sport in which the paddler has to negotiate their way through a stretch of rough water on which are hung parrallel poles or "gates". Touch one of these or miss a gate and there is a penalty.

Everything happens quickly; misjudge once and hopes evaporate.

Rheinisch finds this thrilling.

"Ninety seconds. What I love about it, is it is like boxing. Your opponent is different each time. The course is different each time.

"You don't get a chance to practise it. Every race is different - it just feels fresh all the time. You don't get bored of it."

Ireland does not have a single slalom course, so it is extraordinary Rheinisch became involved at all. "It's a funny one. My dad (Donal) was a hurler and footballer for Dublin, and the four boys in the family all had a stint in hurling or football at a young age.

"I suppose (it was) just being so close to the canoe club. My parents' house is in Leixlip, just a mile from the club. If you weren't into the field sports it was one of the other options that was available.

"Both of my older brothers did it before me. Aidan competed with me to get the Olympic spot for Athens; David, my older brother, did it at World Cup level in his time. And my younger brother, Eamon, is on the under-23 team."

He talks enthusiastically about the courses, how the newer ones can be completely altered, and not just by changing the power of the water rushing through them. "The newer courses have movable obstacles. They can change the characteristics of the river. It's like Lego, almost."

"We practise countless positions - but on the day of the race someone sets the course and it will never be the same as you have practised.

"It might be close to what you have practised, but a surprise will always be thrown up - because of the way the gates are, there are infinite combinations of the way you can put gates on a course."

Competitors are not allowed to practise the course as laid out for the race, so top slalom canoeists need both technical mastery and acute spatial awareness.

"You have to be able to picture yourself from the outside looking in, as if someone was using a video camera of you doing the move," Rheinisch explains. "But also - and it's the harder one to do - is from your own eyes. You have to be able to see it as if your hands are moving in front and the gates are coming towards you. That's the harder one to visualise, but you need to be able to do it."

Rheinisch writes a blog eoinrheinisch.com, and it is striking how unsparing he is about his performances.

"I'm my worst critic. I don't mind saying that. I don't know if it's a good trait to have. Sometimes it is; sometimes it's not.

"I'm definitely a perfectionist when it comes to my training - and sometimes that can play against you. Sometimes you have to cut yourself a bit of slack - and sometimes it takes other people to do that for me."

He is very thankful to those who have supported him, including coach Han Bijnen, the Irish Sports Council and sponsor Agtec Ireland.

So how does this perfectionist think he will do in Beijing? "I've been very careful to think in terms of process, because I can't control what the others are going to do. Everyone's good on their day.

"I know if I put my two (best) runs together it's medal standard.

"I'd certainly be looking, as a goal, to be in the final. Once you're in that mix the margins are so tight anything can happen on that day. But I'm very careful as the race approaches to think in terms of process. 'What do I need to do to do my good runs . . . lines, that's it . . . and let the result look after itself, if you know what I mean.

"I just think it is absolutely critical at an event to think in the present moment. If I'm thinking of the medal, that's the future - and you can't do that. If it's the past you can't do that either - you can't think of past results or anything like that. Just right in the present: 'what do I need to do to get down this course quickly'. And that's it.

"And even within that 90 seconds it's very important not to think 'I didn't do that last bit very well'. You have to keep in the present on the run, as well. If you get to gate 17 and there's two left and you're on a great run don't think of the finish line. Gate 18. That's that."

Put like that, it sounds very similar to something like golf - let the shot you've just played go.

"Yeh, Whether it's good or bad, it doesn't matter, it's gone. It's the same in our sport: it's gate by gate.

"I can't think of how many times - before I did the mental training that I've done - when that has destroyed a run. When you'd get to gate 16 and you know it's great and then you think 'Jesus, if I just finish this . . .' And you freeze. Because you're not in the present moment you blow it."

Brendan Hackett, his sports psychologist "has been fantastic. He's made a huge difference to my last four years. I think at the top, in the top 10, or 20 in the world, everyone's fit; everyone's strong; everyone has done the technical work. The difference is really going to be in the head. Especially at a major event like an Olympics or a World Championships."

So how will he do? Ten men will make the final in Beijing, and Rheinisch could certainly be one of them. While he is ranked 15th in the world, five of those above him are effectively ruled out of Beijing because each country is allowed only one athlete.

The bigger teams have the advantage during the year of training and travelling together, but come Beijing this will be taken from them. Rheinisch has teamed up this season with Canadian David Ford, a 41-year-old heading into his fifth Olympics, and it has worked well.

"We'll be going out to the Games and we'll be the only team there. We'll be the only people who have worked together through the year as a team - and we'll still be a team.

"So you're not, all of a sudden, an individual, or on your own. I think there's an advantage in that."

If Rheinisch is flying under the radar he is locked on to his target. "Nothing counts this year except the 11th and 12th of August," he says. And you believe him.

'I'd say I'm one of the few on the Irish team who knows exactly what to expect. I know where I'm going; I've been at the course plenty of times. I'm not worried about that; I'm not worried about acclimatisation . . . The speed is coming at the right time now, and it's all building in the right direction