Hard Training just goes with the territory

ATHLETICS:Ignore the pointed rumours of a proposed training camp in Vladivostok, our top athletes, like our boxers, routinely make the hard sacrifices in pursuit of their dream, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

OKAY, FOLKS, this one is going to be short and hopefully quick, because in case you haven’t noticed we’ve had our weekly allowance in here docked by 20 per cent. So, there’s a rumour going around athletics circles that unless our Irish athletes perform with some distinction at this weekend’s European Team Championships, then they’re being packed off – en masse – to a two-year training camp in Vladivostok.

They won’t be set free until shortly before the London Olympics in 2012, at which stage the expectation is they’ll understand the meaning of Hard Training.

Vladivostok, somewhere in Far East Russia, is not well known in this part of the world. Except perhaps as the birthplace of Yul Brynner. But it is well known in Irish boxing as the place our Olympic team endured plenty of Hard Training before Beijing two years ago – and where the team spirit developed there became one of the reasons they won three Olympic medals.

Irish coach Billy Walsh reckoned he had that “Vladivostok” feeling going into their recent European Championships in Moscow, which concluded last weekend with an astonishing five Irish medals: a gold, a silver, and three bronze. In fact, the Irish team trained in Kiev in Ukraine before going to Moscow, but again the results spoke for themselves. Heady stuff indeed.

Irish boxing has a system right now which has become the envy of the boxing world (only the all-conquering Russians finished ahead of them on the medal table in Moscow). This hasn’t come about by accident, and the only worry is the whole thing isn’t derailed by the row over who gets the job of high performance manager.

It hasn’t come cheap either, and although this is strictly amateur boxing, lest anyone forget, our Irish boxers this year got €551,000 in taxpayers’ money between them – more than anyone else, including our athletes, who got €468,000 between them. Seven boxers are on the maximum funding amount of €40,000 (only three athletes are), including Paddy Barnes, who won gold in Moscow, and Ken Egan, who won bronze.

One of the reasons they are so successful is because they are well looked after, and don’t really have to worry about anything else outside of boxing. (Darren O’Neill is something of an exception to this given he still teaches in Holy Trinity national school in Donaghmede, and only got €20,000, although after his silver medal in Moscow he has no more worries of indiscipline in his class.)

Billy Walsh and his team deserve the highest respect, and if they can maintain this form through the London Olympics in 2012 then more medals appear inevitable, particularly with proven champion Katie Taylor also entering that show.

But there was that other rumour going around the Beijing Olympics that our boxers were being somewhat dismissive of our athletes, saying that there was no moaning going on around the ringside, unlike down at the trackside.

I don’t know if it’s true because I spent most of my time in Beijing at the trackside, though I know some people didn’t once leave the ringside. Maybe there was some moaning from some athletes in Beijing – but whoever started this rumour, that they’re about to be sent to Vladivostok to understand the true meaning of Hard Training, has probably never seen them train.

There are 47 Irish athletes in action this weekend – 24 men and 23 women – at the European Team Championships, the competition formerly known as the Europa Cup. Ireland were promoted to the First League last year, and compete in Budapest this weekend with hosts Hungary, along with Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Sweden and Turkey.

The top three teams are promoted to the Super League – although that is asking a little too much of Irish athletics right now, at least until the dearth of field event specialists is addressed. The challenge really is to avoid being among the two teams relegated to the Second League, and for the likes of Paul Hession, David Gillick and Derval O’Rourke, to lay down the challenge for medals at next month’s European Championships in Barcelona.

Truth is, I’ve never once talked to an athlete who didn’t understand the meaning of Hard Training. I was talking to Joanne Cuddihy this week, someone who also understands the meaning of Hard Work and Hard Knocks. Four years ago Cuddihy made the European Championships 400 metres final, and a year later became the first Irish women to break the 51-second barrier when running 50.73 at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka.

All this was achieved while also studying medicine – which, by all accounts, is Very Hard Work. In 2008, she deferred those studies to train full-time for Beijing, only for a series of injuries to destroy her aspirations.

Cuddihy effectively ran her Olympic 400 metres on one leg, and if some people perceived her disappointment afterwards as moaning they clearly don’t understand the meaning of Hard Training.

That left her at a crossroads, and although her full potential remained untapped, Cuddihy went back to medicine full-time, and then last September went to Australia to work hard and train hard at the renowned Institute of Sport, in Canberra. She worked (as a junior doctor in Canberra Hospital) and trained (under Australian Institute coach Tudor Bidder) for the past year, before concentrating solely on training in recent months.

“After Beijing I just had to stop,” she told me, “first of all with the injuries, but also because I was a little fed up with it. Australia was about deciding whether I wanted to go back to it or not. If it hadn’t gone well out there it would have been all about the medicine from then on. But I have got the enjoyment back.”

Her early season results have been encouraging: winning the Australian title in Melbourne, and also the Osaka Grand Prix. She has another year of intern work to do before fully registering as a doctor, and plans to do the next six months of that in Galway, before returning to Australia at the end of this year to start focusing on the London Olympics. She was intending to run both the 200 and 400 metres for Ireland this weekend, but last Friday, the evening before a race in Turin, she stumbled on the kerb outside her hotel and badly sprained her right ankle.

“It’s a minor setback,” she says, and reckons she’ll be back to Hard Training within a week.

Hard Training. Hard Work. Hard Knocks. She understands the meaning of the lot.