Following on from last week's article, Trew at 25, this week we bring you the second half of Steve Trew's humorous, entertaining and moving story about his twenty-five years as a triathlon coach, commentator, author and athlete. His story, without a doubt, will amuse many of you have been in the sport as long as him (there can't be that many, surely?) but will also give newcomers a great insight into the history and rapid changes triathlon has seen over the last quarter century.

Camps

Working with the GB squads was a great education and led to me being able to coach all over the world. My first IOC/ITU coaching camp was in Cancun, Mexico where I met Barrie Shepley from Canada. I’d met Barrie briefly the year before when we were both presenting papers on triathlon coaching at INSEP (Institute National du Sport et de l’Education Physique) in Paris, France, I also got to meet Iona Wynter from Jamaica whom I coached for some time pre-Olympics and many other coaches from literally all over the world. It was a tremendous opportunity to talk about coaching and to swap ideas with other coaches and athletes. Reto Hug from Switzerland was a junior on the camp, as was Simon Whitfield who – as everyone who knows Simon won’t be surprised to hear - arrived a couple of days late and ended up sharing a room with Barrie, another coach, Andreas Wittermann from Germany and myself.

I coached in India the next year, down in Chennai along with a Canadian coach and ex-pro triathlete called Scott (I confess I've forgotten his surname) and Rob Pickard of Australia; another fantastic experience. We coached at the biggest swimming pool that I’ve ever seen, 25m across and 100m long. And busy! To cycle safely, we had to get up at 3am, and be off the roads before 6am, and then we'd go back to bed! The hospitality there was just tremendous. We also got hit by a real-life monsoon, right in the middle of the Asian Triathlon Championships. I have never seen surf so big just springing up out of nothing, and the roads were literally two feet under water. Athletes were coming into transition and just ending up on the floor as their brakes refused to work. Awesome!

I spent three weeks in South Africa; a three centre trip to Durban, Johannesburg and Pretoria, and Cape Town and Stellenbosch. The main thrust of that trip was to work with triathlon coaches, but it also gave me the opportunity to get to know Stellenbosch and the surrounding facilities very well, which was a real plus for when the Brits used Stellenbosch as a winter, warm weather base in the run-up to the Olympic Games. I’ve also been lucky enough to have coached or been involved in coach education in Israel, Yugoslavia and Hong Kong as well as both Northern and Southern Ireland, a lot closer to home and, of course, Malta.

For the last ten years I’ve worked with Neil de ste Croix in organizing a camp in Bermuda where Neil is based. We found ourselves sitting at the same breakfast table in Perth before the World Championships in 1997; it just went from there. A certain Flora Duffy was a nine year-old on the first camp we arranged in 1998, the same Fluffy Duffy who took silver at World Juniors, and a brilliant top ten at the Commonwealths in Melbourne as a seventeen year old.

Four years ago, I switched my Malta camp to Cesenatico in Italy; I’d been there with a GB junior team and the facilities are just perfect for triathlon (that’s my advert for my camp, contact me if you are interested!).

I’ve had Sian Brice, Joanna Hinde and Ceris Gilfillan as coaches with me in Bermuda; as well as Chloe Ashpole, Colette O’Neill and John Levison. Triathletes will know Sian and Joanna of course: Ceris I’d been coaching since she was 14 years old and she switched from triathlon to cycling in 1998 and went to the Commonwealths as an 18 year-old and then the Sydney Olympics. I think it’s really important to demonstrate, to youngsters particularly, that you can be a successful international athlete and also a nice person with a full life. I was lucky enough to coach Fiona Ford (now Fiona Morehead-Lane) to a World’s title a couple of years back, again, a lovely lady. John Levison and Colette; what do I say? Truly, two of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I know you’ve read John’s blog and read about his battles with cancer, Colette’s illnesses and injuries, but fantastically, they’re still here and winning! Good people. I have a particularly fond memory of John sitting on a cross-island ferry from Malta to Gozo anticipating a three mile (very) rough sea swim back. I have, honestly, never seen anyone greener. But, you know what, he did it. Have a look at John’s blog (plus their columns on this website of course) and see what they’re getting up to now.

Books and stories

When I was writing the first training book, I also started my first novel, Triathlon. A long day’s dying. What got me going is the fact that I’m an absolute sporting fiction junkie, particularly running novels. It’s that empathising with the emotion, the pain, everything that goes with being an athlete, the training and the racing, but also, all the bits that go along with it; relationships, particularly with your coach – or, as a coach - with your athletes. Loads of people ask, “Do you put people you know into the books?” Sure, course you do. But it’s not one real-life person transported into fiction; it’s bits and pieces of people and characters jumbled up and mixed together to make the fictional characters, at least fiction gives you that option. There are loads of the athletes that I’ve raced with, swimmers, runners, triathletes, coaches I’ve known, but with fiction you can squeeze that extra bit out of the character, go that little bit further.

It might sound a little strange, but in many ways, teaching and coaching, writing, and commentating are actually quite similar. You’re on a stage and people are expecting you to deliver, they want something from you. It really is all about communication skills.

Memories

I have some amazing memories of the characters and occasions over the years; Spencer (Smith) winning in Manchester was fantastic; Spencer’s raw power on the bike set him apart there, and then when he repeated the Worlds victory down in Wellington the next year after a disappointing race year, it was possibly an even greater result than Manchester. I was working for TV for the first time in Wellington, New Zealand in 1994, and had the opportunity to do the commentary on Spencer’s victory – and indeed - Emma Carney's, who had come out of nowhere to take the title; it made me realize how privileged I was. You can’t mention Spencer without mentioning the big man, his dad Bill. A character without equal, so many stories; Bill got himself into all sorts of trouble. At the Bath Triathlon, in 1995 when Spencer was dueling with Simon (Lessing) there were one or two, err... how shall I put this? ‘unfortunate words’ directed at Simon that got broadcasted on television. When I caught up with Bill some time later, his response was, “Steve, I hold my hands up, I was wrong, but he’s my boy!” And then he bought me a drink. My happy/sad memory of Bill is from the European Championships in Finland, in 1997 (and what an awesome race Spencer had against Stephan Vuockovic there!), you may have gathered that Bill liked a drink, but rarely suffered any aftermath from it; but in Finland, he was complaining of headaches in the mornings. As you can imagine, there was a total lack of sympathy towards him, but of course, this was the first signs of the illness which took him. We miss you Bill.

I met Dave Scott in Cambridge, Sarah Springman had managed to persuade him to come over; it was almost like the second coming. You have to remember Dave’s total domination of Hawaii in those days. Legend personified. As is World standard distance and Hawaii champion, Greg Welch. Greg has this amazing ability to see humour in absolutely everything. I recall him telling me about his open heart surgery and laughing so much he was crying, Greg also does a fair imitation of an ‘on fire Mexican hat dance,’ for which he would most certainly be arrested in the current politically correct climate! I had great fun working on race commentary with Greg at two World Championships, he is able to bring such an insight into how the race is developing.

And then there was Simon Lessing! In 1990 as an 18 year-old he arrived in Disneyland, Florida for Worlds with Ian Sweet (the then Eurosport front man for triathlon) showing him the ropes, he took seventh place, that was the year that Welchy led the Aussies to a clean sweep.

There are legends, and there are legends, and then there is Patrick Barnes. The bike named ‘Beelzebub’ with the shopping basket, the race in Perth where he shared the finish with Emma Carney. Another quick story about Patrick... I was present at a weekend training camp for newcomers to the sport, many years back now, and one of the coaches was talking about focusing on effort and never backing off when racing. The coach said that when she raced she had the word ‘GUTS’ printed on a small piece of paper and taped to her handlebars to remind her to keep pushing all the time; a tentative hand rose from a seat near the back and when acknowledged, Patrick stood up and said that he had the word ‘CAT’ taped to his handlebars. Why? he was asked; “To remind me to get some food for the cat after the race”. The group collapsed into hysterical laughter and the group speaker was somewhat humbled!

The Olympic Games, Sydney

Being involved with the British team and also doing the race commentary at Sydney was just the best thing. The absolute thrill and the excitement, the sheer buzz of being there. By then I’d written all of Moment of Suffering apart from the final two chapters, but with the novel’s climax happening in Sydney at the Olympics, I needed to feel the atmosphere to finally get it finished. I pretty much knew what was going to happen, in the novel that is, not the Olympic Games result! I had decided how it was going to end, but there were still some bits and pieces, the local knowledge factor that I wanted to bring into the book. The British team were up on the Gold Coast for three weeks going into the Games and there’s a lot of truth in the novel about the final preparations and the athletes’ feelings before what was, let’s face it, the biggest sporting event in their lives.

Working with Sian Brice specifically for a lot of years up to the Olympics was fantastic. She’s a highly intelligent lady who is prepared to give everything in training. It’s always been a great relationship with her, and also with Paddy (her husband). In a lot of ways, the most important thing was building up ‘team Brice’ because the pressures on an athlete, when they’re always traveling, on training camps, racing and away from home for a large part of the year, can be really tough! I know that from the outside it’s like, Wow, what a great life, all the traveling, exotic locations, visiting other countries and of course it is fantastic, but there is another side as well.

We knew pretty much from three years out that Sian had a realistic chance of a medal at Sydney. She’d just won the European Cup final in Alanya, Turkey and was getting consistent top ten places on the ITU World Cup circuit, then she took bronze at Auckland World Cup. Things were going well through 1998 and 1999 and then she took 6th place at Worlds in Montreal with the five in front of her all Australians.

So there we were, a year out from Sydney... We sat down and analyzed everything, took every race performance apart, looked at every single aspect of training and set out the 40 weeks of hard work that were needed. We got very specific in looking at the weak areas and the areas where things had to be improved, and where other athletes were vulnerable. It had been a long learning curve before that final year and it was time to use the knowledge and go for Sydney. We felt that we could try to cover all the bases by being able to challenge every other athlete in each discipline.

We did a lot of work on the mental preparation side, that’s not only with Sian but with every athlete I coach. A lot of people talk about visualization, but I wonder how many athletes and coaches really go into it and practice it? It's far too big a subject to go into here, but I’d say that if the athlete is not prepared mentally, then there is little chance of winning a major championship. I’d bet Sian mentally went through Sydney a couple of hundred times in the lead-up to the Games.

I’ve been very privileged as a race announcer at the major championships. Apart from anything else, you’re there on the ground seeing all the action and being a part of it. When Sian crashed out in Sydney, it was a very difficult thing to deal with. I was in the commentary box with my very good buddy Marc Dragan of Australia; he was probably the first Australian pro-triathlete, we’d raced each other in Europe in the eighties. We were co-commentators and he knew exactly how I felt when Sian went down with Carole (Montgomery) and Mariana (Ohata). Sian’s husband had flown out literally the day before, and the first that Paddy saw of Sian was her crashing. It was a very emotional few moments after the event, believe me.

And now the philosophy bit...

Was it Theroux who said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation”? I believe that you choose your life and your lifestyle; there are always reasons not to do what you want, always reasons why you can’t leave your steady income, steady job, why you can’t take a chance. But, and it’s a big but, if you really want to, then there are a million reasons why you should take your chances.

Steve is still coaching, writing and commentating but now chooses his competitive outings very carefully, preferably short and somewhere warm where wetsuits aren’t needed and knees don’t hurt! A Long Day’s Dying is out of print, Triathlon, a Training Manual, A Moment of Suffering and The Techniques of Triathlon are in good sports and book shops or can be purchased direct from Steve. The warm weather camp in May in Italy has a (very) few places left... Just e-mail! Steve Trew can be contacted on: trew@personalbest.demon.co.uk