There comes a point not long into every Olympics when hope and reality start to divide. It’s the part you don’t always see on TV, or read about here, when the Olympics become less about the faster, higher, stronger, and more about holding back the tears.
Because no matter how hard you’ve worked or trained, few of us ever come away from the Olympics with all been we’ve looking for. And sometimes that’s before we even get to the press seats. We buy the ticket and take the ride and suddenly realise we’re on the wrong transport bus.
God only knows what it must be like for the athletes. The hope and reality of their Olympics are often two completely different things, and all we can do is try to pry and to probe and find that tidy soundbite that will somehow capture the last four years of their life. For every Gary and Paul O’Donovan, there are countless others who come away with nothing at all.
Indeed they say one of the main reasons the Olympics can only happen once every four years is because that’s how long it takes to count the cost, not just financially, but physically and emotionally too.
What is certain is that for each and every one of the 10,000 or so athletes taking part in Rio, the experience will be different, in every possible emotional sense, and doesn’t just come in four-year cycles but more like the life cycle itself.
So, five days in, and Fiona Doyle is standing dripping wet in the narrow mixed zone that runs underneath the Olympic swimming pool, trying to come to terms with exactly that: at 24, her journey to Rio had already lasted exactly half her life, since first declaring to her parents at home in Limerick, while watching the 2004 Games in Athens, that someday she was going to swim in the Olympics.
“And if you told me, 12 years ago, that this is what it would take to go to the Olympics, I’m not sure I would have chosen it,” says Doyle, not quite holding back the tears. “It’s certainly been a very up-and-down experience.
“In some ways it has been a fantastic experience, and I think I’ve grown a lot as a person, to become better both as an athlete, and as a human. But I’m never really going to be happy with how the journey ended. I would have liked to have ended it on a high, and I haven’t quite achieved it. Maybe in a few weeks time I will look back on the Games and I’ll be delighted with how I composed myself, but I’m never going to be happy with the performances.”
Indeed her swimming interest in Rio ended with a second straight elimination, in the heats of the 200m breaststroke, following her preferred event, the 100m breaststroke, the previous Sunday: her experience was further dampened by the Russian Yulia Efimova, who wasn’t supposed to be in Rio, having been banned for doping offences before gaining a late reprieve (Efimova went on to win silver, behind the American Lilly King).
Nightmare
At no point in the 12 years since Doyle first dreamed of swimming in the Olympics did she envisage that nightmare scenario. For Beijing in 2008, she was about a second off qualifying; for London, she was about half a second off qualifying; in the four years before these Olympics, she’s trained at the University of Calgary to give herself every chance of delivering the performance of her life in Rio.
Now, can she possibly dedicate another four years for Tokyo 2020, with possibly even less of a guarantee of any return?
“Of course, every athlete thinks of that. I’ll go home for a while, try to think about nothing, but who knows. I have other plans for the future, in terms of the rest of my career. I just can’t say at this stage. And at my age, particularly in swimming, this is hard to say.
“Four years in a sport like running, or sports with a higher age category, is maybe easier, but in swimming 24 to 26, for a woman, is about the peak. I know four years is a long time but I also know it flies by when you’re training. Who knows?”
Around the same time that Doyle is coming to terms with her future, Kieran Behan is just across the way in Olympic Park, a guest at the Samsung Galaxy Studio, one of the event sponsors: he’s been invited along to recount his experience in the men’s overall gymnastics, which hadn’t just ended in tears, but a dislocated kneecap early on in his final routine, the floor exercise.
Behan ended up 38th, with only the top 24 going through to the final, and having also missed out on the final in London, four years ago, his tears deserved to be a mixture of pain and disappointed.
Only now, days later, the tears are replaced by a bright smile – and with that the 27-year-old explains why even disappointments on the grandest of stages aren’t always negative.
“Coming out of the arena on Sunday, in a wheelchair, then in crutches, I was a little down in the dumps,” he says. “Then I got back to the athletes village, into the wi-fi zone, and my phone just started going crazy, comments coming through on my Twitter account, on Instagram.
Happiest
“And right then I was about the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, to be honest. I had no idea it would make that sort of impression. For me, it’s been as big as winning a medal, and I really mean that. Just getting through the routine as well. I knew I’d hurt the knee early one, so to get through it, like that, given my injury track record, means so much.
“I’ve always been positive like that, I have to be. I can’t go back in time. I can only deal with the here and now, and the future. And the best way to deal with that is to be positive.”
This is the same young man who at age 10 endured a botched leg tumour operation, which left him in a wheelchair for several months; then a freak head injury which had doctors telling him he’d never compete again; and even when he did get back, he endured two ruptured cruciate ligament injuries, one in each knee.
Does it make the last four years, eight years actually, worthwhile?
“Of course it does. I think the Olympics are all about overcoming some obstacles, some adversity. And it’s about how you touch people. And every day I feel I am learning more and more about myself, my strengths. And getting through this week I think is one of the biggest achievements I’ve done.
“I know another four years is a long, long time away, but I’ve always been a fighter. Now I can take some time to reflect a little, spend some time with my family, my girlfriend. There’s no reason I can’t make a full recovery, but I’m determined to enjoy this Olympic experience, as much as I can.”
Perhaps it is possible for hope and reality to run parallel, rather than divide, which may well be the case on Sunday morning, 9.30am Rio time, when Lizzie Lee lines up at the start of the women’s marathon. At 36, and competing in her first Olympics, Lee, like the vast majority of the 160 entrants, knows she won’t win a medal. But it’s the taking part that counts.
In getting to Rio she’s already sacrificed a lot, taking a brief leave of absence from her job with Apple in Cork, and leaving two-year old daughter Lucy at home for the duration of the Games.
Not that she considers any of this a sacrifice: “The sacrifice is sometimes being tired, training in the lashing ran,” she says.
“But I just love running. I haven’t looked a single day beyond Rio. I do have a bucket list of what I want to do after, but that doesn’t matter for now, because the number one thing on that list was to become an Olympian. I don’t need to think about anything else for now. I love running, and will always continue to run.”
Eight women
Only eight Irish women have previously qualified for the Olympic marathon, since the event was added in Los Angeles in 1984 (and three of those were in London 2012):
“And I’m the fifth fastest Irish marathon woman ever. That’s what motivates me. And now I’ve the chance to run in the Olympics and to run the fastest time of my life. It’s once in a lifetime, for me. And then I get to come home and be an Irish Olympian for the rest of my life.”
