Life Without Limits, A (15 page)

The sight of Brett that Wednesday, though, only encouraged me to go faster. I was the newcomer and I was so eager to impress. I didn’t know about the etiquette of bike training. I didn’t realise that you weren’t supposed to go bombing off, and that cycling faster than the more experienced athletes in front of the coach just wasn’t cricket. I didn’t know, and, frankly, I didn’t give a damn. Still don’t, even now that I do know. So Brett turned up, and by the end of the hour I had lapped the girls on this training ride.

This sort of thing didn’t endear me. None of the girls that week, other than Lizzy, was particularly welcoming, and, although it was too early for me to notice it, resentment was brewing.

But Brett loved all that. He summoned me to his flat that afternoon.

Lapping the girls on the bike that day was the first time I realised I could make a go of this, and Brett confirmed that this was how he was thinking. But he had some major reservations.

He lived in a flat with his Swiss wife, Fiona, and their two small children. The flat was on the fourth floor of an apartment block, and I climbed the stairs apprehensively. I was actually really scared of him at this point. I was learning more and more about his standing in the triathlon world, how many world champions he had coached. There was a kind of awe that all of his athletes exuded when they talked about him.

The flat was not big, but it was comfortable and open plan, and it overlooked the mountains at the back. There were kids’ toys everywhere, and he sat me down on their red sofa. So it was that the chat that would herald a new era in my life began.

I say chat. With Brett, it’s more of a monologue, and you listen, although it’s no less exhausting for the fact that you hardly have to say anything.

‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Are you a lesbian?’

That was one of our first exchanges, and it is the kind of blunt, confrontational method he delights in using. There was a purpose behind this superficially crass line of questioning. He needed to get to know me quickly if we were to work together, and there is no room for squeamishness in his world, or that of the successful triathlete.

‘I think you have the physical attributes to make it as a pro,’ he said, which was a revelation that had me buzzing with excitement. ‘But I’m going to have to chop your head off.’

Oh.

My problem was that I couldn’t relax. I went at everything like a bull in a china shop, he said.

On one level, this was great. He told me stories of some of his other athletes, and the importance of their aggression and bullishness. He told me about Loretta Harrop, one of his world champions, and how the guys never liked training with her because she would smash them and dent their egos. He told me about another, Emma Carney, and how she was at loggerheads with her sister in training. One day they were going different ways round the track, and neither of them would move, so they ended up crashing into each other. ‘You’ve got to relish the fight,’ he said. ‘Sport is war.’ And I just bristled inside. I wanted to be like Loretta. I wanted to be like Emma. He told me to read
The Art of War
, the ancient Chinese treatise on warfare, and I bought a copy as soon as I got home.

That aspect came naturally to me, but it was just as important to turn it off, which was my big problem. I had to be able to pour every ounce of my energy, both mentally and physically, into my training sessions and ultimately my races. At all other times I needed to be resting. And, most importantly of all as far as he was concerned, I must never let that gladiatorial instinct, accidentally or otherwise, turn itself on him. Pumped up to the eyeballs in competition I needed to be, but in my dealings with him I had to be as supine as a slave, never once questioning his orders. He wondered whether I’d ever be able to do this. This was where the removal of my head came into it. He also worried about my impatience. He had already picked up on my bull-in-a-china-shop tendencies, and I was impressed at how completely he seemed to have seen through me.

Just to reinforce that impression, it was Brett who brought up the other worry at the back of my mind – his past. In 1987, when he was twenty-seven, he had sexual relations with one of the teenage girls on the swimming team he was coaching. The girl was under age at the time. He was ashamed of what he had done; he had abused his position. Nothing more came of it until ten years later, when he was arrested in the build-up to the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, for which he was coaching the Australian team. The girl, now married, had decided to press charges. In 1999 he was charged with what the Aussies call ‘indecent dealings’ with a minor. The court found that it had been consensual and that it had been a one-off – he had never again abused his position in such a way.

Nothing with Brett is ever easy, and this already life-changing meeting with him that darkening afternoon took on an even more surreal tone as we delved into his past. But I was satisfied. Satisfied that it had been an aberration and that he regretted it more than he could say. Not once in the years since have I had any reason to think that similar ‘dealings’ have ever taken place with any of his athletes. Brett made a terrible mistake a long time ago, which continues to haunt him. It was weakness on his part, and we all know what it is to suffer from that. Case closed, as far as I was concerned.

I left that meeting exhausted. I had spent hours on that red sofa, surrounded by toys and bric-a-brac, listening to Brett talk about the qualities required for this new world of pain that I knew then I was about to enter. It would be financially hard, he said – it always is in the first year, even for the most successful athletes, and for most it remains that way. I would have to move to Thailand, where the team were to set up camp over spring. I would have to give up everything for a lonely, arduous pursuit, whose requirements would come as a shock to someone used to a varied life. I was far from convinced that I had what it took, mentally.

But I knew my course now. When Alex Bok invited me to join the team the next day, I said yes straight away. And when I took the train back from Aigle to Geneva for my flight to London, the sun was shining, the lake was icy blue and the mountains rose around me, thrilling and daunting at the same time.

First things first. Leave job.

I had taken a holiday for my week in Switzerland without telling anyone why, so now I spilled the beans and applied for yet another unpaid sabbatical. The request was referred to the powers that be, and it was granted after a suitable period of deliberation. This meant I didn’t have to resign, which kept the door open for a return if things did not work out.

Then it was time to pack up my stuff and ship it all back to my parents’. Mum and Dad were incredibly supportive of my decision, although I think they were relieved that I was joining a team, not striking out on my own, and that I’d sought the opinion of an expert – I had done my due diligence.

The other matter that required my attention was the due celebration of my thirtieth birthday. I didn’t know when I might next get the opportunity to push the boat out, so it was a good night. Naomi has a scar above her eyebrow to prove it. Thirty years old and only just about to embark on a career as a professional athlete – I knew it wasn’t the conventional path, but that milestone was just another reason why I had to take the plunge. If I didn’t do it now, I never would. And I would be left wondering ‘What if . . .’

Mum and Dad took me to the airport, and on 20 February I flew out to join the team in Thailand. That makes it sound easier than it was. I flew to Singapore, then caught another flight to Phuket and managed to find my way to the place where the team were staying. The eighteen athletes were holed up in two Big Brother-style houses. I finally found the one I was meant to be living in at about 11 p.m.

It was dead to the outside world. I stood nervously at the door and knocked. Nothing happened. I hammered a bit louder. Eventually, one of the guys (I don’t think I’d got him out of bed) answered the door. Everyone was asleep, he said. I could sleep on the sofa if I wanted. He had no idea I was coming. None of them did. It was another thing typical of Brett; a complete contempt for logistics. It wouldn’t surprise me if he had deliberately not told anyone of my arrival that night, to see how I coped, but actually I think he just forgets. It’s not important to him.

I settled down on the sofa for my first night as a pro athlete. I remember there were boxes of cornflakes everywhere. ‘Is this all they eat?’ I thought ‘Bloody cornflakes?’ This wasn’t what I’d had in mind for my new life among the elite.

I hardly slept that night. The next morning the team met for our 7 a.m. swim session at the pool. Belinda Granger and Hillary Biscay were talking about the six-hour run Brett had made them go on the day before.
Six hours
? They’d run 60km. What’s more, they actually seemed to have relished it. ‘It was a smash-fest,’ said Hillary. I wondered what I’d got myself into.

Stories I’d heard about Brett began to play through my mind again. Brett smashes his athletes, they said. They’re like eggs to him. He throws them against the wall, and most of them can crack for all he cares because the ones that don’t will become world champions. I’d heard he got the new girls to act as slaves for the older ones to toughen them up. He had weigh-ins. He got the guys to run in wetsuits with rocks on their backs.

We headed to the pool. I was apprehensive. Brett was waiting for us, and we all got into the water. Someone had brought their water bottle to the pool and left it on the deck. Brett went ballistic. He picked the bottle up and hurled it over a fence. ‘You don’t stop and drink during a triathlon swim, so you don’t fucking do it here!’ he yelled. ‘The next time I see a bottle at the pool it’ll be the owner who gets hurled over the fence!’ This was more like T Rex.

And then I couldn’t understand why my room-mate was being so hostile. I was let into my room for the first time later that morning. She had told Brett that she didn’t mind sharing with me, but that he had to tell her when I was arriving. Obviously, he hadn’t, and they’d had a massive row at the pool. She was furious with him, and she was taking it out on me.

It was a pretty miserable start, and it set the tone for those early months. After two weeks in the Big Brother house, we all moved to new accommodation in apartments. Brett put me in with four of the boys – on purpose, he later told me. I remember when we moved – Brett drove a van while the rest of us got on our bikes to cycle the 100km in the heat of the day. Pretty soon the athletes split into two groups, and I went with the faster one. I tried valiantly to stay with them, but a lack of fitness got the better of me and I dropped off. I rode on my own for most of the way, not good enough to keep up with one lot but not wanting to drop back and join the other. God knows what either group thought of me.

It was symbolic. I’d never felt more alone than during that first spell in Thailand. I derived huge enjoyment from pushing my body as far as it would go in training sessions, that masochistic thrill of taking the pain just a little bit further each time. And doing it in the company of masters of their art, obsessive perfectionists all of them, was a great privilege.

But that was where the enjoyment ended. The typical day? Well, typical doesn’t do it justice. Identical. They were all identical. And they went something like this: get up, eat, train, eat, train, rest, train, eat, sleep. Seven days a week.

Things weren’t going well with my team-mates, either. They all knew each other, and most of them had been triathletes for years. I know they were just putting me through my paces, testing me like any new kid is tested anywhere, but there was a clique and I wasn’t in it. Which is one thing when you’re at the local school, but another when you’re alone in a sweltering climate, thousands of miles from your friends and family, and all the while pushing your body to new limits. Snide comments came at me from all angles. The boys would goad me by flinging their filthy training kit around the kitchen, then watching as I picked it up, which they knew I would. They would steal my food. They – and I mean everyone – would go out for dinner and not invite me. I would be left alone with my laptop, trying to communicate with my friends scattered across the globe. I’d gone from being in the centre of a large, lively circle of friends to this.

I was desperately lonely, but I was angry too. I channelled the frustration, spurred on by emails from my friends urging me to stick to what I was out there for. But I was caught between the desire to smash everyone at training and the feeling that I ought to observe their petty conventions.

‘Chrissie,’ said one of the guys who we were on a ride with, ‘do you know what half-wheeling is?’

‘No.’

‘You’re doing it now.’

I was ever so slightly ahead of him as we cycled along, so that my wheel was half in front of his. This was how it was. You had to maintain perfect synchronisation with your training partner’s bike wheels. You had to fall in line, literally. It made me realise how my lapping the two girls on our hill repeats in Leysin must have gone down. No wonder they all hated me.

I don’t think they were too impressed with my bike, either. They all had top-of-the-range models and I had my beloved Calvin, who didn’t cut much ice with anyone who knew anything about triathlon. Which was yet another problem. I knew nothing about my adopted sport, the history of it, or the personalities, even the rules. Yet triathlon seemed to be the only subject the others ever talked about. There was just no way I could have contributed to any of their conversations, even if they’d let me.