Kieren

For ten years I had a small bike shop in Brisbane. It was a little “hole in the wall” type of shop where I went to recover from my training. When I started the shop, I had no competition in a five km radius. Over the years four other shops moved in on my territory. I was faced with the option of spending lots of money, moving into bigger premises or getting out and doing something else.

When I started the shop, I was a bike shop owner who did a bit of coaching on the side, and now ten years later, I was a triathlon coach who ran a bike shop on the side.

My shop was five hundred metres up the road from the pool where the great Kieren Perkins trained. As part of his training, Kieren did some cycling. I supplied him with a custom made racing bike.

Shortly before the Atlanta Olympics, the pool was burgled, Kieren’s bike was stolen. Maybe Kieren went to Atlanta angry.

About four weeks after Kieren had won his second gold medal in the fifteen hundred metre event, he came into the shop to be measured up for his replacement bike.

We had one of the most inspirational conversations I have ever had with an athlete.

I am always interested in what athletes think. I believe, once you’re fit, seventy percent of performance comes from the mind.

I asked Kieren, “What do you think, when it’s dark outside, when you get out of bed to go training? When you already hold the world record, you already have two Olympic gold medals, when you’re the World Champion. What thoughts go through your head?”  

His answer, “I honestly don’t think a conscious thought, I just get up and do it, It’s my job” I wonder how much we could all achieve if we had that attitude. He went on, “Besides, when I started swimming, I wanted to win three Olympic gold medals and I’ve only got two”.

When he said that, I got goose pimples. When would he have made that goal, when he was thirteen, fifteen. That’s a long term view. What would we all achieve, if we set goals and held onto them for ten, twelve years?

Kieren went on to come so close to achieving his three gold medal goal. He retired from swimming with two gold and one silver medal in the Olympic fifteen hundred metres swim.

With the ability to hold a goal for that long, to pursue it with dedication like he has, he’ll be successful in whatever field he enters. Nothing can stand in the way of that sort of energy.