Born to Perform by Gerard Hartmann

Author:Gerard Hartmann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orpen Press
Published: 2011-10-24T04:00:00+00:00

14

A Life-Changing Day

It was a Saturday in February 1990 and I was in the O’Connell Centre in Gainesville, Florida – a large indoor basketball and track arena. I was doing a practicum in sports therapy at the University of Florida, and I was assigned to the medical room along with four other trainees. Our role was to provide various treatments to athletes, from pre-race limbering up and injury assessment, to post-race massages and general stretching at the two-day indoor collegiate meeting.

A tall, lean girl wearing a Villanova University track top edged over to me. She was shy, looked about seventeen years old but was probably about nineteen or twenty, and she had a teenager’s giddy disposition when she spoke to me.

“I know you,” she said. “You’re Gerard Hartmann, the Irish triathlon guy. I loved watching you on television in the Ironman.”

She was injured, and had been for almost two years since leaving Cobh with so much promise. Yet now she was just a journey runner with the team, trying to keep her interest in the sport. She explained how frustrating it was to be in the US with all her friends back home thinking she was having a great time and living it up as a star athlete. She’d had stress fracture after stress fracture in her lower legs, and was repeatedly sidelined from training and competition. She was not soliciting any professional care; she was just a lost soul longing for a chat with a fellow Irish person and was excited at seeing a face she recognised.

I told her that in Arkansas, where I went to college, my coach John McDonnell singled out the injury-prone athletes and never allowed them to train twice a day. He would drive them in his pick-up truck the five miles out to the golf course, where they would train on the soft grass perimeter. She said she would mention it to her coach, Marty Stern, but she was concerned as there was no grass facility at Villanova. I urged her to give it a try for a few months, that surely there was a golf course within a few miles of campus. She warmed to my concern. I recognised a good girl, stuck in a rut, and searching for a way to get back on track and use her talent.

I also told her to watch out for the golf balls, and shared the story of my college friend Keith Iovine and the accident that befell him on the Arkansas University Golf Course. It was a hot August day and we had stripped down to our shorts and discarded our running vests. Suddenly Keith was like the Lord on the cross, spread out flat on his back with his arms outstretched. It was a sight to behold. Coach John McDonnell ran down: “Hey, kid, you okay?”

A big boy on the university golf team named John Daly had teed off, the ball going over 100 miles per hour and hitting Keith on the ribs. We were in stitches laughing, and so, too, was my Cobh friend when I told her the story.

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