In the final few days, after watching numerous athletes outdo their potential but still leave without a medal, I hatched a plan to follow six of them during the ensuing four years, the highs and lows of their preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, three men, three women across various disciplines. Mostly this involved feeding their names into Google News alerts and posting the results.
For a while I became genuinely engaged in their struggles referring to them as "my athletes" and doing my best to at least see their competitions despite the time differences, continuing to follow their efforts right up to the London Olympics in 2012. After none of the qualifying athletes made the final and assuming it was because I'd jinx them, I stopped.
Well, here we are another eight years later, there's another Olympics on the horizon and although none (?) of them are still athletes, I thought I'd drop in and see what their post-competition careers have been like. The initial descriptions of their Athens performances and why I chose them are here. Let's see how they went from there.
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Michelle Dillon Triathlon
2004 (Athens): 6th place, Women's Triathlon
Michelle retired from competition in 2008 after a back injury and started a triathlon coaching team. But she's recently begun racing again, winning some senior sprint races on the ITU tour and competed in the World Championship trials at Eton Dorney in May.
James Goddard Swimming
2004 (Athens): 4th place, men's 200m backstroke
2008 (Beijing): 6th, 200m individual medley
2012 (London): 7th, 200m individual medley
Retired from competitive swimming in September 2013 - he hadn't qualified for the World Championship team. In 2017 he signed up as a coach for a swim travel company and it looks like he's been coaching in various capacities since. He's on Twitter but hasn't updated since retweeting something last October.
Laurence Godfrey Archery
2004 (Athens): 4th place
2008 (Beijing): 4th place
2012 (London): 9th place
Larry wasn't in Team GB for Beijing and if I'm interpreting his World Archery profile, he just didn't qualify. His LinkedIn profile says that he's now a full time engineer at Rolls-Royce having worked for the company since 1992.
Abi Oyepitan Athletics
2004 (Athens): 7th place, women's 200m final / 5th place, 100m semi-final
2008 (Beijing): Didn't qualify.
2012 (London): 6th place, women's 200m semi final
Retired from competing in 2013 and has had various jobs since, at Carphone Warehouse, on a Clipper team for the round the world race, as a motivational speaker in schools and most recently running a vegan skincare company.
Lucy Wainwright ne Hardy Canoeing
2004 (Athens): 7th place, Women's K1 500m
2008 (Beijing): 7th place, Women's K1 500m
Competed in the 2009 World Cup but fell of the radar since then. She's now a Senior Performance Nutritionist working for British Triathlon as part of the sports heat and humidity strategy, recently winning an award for the preparations they're making to help athletes cope with the humidity at Tokyo.
Matthew Elias Athletics
2004 (Athens): 5th place
Wasn't selected for the Beijing Olympics and retired in 2010 and took up a position in Welsh Athletics as the Development Officer for South East Wales. This British Athletics site suggests he competed in a few half marathons and 400m races in the ensuing decade. This was concurrent with his work for Welsh Athletics eventually becoming National Talent Development Coordinator for Sprints. On June 28th this year he announced he'd be moving on to pursue other opportunities, although he'd be remaining to see through the relay programmes to help them qualify for the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.
What can we draw from this? I'm not sure other than that being an Olympian carries weight and that making finals and semis is still achievement enough to put you in a position put your experience back into the sport. Perhaps if you repeated the exercise for most ex-athletes you'd end up with similar results, but I'm happy that all of "my athletes" have found a good career, seem to be healthy and are still with us.
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