The Road To Beijing.

Sport Glancing backwards through the archives, it's notable how obsessed I was with the 2004 Olympics in Greece with this essentially becoming a sport blog for two weeks. A oist about the women's triathlon's a good example as I wade in on the coverage of Austria's Kate Allen and how she'd won the race after travelling up the line-up from 44th position after the swimming a fight which had gone totally uncovered by the tv directors or the commentators despite her split times presumably being right in front of them.  Now you can relive the whole race on YouTube.

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.

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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.  

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport  Abi came sixth in her 200m semi final and failed to join the final this time.  That's that.

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport  Abi Oyepitan left the 100m competition after turning in 8th in the semi-final.  Goes in the 200m first round heats this evening.

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport Despite beginning well, James Goddard finished 7th in his only race, Men's 200m Individual Medley with 1:59.05 about five seconds behind Lochte and Phelps. But it was stacked heat and he does at least come away with the story of having fnished third behind the two of them in that semi-final.

Larry Godfrey's also out of the Men's Individual archery after losing to Khairul Anuar Mohamad of Malaysia in the quarter finals on a shoot off, not quite getting his arrow into the middle of the target.

Abi begins her j-word this morning in the 100 metre heats which are passing through at the moment, though they're not on Freeview which is showing the same swimming on two channels.  So I'll report back soon.

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport James Godard has made the final of the Men's 200m Individual Medley having stormed through his semi-final coming in third behind Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. At the close of the race he was clearly rather cheesed with his time of 1:58.49, two and half second behind Lochte and seventh in the overall timing across the qualifiers. The experts around the pool suggested he does have the potential to go faster but the field is stacked so we'll probably be simply pleased with being in the final.

In Volleyball news, the British women lost their third match against Italy, taking them to the wire in the opening set, 27-25 before losing it in the second two with the symmetrical 25-12 25-12. They still have two matches though against Dominican Republic on Friday (16:45 BST) and Japan on Sunday (14:45 BST) and a win against either will lead to their progression.  Since their win against Algeria there's been a genuine buzz behind them and the Twitter feed's well worth following.

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport Larry Godfrey's through to the last sixteen in the individual archery. As the BBC describes, "the Bristolian bowman breezed through the first round with a 6-0 victory over Emdadul Haque Milon of Bangladesh, before dispatching Mexico's Juan Rene Serrano 7-1 in the last 32 later in the day."

He'll go again on Friday. I think.

Meanwhile as a fringe event, I was up as late as I could last night (around midnight) watching the British women's volleyball team battling against the African champions Algeria. As has often been the case at these events, in sports I'm less familiar with, it was the commentary which drew me in, as they enthusiastically explained that what we were watching was a historic moment for British women's volleyball.

Never having been in the Olympics before and ranked sixty-nine in the world the commentators became increasingly excited at the prospect of this team winning a set, of that being a massive achievement and I found myself cheering any point and in the event they did take the first set. Algeria pulled back to draw level and then looked guaranteed to win the match.

At that point I went to bed, having seen the team achieve what the commentators said they'd entered the Olympics to do, only to wake up this morning and find that they'd won the match 22-25 25-19 23-25 25-19 15-8, fighting their way back to level scoring in the fourth set before trashing Algeria in the fifth. Part of me wishes I'd struggled to stay awake, but it was a nice start to the day.

These are the kinds of stories which tend be overlooked in the medal rush. In some sports even being in the Olympics is an achievement, or winning a match, or beating an apparently insurmountable opponent, that's the dream. Even if this team can't beat Italy in their next match tomorrow and don't progress, they've already lived some kind of a dream in front of home crowd and we should be pleased for them.

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport James Goddard's contributed to The Guardian's Olympic Breakfasts series:

"My breakfast is really boring – were you hoping I'd say I was going to have cheeseburgers every day or something like that? Before I race I just want to throw lots of carbohydrates down me, so you are looking at some toast or bread, some cereal and maybe a croissant. I keep it pretty basic really."

Currently I'm on Sugapuffs.

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport  After last night's extraordinary opening ceremony which covered all my bases (Ken!  Sugababes!  TARDIS!  Sir Tim Berners-Lee!) and not going to bed until two o'clock, I was still up and almost wide awake this morning to see Larry Godfrey as part of the Men's Archery team in the opening match of the championship at Lords Cricket Ground, where a stadium's been built in the middle of the pitch right across the wickets.  In the event, we lost to the Ukraine 223-212 and although that score looks close we were out of contention within the first few arrows, a splattering of tens (which I cheered) balanced out by some sevens.

Rather like watching darts which can kill you, this made for surprisingly exciting television.  The coverage included three nested commentaries:  the BBC's team, another voice in the background which I think was Hugh Sykes (usually heard covering the revolution in Egypt) talking for the radio and the public address system actually commenting on the athletes performance while they were in earshot which must be a bit distracting.  But it did have the added bonus once they'd lost of building their spirits.  "They'll be back in their individual events" said the PA as they strolled out of the stadium, "All fired up."  Yes!

Updated!  Larry has commented on the loss to The Guardian: "It's sad. I came here to win two medals and now one has gone. I thought we did everything right. We prepared right and practised well. Everything has been brilliant, apart from the match …"

The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport Yes, I know. But I'm not sure what else to call this so might as well go with the classic. Archer Larry Godfrey says he's 'in the form of his life and proves it by coming fourth in today's ranking ahead of sixty other competitors, with a season's best and personal best.

  The score card's here.

It does look like a mountain to shoot over though. The top ranked athlete, Im Dong-Hyun managed a world record today and he's legally blind in one eye.

Meanwhile James Godard has been confirmed as a member of the swimming team.

The Road To Beijing: London Olympics 2012.

Olympics  You might remember that this blog used to have a series, The Road To Beijing, which followed a group of athletes in the preparation for the 2008 games.  Here's the original post from 2004 explaining why I chose them, usually because they just missed out on a medal.

Three of the athletes have qualified for London 2012 too so it seems fair, like a Michael Apted documentary, to continue to follow their progress this year.  It'll give me something to focus on anyway.  The real surprise is Abi's return.  Last time I checked, back in 2008, she looked close to retirement.

James Goddard Swimming
In Athens: 4th place, men's 200m backstroke
In Beijing: 6th, 200m individual medley
In London, he's be competing in Men's 200m Individual Medley.

Laurence Godfrey Archery
In Athens: 4th place
In Beijing: 4th place
In London in the individual and team events.

Abi Oyepitan Athletics
In Athens: 7th place, women's 200m final / 5th place, 100m semi-final
In Beijing: Didn't qualify. 
In London, she'll be competing in the 100m and 200m.

To show how times have changed, I'll be able to follow their progress through individual RSS feeds on the BBC's Olympics websites.

Of the athletes who aren't here:

Michelle Dillon retired in 2008 and now runs a triathlon training team.

Matt Elias retired in 2010 and took up a position in Welsh Athletics as the Development Officer for South East Wales.

Lucy Wainwright competed in the European championships in 2009 but her website hasn't been updated since.

No more now.

Sport Lucy Wainwright came seventh in a time of 1:53.102 in the Women's kayak single K1 500m final. Well done to her for making the final, not coming last, and good luck to Lucy for the future. I was screaming for you, and sorry I was such a jinx.

At Beijing (or whatever I'm calling this now).

Lucy's made the final. As the BBC reports:

"In the women's K1 500m, Britain's Lucy Wainwright also qualified for the final, finishing second in semi-final one in a time of 1:52.580secs. [...] Wainwright, 30, made a slow start but was impressive in the closing stages."

She goes at 09:20 on Saturday morning.

Life As I've recently tweeted I'm currently having an issue with back pain. It began last night just before I went out and today it was excruciating. I think it's just general stiffness from sitting down instead of walking around a lot recently which is my fault but I don't think its anything more serious than that. It's felt a bit better in the past couple of hours but that could just be the Ibuprofen kicking in.

What it does mean is that I'm not in much of a mood to actually very much more than ironically lying down and watching a lot of sport. Excellent day at the pool, though it's a shame that one of my ones to watch James Goddard couldn't have got a better shot in the pool -- but he was rather stuck in the final with Michael Phelps so didn't really stand a chance. Still, another Olympic final in any career is no mean feat. Still Canoeist Lucy Wainright to go in the K1 500 beginning on Tuesday.

Sport Quick Olympic update. Archer Larry Godfrey went shooting on the first day of the championship finishing 34th on 657 points on the first day of the Men's individual (70m) ranking round. Since I've no real idea of how Archery scoring works, I can't tell you if that's normal, a good thing, or everything is lost.

The Road To Beijing: Team GB announced

Sport Readers with long memories will remember that at the close of the Athens Olympics, I began a series for the blog in which I promised to follow the progress of six athletes in a range of disciplines in the preparations for the next games in 2008. Many had just lost out on medals or had been the best British athlete in an overwhelming field. As I said at the time: “I've tried to choose people who have a spark of potential that spirit of 'do better', and who also engender that feeling in their audience. And I have faith that all of them have the potential to win a medal in four years time and I hope it's going to be an exciting and fun time watching their progress.”

The slot lasted all of a year. After a few months, news of the athletes became scarce and unreported and though I tried to keep interest, another phenomena developed in that every time I would post something about them on the blog, the next time I looked at the news feeds, one of my 'ones to watch' had befallen some misfortune – an injury, a sponsor dropping out, a poor performance even in a championship where they were supposed to be the favourite. I’m not really a suspicious person – apart from not cutting my toe-nails on a Sunday – and I knew that my meanderings here could not really be the kiss of death. But it was terribly dispiriting to see these men and women I’d had sure high hopes for crashing out.

Team GB for the Beijing Olympics was announced today. It seems right then that I should look again at this list, see who made the team in the end and try to find out what happened since 2002 for those unfortunate enough not to have to sit through another opening ceremony. The original biographies are here:

Michelle Dillon Triathlon
In Athens: 6th place, Women's Triathlon
Not selected due to injury. It seems she’s been out for much of the season. On her weblog she talked about hopes for making the qualifying race, but sickness in the end kept her away from the start line though she was there to help coach the other athletes. In her last post, she explained that she’s been plagued by these injuries all through her life and that it’s one of the reasons why she took up Triathlon in the first place to help spread the stresses..

Matthew Elias Athletics
In Athens: 5th place, anchor leg, Men's 4x400m
Not selected. Though I can’t quite work out what happened. He was competing for Wales as late as March 2006 but wasn’t at the trials last week. Did he retire?

James Goddard Swimming
In Athens: 4th place, Men's 200m Backstroke
He’ll be there! Competing in the 200m backstroke and 200m individual medley. At the trials in Sheffield, James set a Commonwealth record for the 200m individual medley making him second in the world this year and fourth on the all time list – though he was pipped in both by Gregor Tait. But doesn’t Mr. Goddard look like a medal hope? [new biography]

Laurence Godfrey Archery
In Athens: 4th place, 70m Archery
Larry's been selected too after qualifying at the World Championships last year [new biography].

Lucy Hardy Canoing
In Athens: 7th place, Women's K1 500m
Will be taking part in her second Olympic games and she's been married in the meantime. She's been on excellent form having won Gold at the European Championships in Milan this May.

Abi Oyepitan Athletics
In Athens: 7th place, Women's 200m final / 5th place, 100m semi-final
Hasn't qualified. Dogged by injury, she didn't ever really return to the form which took her into the Olympic final. She was at the trials at the weekend and though Abi came second in her 100m heat, she was fourth in the semi and ultimately came seventh in the final which wasn't enough with only one place available. I actually watched the race and though she began strong, she fell backwards pretty quickly. It was sad.

I'll try to keep you up to date on the progress of James, Larry and Lucy. We'll see if they manage to reach the medal rostrum this time.

The Road To Beijing: Laura Baldwin & Abi Oyepitan

The Road To Beijing "If I'd done what I did in the first race yesterday and gone right, I'd have been well inside the top ten overall but as it was I went left! I finshed 20th. The pressure was huge for the last race so I gave it everything I had and was 3rd to the windward mark. I lost 3 boats on the secon beat to finish 6th which placed me 11th overall, one place behind GBR's Lizzie Vickers in 10th. I am happy with my performance at this regatta and I learned loads from Diego who was a fantastic coach! I have a lot to thank him for.. Thank you Diego!" -- Laura Baldwin updates us with a diary from Laser Radial World Championships.

Elsewhere Miss February, sorry Abi Oyepitan has been the driving force behind a 2006 calender, Ladies of the Track, Babes of the Field. No quote from Abi, but Miss April, Goldie Sayers (javelin finalist at the World Championships in Helsinki this year): 'I've always dreamt of it. [Her sarcasm probably does not translate too obviously into print.] My Mummy gave me boobs and a bum; not much good for training, but good for a calendar.' The BBC have images -- and really it's not what you'd expect ... [about]

The Road To Beijing: Abi Oyepitan, Michelle Dillon & Laura Baldwin

The Road To Beijing It's been a while and unfortunately the news isn't good. Abi Oyepitan has withdrawn from the Melbourne Commonwealth Games squad because of her ongoing injury. This doesn't rule out a Beijing comeback, it does indicate the serious nature of whatever's stopping her from competing. Michelle Dillon missed out at the Noosa Triathlon on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, but her competition was pretty stiff - this was the third straight win for Emma Snowsill. And finally, Laura Baldwin has updated her online diary with a look forward to the world championships. [about]

Tri is the magic number

The Road To Beijing Congratulations to Michelle Dillon, who romped home to win the ITU World Duathlon Championships in Newcastle, Australia:

"The Elite Women?s race was fought hard with fantastic results with a 1,2,3 for Great Britain. Michelle Dillon (2:11.06) claimed the crown of World Female Duathlon Champion. Post race she said ?I had to dig deep to hammer that final 5km run, but the great crowd support got me to the finish line?.

Looking for that Wikipedia definition linked about, I discovered this reference to a Quadrathlon which also features a spot of kayaking or sometimes rollerskating. Surreal. [about]

The Road To Beijing: Abi Oyepitan

The Road To Beijing Here is the selection for the 2006 Commonwealth Games (already?) according to someone posting at the BBC Radio Five Live website. Abi Oyepitan is listed to appear in the 200m which is good choice as this is her best event. But looking at the rest of that thread I'm not sure if this is an official listing or the writer's opinion.[about]

The Road To Beijing: Michelle Dillon

The Road To Beijing Michelle Dillon came seventh in the Salford Triathlon. [about]