by John Maclean
I did not handle this failure well, because it felt so much more final than my previous failures. I didn’t meet all the cut-off times in my first two Hawaiian Ironman races, but still I finished, which was a victory in itself. My first Channel crossing ended with me being hoisted up into my support boat, exhausted. But I had not failed. The weather won that day. No one could make it across in those conditions. I knew I would get another chance. Perhaps I could have adopted the same mindset this time and spent the next four years working toward the 2004 games in Athens. Somehow that never really entered my mind.
There was more at play than simply failing to win a medal in my first Paralympic Games. After the truck hit me on the M4, I used sports to regain my sense of self-worth. I threw myself into training and competing and pushing the limits of what a wheelchair athlete could do, all in an attempt to forever banish that image I caught of myself in the mirror not long after my accident. I loved the notoriety and the adulation sports provided. More than that, my accomplishments were, in my mind, my response to anyone who dared call me “disabled”. I was more than able, and I planned to keep on proving it to anyone who doubted me.
Having so much of my self-worth tied up in my athletic achievements set me up for an inevitable fall. I didn’t realise it until I found myself lying on the track in Sydney. In the weeks that followed I fell into a deep depression. David Knight tried to cheer me up. He reminded me of all I had accomplished just making it to the Sydney Games. Perhaps, I thought, that was the problem. I should have been more focused on the gold, not satisfied in making the team. Such thoughts only made me kick myself even more for my failures. My friend’s encouragement only made me that much more depressed.
I went back home to Penrith after the games and tried to hide from the world. I soon found that the world was not the problem. I was. I became very introspective. Not long after my release from the hospital in 1988 I married, but regrettably the marriage did not last. Many relationships followed, as I searched for my place in the world. Sitting alone in my house in Penrith, feeling the weight of my Olympic embarrassment, I also felt the weight of failed relationships. Additionally, I reflected on losing my mother. Even though I don't remember her, I longed to be able to talk with her now to try to understand this emotional roller coaster.
With each passing day I sank deeper and deeper into a morass of introspection, regret and despair. I knew something needed to change. I turned to my friend Wally Brumniach. He always told me what he thought, even if I didn’t like what I needed to hear. “Mate, I’m in a bad place and I need someone to talk to,” I said to him. Wally put me in contact with his friend Maurie Rayner. Maurie was a life coach who ran a centre in Victoria that focused on helping people confront their fears. He was also dying of bone cancer.
When I first walked in Maurie’s front door, he greeted me by saying, “I’m dying and incapable of bullshit, so let’s get on with it.” I liked his directness. We sat down together in his office and over the next hour or so I told him my entire story. I talked about my early years in foster care and my mother’s illness and suicide, my growing-up years in a working-class suburb, and my dreams of becoming an athlete someday. I took him through the entire story of my accident and my time in the hospital, as well as everything that followed—my failed marriage, the triathlons, the Channel, and of course, the crash in front of 115,000 people in the Sydney Olympics. Maurie sat back and listened thoughtfully, never interrupting. He let me go on and on until I had nothing left to say.
Once I finally stopped talking, Maurie leaned forward, looked me squarely in the eyes, and said, “The best thing that ever happened to you was getting hit by that truck.” I could not believe my ears. Had he been listening to what I said? “And the next best thing that ever happened to you was crashing at the Olympics. Maybe that will make you realise that life doesn’t revolve around John Maclean.”
I guess I should have become angry, but I did not. Deep down I knew Maurie was right. He now had my undivided attention. “Your feverish goal setting and the way you run from one challenge to the next have hindered your development as a person,” he continued. “The answers you are looking for aren’t going to be found in Hawaii or the English Channel or in the Olympic stadium. You’re going to have to find them inside yourself.”
Over the course of our weekend together, Maurie helped me look at my life from a completely different perspective. He opened my eyes to see my father’s struggles in the aftermath of losing my mother. I came away with a new appreciation of both my father and my stepmother, whom he married when I was quite young. “If not for your accident, you might never have stopped and had to reflect on all of this,” he told me. “All people are born with pure love in their hearts, John. But as we go through life, we start collecting ‘yuck bits’, those unpleasant experiences, and we file them away in our heads. As we get older, those little ‘yuck bits’ add up, and it’s my job to help you dissolve them.”
I came away from my time with Maurie with a clearer mind about where I needed to go next. Maurie had asked me what I most wanted out of life. “A loving relationship,” I told him. He also asked me how I wanted to be remembered. To my surprise, I suddenly realised the answer had nothing to do with sports or athletic accomplishments. More than anything, I wanted to make a contribution, to make a difference in the lives of others. I wanted people, especially kids, to understand that they could still achieve their dreams regardless of the cards life dealt them.
Over the next several months I reflected more and more on these two realisations. I came to understand that to accomplish either, I had to stop living my life for John Maclean and start living it for others. But after spending so much of my time and energy focused solely upon myself and my accomplishments, I wasn’t sure where to start. Whatever it might be, I knew I was going to pour my whole self into it just as surely as I had given my all to Kona, the Channel and wheelchair racing. My father used to tell me, “John, it doesn’t matter if you win or lose, just as long as you give it one hundred per cent.” I lived by that motto; however, I had always given my one hundred per cent to myself and my goals. Now it was time to think bigger.
7
Amanda
* * *
It wasn’t love at first sight when I met Amanda, for either of us. She says when we first met, I wheeled into the room so dishevelled that I looked like I needed someone to mother me. My shirt and pants badly needed to be ironed, and my curly, blond hair appeared to have a mind of its own. Given the circumstances, I probably should have done more to make a good first impression. Perhaps I should have come in a suit and tie, but at the time I didn’t think that way. I was who I was, wrinkled clothes and all. And that’s why I was there, to show who I really was. Amanda was the Sales and Marketing Director of Murdoch Books in Sydney (a privately owned independent publisher), and I was there to pitch her, along with the company CEO and the Publishing Director, the idea of publishing my autobiography. I’d started doing some speaking, and people kept asking if I had a book that told my story. When I told them I did not, they always replied, “You should. This would make a great book!” After hearing the same thing over and over again, I thought perhaps I should look into what it takes to get a book published. That’s what took me to Murdoch Books that day. I wasn’t looking for love—only a book deal.
The book deal came. I did not see Amanda again for nearly a year, not until the book actually came out. Given her position with the company, Amanda rarely, if ever, personally handled the publicity of a single title. However, the publicist assigned to arrange my speaking engagements and book signings was on maternity leave. Amanda volunteered to cover for her. She didn’t do it because she was interested in me. She really just wanted the book to do well.
From the start the two of us worked well together. Neither of us harboured any romantic desires toward the other. The two of us were close in age, which automatically meant she wasn’t the kind of woman I normally dated. She also wasn’t all caught up in who
I was and what I had done, which was a change from many of the women with whom I had become involved. That’s not to say Amanda didn’t appreciate my accomplishments. Obviously she did, or she never would have signed off on my book. But she wasn’t in awe of me as a professional athlete, which was actually a breath of fresh air. I discovered pretty quickly that I could just be myself around her. I did not have to be John Maclean, the first wheelchair athlete to do whatever. I could just be me. She got me.
And I got her. She had a strength and confidence about her that I deeply respected. I’d never met a woman so comfortable in her own skin. The more we got to know each other, the more impressed I was by all she’d accomplished in her life. I think that is why our friendship worked so well. We both respected each other, and at the same time, we could be completely ourselves without trying to impress the other.
Once the book came out, Amanda and I saw quite a lot of each other. I found her very easy to talk to and I enjoyed her company. In fact, there were times when I had to go to an event or dinner that had nothing to do with the book, and I asked her to come along. She did the same with me. Neither of us thought of these as dates. That wasn’t the kind of relationship we had at the time. We were building a friendship, one I felt quite lucky to have found. I don’t know how my girlfriends at the time felt about her. To be honest, I never really gave it a lot of thought. I saw no reason for my romantic interests to feel threatened by my friendship with a smart, attractive, accomplished, independent woman. But then again, I am a guy with a less-than-stellar relationship track record. Understanding women has never been my strong suit. I even discussed my current relationships with Amanda to seek her advice. Like I said, I am not an expert on women.
Amanda and I kept in regular contact with each other for two and a half years. I cannot say constant contact, because both of us were quite busy in our careers. I took Maurie’s advice to heart and expanded my athletic focus beyond myself. In 2002, prior to even thinking about writing a book, I handcycled from Brisbane to Melbourne, a distance of over 2,000 kilometres, to raise money and awareness for my foundation. Thanks to Maurie, I badly wanted to give back, and the John Maclean Foundation provided me with the perfect platform to do just that. My K4K ride, as we called it—that is, Kilometres for Kids—raised over $400,000. Like Maurie instructed me, this wasn’t about John Maclean. Nor did the ride have anything to do with conquering any athletic challenge or winning any medals. Instead, the entire event was designed to open people’s eyes to the needs of children confined to wheelchairs and to give people a way to do something to help.
The K4K ride corresponded with my expansion of the scope of my charity. When I first started the foundation, we provided grants to buy equipment for children in wheelchairs who wanted to pursue sports. With the K4K ride, the foundation opened the grants to any children in wheelchairs and their families, not just for sport equipment but for any of the multitude of expenses these families face when a child is confined to a chair. Every family with a child in a wheelchair, for whatever reason, faces financial challenges most people never consider. From the chairs themselves to vehicle conversions and home modifications, life for a family of a child with special needs is very, very expensive. Conditions like spinal muscular atrophy and accidents that rob children of the use of their legs strike without regard to a family’s economic status. We give grants for chairs, both manual and powered, as well as grants towards modified vehicles and home modifications. At the time of writing, we have raised and distributed nearly four million dollars nationwide.
After training for the K4K ride for nearly a year, I kept on with handcycling in the hope of qualifying for the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games. I won the Australian national championship three years in a row, but that wasn’t enough for me to make the national team. The selection committee went with athletes who had been at the sport much longer than I had. For me, trying to make the team was less about handcycling and more about seeing how far I could go if I really pushed myself. When I was selected to represent Australia in the 2004 games, my handcycling career came to an end. I also returned to the English Channel as David Knight’s support swimmer in 2004. A year later David Wells and I completed the Molokai Challenge, a two-person open-ocean kayak event in Hawaii. Along the way I also competed in more Ironmans (although not Kona), and I went back to Hawaii to compete at the Ultraman World Championships, which is the equivalent of three Ironmans in three days. In between, I was inducted into the Hawaiian Ironman Hall of Fame, the first non-American so honoured.
Amanda was also very busy in her work. Sometimes when I called her, she would be in London or New York or Frankfurt. Even when she was back in Australia, it was hard for us to reconnect. She was very good at her job; a lot of her time was spoken for as a result. When we could not meet face-to-face, we kept in contact through calls and text messages. I did not realise it at the time, but my feelings for her had begun to grow beyond friendship. However, I was very hesitant to act, because I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardise our friendship. Suffice it to say that I had been far less successful in my relationships than I had in sports. I could not bear the thought of losing Amanda’s friendship if a romance did not work out.
Yet, the more time I spent with her, the more I realised we connected in a way I had never really connected with any other woman. My friends saw this before I did. One evening when Amanda and I were at a blues club, my close friend Hans leaned over to me and whispered, “Don’t let this one get away.” I wasn’t quite sure what to do with Hans’s advice. Romantically speaking, I didn’t “have” her to let her get away. I just smiled at Hans and replied, “Duly noted.”
My getting to know Amanda came at a time in my life where I was at a bit of a loss as to where I needed to concentrate my attention as an athlete. Now forty, I knew I had passed the age where my football career would have come to an end if the truck had never entered my life on the M4 in 1988. I started speaking more, something with which I was growing increasingly comfortable. I had always shared some of my story. Immediately after my accident Dr John Yeo got me a job speaking for Spine-Safe, an in-school education program for kids that focused on safety and spinal injuries. I left Spine-Safe when my training for the Ironman began to consume all my time. Through the years I spoke here and there. My presentations were a lot like my appearance at Murdoch Books: I wasn’t exactly the most polished speaker on the podium. But the more I did it, the more I developed my own style that worked for me. The audiences seemed to enjoy it.
By the start of 2007 I began making plans to transition more into speaking as a way of making a living. Everything changed when Gary Foley, one of the wheelchair coaches I met in the lead-up to the Sydney Games, called me out of the blue. “Have you heard of a sport called adaptive rowing?” he asked.
“No,” I replied.
“It is a new sport that has been included in the Paralympic program for the first time in Beijing next year.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to give it a try?” Gary asked.
“Sure,” I said, without knowing any details. I’d seen rowers training on and off for years at the Sydney International Regatta Centre at Penrith Lakes. I had no idea exactly what adaptive rowing might involve, but if Gary thought I could do it, that was good enough for me.
“I hoped you would. The sport consists of two-person mixed teams, a man and a woman. The races are basically like what you’ve witnessed there in Penrith; however, the equipment is adapted to the user—in your case, trunk and arms,” Gary explained.
“Okay. So what do I need to do?” I asked.
“There’s a coach named Pedro Albisser at the regatta centre that I want you to meet. He will take it from there.”
I thanked Gary for thinking of me. The next day I drove ten minutes from my house to the lakes and introduced myself to Pedro. He was expecting me. “Where do I start?” I asked.
“I’ll put you on a rowing machine and see if you can produce a result that shows you have
some potential,” Pedro replied. “Then we will go from there.”
He strapped me onto the ergo machine and told me I needed to clock a time of less than four minutes, twenty seconds for one kilometre to be considered for the training program. Even though this was my first time trying the sport, I came in at four minutes, ten seconds. Game on. Afterwards there was only one question in my mind: “What do I need to do to win a gold medal?” For me, nothing else mattered. I knew what it took to compete in sports at an elite level. If I took this challenge, I faced at least eighteen months of intense training to which everything else in my life had to take a back seat. I’d competed in the games before. I had both Olympic and Paralympic experience. I’d been there, done that. If I went there again, it wasn’t to experience the joy of wheeling into the opening ceremonies with the rest of the Australian team. From the start it was gold medal or bust.
“The first step is the state championships next weekend,” Pedro explained. “You will compete in a single scull or boat. If you qualify, the nationals follow in six weeks. If you win your category there, and if there is a girl who wins hers and her times are good enough, you will go to the selection regatta and compete together. And if your times together are good enough, you will go on to the World Rowing Championships in Munich later this year, representing Australia. Then, if you make the finals, you will qualify for Beijing. Any questions?”
“Let’s get started,” I said.
A week later I went to the state championships. I basically knew nothing about the sport in terms of techniques and strategy. The only thing really driving me was a burning desire to win a gold medal in Beijing. Pedro taught me as much as he could in a week, but there was only so much he could do. In spite of my inexperience, I finished second in the state championships, which was good enough to qualify for nationals. Six weeks later I won my event at the nationals.