How Far Can You Go

by John Maclean

  As the officials hung the silver around my neck I smiled and put on a good front, but inside I wanted to go off and hide. Knowing we were good enough to have won gold, and missing it by 0.89 of a second—that was hard for me to take. Amanda knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling. A television reporter found her in the stands and asked for her reaction to the race. Keep in mind, for most people, winning any medal in the Olympics or Paralympics is enough. But I’m not most people. Amanda, however, put on a brave front. “It’s an amazing achievement to get silver. John will be disappointed initially, but with John’s nature, he’ll realise it’s such a great achievement.” That’s what she said, all the while thinking, This is not good. This is not good. And she was right.

  I had to rush off for the post-race drug testing, which made avoiding the media right after the race easy to do. Race officials had me give them a urine sample, and then they drew blood. When I came out of the testing room, I was directed to the press room to answer questions. Over and over again I simply deferred to Kathryn. She was ecstatic over the silver. I couldn’t share her enthusiasm. It wasn’t just that I was so invested in the gold. For me, this was the end of the journey. Coming up less than a second short of gold was the last chapter of my career. Kathryn would go on to find another partner and would have another chance for gold in London or Rio. Not me. This was it—my last best shot.

  Amanda and I reunited after my media session. I moved my things out of the Olympic Village and went straight with her to her hotel room. We’d already booked one of the hotel ballrooms for a post-race celebration. Now I had no interest in going to a party, but I knew I had no choice. As soon as we walked into the hotel room, I pulled the silver medal out of my pocket and looked at it. “What am I supposed to do with this?” I said with the same tone I might have used for a speeding ticket. I tossed it towards the corner, fully intending to leave it there. At that moment, in the immediate aftermath of the race, the silver embodied my failure.

  “Come on, John,” Amanda said. “It’s a silver medal. That’s an amazing achievement. You have to pull it together. This isn’t about only you. Kat is over the moon, and everyone has travelled here for you. All our friends and family as well as Kat’s friends and family are waiting for you downstairs. You don’t have time to be upset over this. You can have your moment to dwell on this, but it’s not now. So get it together and let’s get downstairs.”

  I could not argue. I changed my clothes and wheeled around to leave the room. Amanda turned, took one look at me, and said, “You can’t come downstairs without it, you know. Everyone expects to see it.” I retrieved my medal, slipped it around my neck, and followed Amanda out of the room without saying a word.

  Downstairs the party was in full swing when we arrived. Champagne flowed. There were handshakes, hugs and smiles all around. “Great job, John,” one person after another said. Only those closest to me knew how deeply disappointed I truly was. As the evening wore on I relaxed a bit. At one point I had to make a little speech. I grabbed the microphone and thanked everyone for travelling to China to support us. “Kat, you’ve been a great partner. I couldn’t have asked for a better one. You did a great job out there today. I know we both are a little disappointed, but silver is still a great achievement.” I didn’t mean that last line. Silver meant I had lost the biggest race of my life.

  After the party, I went to our room briefly. I tried to leave the medal there once again, but Amanda wouldn’t hear of it. Many of our friends wanted to go out and see the city and hit the hot spots. Begrudgingly, I took the silver along. As Amanda and I climbed into a cab downstairs, the cab driver turned to me and said in broken English, “Paralympian?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He became quite excited. “Did you win race?” he asked.

  “I got silver,” I said, with all the enthusiasm of a man on his way to the dentist office.

  The cabbie was excited enough for both of us. “Show me, show me!” he said. I pulled out the silver medal for him. “Ooohhhhh,” he said with reverence and awe. From that moment on he treated me like royalty. I received the same attention in all the restaurants and bars we visited over the next several days. People recognised the silver medal as an enormous achievement, and for those few days at least, I became quite comfortable with it.

  However, when it was time to leave Beijing and fly home, my disappointment of failing to reach my goal returned. The medal was locked up in the hotel room safe, and I thought about leaving it there. “What am I going to do with it now?” I said to Amanda. “It’s not why I came and competed. Why take it home?”

  “You’re not leaving it here,” Amanda replied. “If we have children some day, they will want to see it. It’s a part of your legacy. Or, if you really decide in the next few months that you don’t want it, we can have it framed with a photo and give it to the staff at North Shore Hospital to inspire others in the spinal unit. Everyone sees this as an amazing achievement. I know you’re disappointed, but you’ll be more disappointed down the track if you throw it away now.”

  “But . . .” I said.

  “We’re taking it home,” Amanda said.

  And we did.

  I did get my gold from China, however. On our way home we stopped in Shanghai, where we picked out my wedding ring—a gold one. I still have the silver medal. It sits in a safe in our home. The silver and I have grown on each other. I’ve enjoyed several moments at schools and conferences handing around the medal for others to look at. Today I can clearly see the achievement that medal represents and the value of having it in years to come. Would I rather it be gold? Go find the captain of any NRL team who lost a premiership and ask if he’d rather have won. You’ll get the same answer.

  9

  Tipping Point

  * * *

  Whatever residual disappointment I carried over Beijing completely evaporated on the seventeenth of January 2009 as Amanda walked down a path toward me with her father. A tartan-kilted piper played “Amazing Grace” in the background. I could not believe my good fortune that this woman had agreed to marry me. Her ankle-length, gold-sequined dress shimmered. This is the gold I’ve been waiting forty-two years for, I thought as I watched her come closer to me. We grasped each other’s hands when she reached me. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place as a solo vocalist sang the Maori love song “Pokarekare Ana” to honour Amanda’s Kiwi origins. The two of us exchanged vows we had written ourselves. A wave of pure joy swept over me when the celebrant said, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” For the first time in my life I felt complete, whole. Afterwards, during the reception celebration, my father sang “For Once in My Life”. Johnno, David Knight and Amanda’s brother Calvin offered speeches. Finally, Amanda and I took a spin around the dance floor, our first as husband and wife.

  In the months leading up to Beijing Amanda and I had precious little time together. Between my rigorous training schedule and competition, we grabbed moments here and there as best we could. We made up for lost time after our wedding. Two thousand and nine was essentially a year-long honeymoon. The two of us travelled all over the world because of her work or mine. Although I was not actively competing in anything through the first several months of the year, I spoke at events around the world, thanks in large part to my work with Dimension Data. Amanda’s employers, Murdoch Books, kept her busy with travel as well. I can honestly say that this was the first year of my life where my heart and mind were totally and completely focused on enjoying life rather than working towards the next big goal. Those months were a bit like a fairy tale. The culmination of it all came in Las Vegas. Right from the beginning we knew we wanted to have a family, but we also knew we were late starters. We had hoped to become pregnant before the end of the year, and it was now late October. However, on our last big trip of the year to Vegas, we decided to quit worrying about conception and focus instead on enjoying each other. Not long after we returned home we discovered Amanda was indeed pregnant with our son, Jack.
<
br />   When we returned to Australia in late 2009, life finally felt complete. I had the gold-medal marriage I had dreamed about. To have a son on the way made life all the sweeter. It was a time of transition. I started speaking as often as I could. It soon became the primary source of income I produced for the family.

  I also started competing again, but not in rowing. Seven weeks after we returned to Australia I entered the SunSmart Ironman triathlon in Busselton in Western Australia with John Young. Even though Johnno had supported me in my three Hawaiian Ironmans, along with other qualifying events through the years, he’d never competed in an Ironman-length triathlon himself. I told him that the day he finally entered one, I would be right there with him. I kept my word even though I was not physically prepared to compete. In the months before the SunSmart triathlon, I planned on training, but I never got around to it. It’s hard to think about triathlon training while travelling the world with your new wife. I didn’t worry much about the swim. As I wrote earlier, once you’ve swum the English Channel, an Ironman swim is not so daunting. The bike portion, however, was another story. I ran out of gas about a third of the way through the 180.2-kilometre course. Quitting was not an option. Instead I pulled over to the side of the road and lay down on people’s lawns, trying to recover enough to keep going. More than one compassionate soul came out and gave me water and salt to try to fix my cramps. Johnno flew past me. I kept going and finally got to the marathon. That’s when I started flying past all those who had passed me earlier, including Johnno. I did not finish before him, though. Instead I waited for him at the finishers’ chute for nearly an hour. We went across the line together. It was a special moment.

  Not long after the SunSmart triathlon I returned to Hawaii with my friend Matt Beals to compete in the Outrigger Canoe World Championships. We paddled across open ocean in the Kaiwi Channel from Molokai to Oahu, taking first in the 2010 OC2 (ocean canoe, two men) championship. Unlike rowing, paddling had always been a love of mine. If paddling had been a Paralympic sport at the time, I would have competed in that rather than rowing.

  With the Molokai challenge behind me, I settled into life as a husband and expectant father. Amanda and I had our Penrith house remodelled, transforming it from the bachelor pad it had been for over two decades into a home fit for a family. She continued commuting back and forth to work in Sydney while I oversaw the remodelling work. Jack was due to arrive soon. I could not wait to become a father.

  Around this time I happened to run into a man named Chad King, who was the head coach for the Great Britain adaptive rowing team for Beijing. He dispensed of any small talk and got straight to the point: “I watched you row in Beijing,” he said. “You should have won the gold. If you are interested, I think I can help you win gold in London.”

  My first reaction was to say, “Thanks, but I am retired.” I didn’t. I thanked Chad and said, “Let me give that some thought.” As I’ve said before, I have always believed there is no such thing as a coincidence. Even before my accident, people have entered my life at just the right moment in a way that cannot be pure chance. If I had not been demoted from the Penrith Panthers and moved on to Warragamba, I never would have met John Young. Without him, I might have forever sunk into a sea of despair and pity in the hospital following my accident. I surely never would have competed in my first Nepean Triathlon, which led to everything else I accomplished in my life in sports. David Knight also entered my life at the very moment I needed him most, even though I did not know it at the time. Without him, I never would have crossed the English Channel, nor he without me. And then there is Amanda. Not only would she not normally have been assigned to work with me in promoting my first book, but the timing of my asking her to move our relationship beyond friendship could not have been coincidental. No, I do not believe in coincidences. When a “chance” meeting with someone like Chad King occurs, I take it very, very seriously.

  Fast-forward a few months. Jack arrived two weeks after we finished the remodel on our house. Amanda and I were over the moon. Because we both waited longer than most to settle down and get married, we were older than most first-time parents. I think that only made both of us appreciate our experience that much more. We had the typical sleepless nights and everything that comes with a new baby, but we tried to relish the experience as much as we could. Honestly, I hadn’t known if I would ever have the privilege of becoming a dad, and I didn’t know if it would happen again.

  In the midst of all of this, another “coincidence” occurred. Kathryn came by to see me. After I retired from rowing, she found a new partner and kept on competing. She and her new partner had recently competed at the world championships and hadn’t done well. “I can only win gold with you, John, so I need you to make a comeback,” she said.

  “That’s all well and good,” I said, “but I already put a lot of time and energy into that goal and we didn’t get it. I’m married now and I have a family, and they are where I’m putting all my time and energy these days.”

  Kathryn was not inclined to take no for an answer. Apparently my taking her onto the medal stand and asking her to imagine winning the gold had sunk in. When we first met, she saw herself the way she had been as a girl, as the last person chosen for the team. Now she clearly saw herself as an elite athlete capable of winning her sport’s biggest prize. “I appreciate that, John, I really do, but I also know this: We very nearly won the gold in Beijing and probably should have. I’m a better rower now than I was then. But if I’m going to get better, then I better make sure my partner is the best I can get.”

  She sounded like me a couple of years earlier. Clearly, Kathryn had reached the point where she wouldn’t raise her fist in triumph over a silver. That piqued my interest. My earlier conversation with Chad replayed in my mind. What were the odds that I would just happen to run into him? And now Kathryn was here, talking to me about making a comeback. I had to consider it. “Let me talk to Amanda,” I said.

  Later that evening I approached Amanda with the idea. Both of us knew full well the sacrifices we’d made leading up to Beijing. Even though we were engaged then, sacrificing time with each other was not as difficult then as it would be now. Before, it was just the two of us. Amanda was busy with work and often away. However, now there were three of us. I wouldn’t just lose time with my wife. I would also lose time with my newborn son. It was a high price to pay. I told Amanda, “I know it is a lot, but I feel it is something I should seriously consider. I hate going out with silver when it should have been gold.”

  Amanda listened thoughtfully. “How will your training schedule work? I’ve got Jack in day care and work in the city. I need some help managing if you’ve got a full training schedule.”

  “I’ll need to spend most of the week in Canberra at the Institute of Sport training facilities,” I said.

  “Seriously? Just home at weekends?” She paused for a moment. “I have to think this through. I’m going for a walk.”

  Quite a bit of time passed. Jack and I hung out together, waiting. Finally, when Amanda returned, she said, “Okay. I married you understanding what drives you. I don’t want you to have any regrets. Go and win the gold medal, and we’ll ‘get the band back together’ for London. We’ll take Jack, and he can look back in years to come at photos of the two of you with the gold around your neck and see that he was a part of your last amazing achievement. It will be a moment the two of you will share for the rest of your lives.”

  The sacrifices we knew we were making went beyond the time I would be away from Amanda and Jack. We had given some consideration to having a second child. Given our ages (Amanda was forty when Jack was born, and I was forty-four), we knew we would need to plan for a second in the short term, and that in itself was somewhat daunting with Amanda working and Jack just a year old. However, the moment we decided I would throw myself into going for gold, we both knew that meant Jack would be an only child. Amanda could not juggle work an hour from home with both a toddler and a new baby w
hile I lived three hours away, only coming home on weekends. But we were blessed with our little man, and we were happy to be just the three of us.

  That’s how, with my wife’s blessing, I came out of retirement and threw myself back into a quest for a gold medal. I shuttled between Canberra and home while Amanda bore the brunt of my decision. She woke up early, got Jack ready for day care and herself for work. Then it was out the door for the hour-long commute to Sydney, which many days stretched to an hour and a half because of traffic. After work she drove another hour home, picked Jack up, played out the evening routine, then got up the next morning to do it all again. I tried to work out a compromise with the Paralympic governing body and spend four days in Canberra, then rush home for three with the family.

  Kathryn and I only had a few months to get back up to speed before the 2011 world championships. We took the bronze, which we both considered a good start, given we’d only been back in the boat together a couple of months. More than that, we qualified our boat for London. Now we had a little less than a year to get ready for another run at gold. When I say we qualified the boat, that’s exactly what I mean. A boat from Australia was assured a spot in the 2012 Paralympic Games because of our result at the world championships. While one would assume that meant Kathryn and I would be in the boat, that was not guaranteed. Of course, at the time this little detail felt like nothing more than a technicality. After all, we were the silver medalists from Beijing and actually the only two adaptive rowers in the category in Australia, or so I thought.