Posted: October 24, 2004

Triathlon: Insights From An Athens Olympic Medalist

Reprinted with permission from Barrie Shepley's Personal Best Newsletter.

Eight years ago, Kiwi Bevan Docherty wasn't even a great junior on New Zealand's national triathlon team.

The popular Kiwi wasn't a natural athletic star but he possessed a tremendous positive attitude and a great work ethic. Coming from the small Island nation of only 3 million people (and 60 million sheep) Bevan Docherty had a dream of becoming an Olympic medallist one day.

Over the past few years Bevan has spent most of his summers living and training in Canada.

Last month Bevan fulfilled a life-long dream by bringing a silver medal back to his proud little country.

I recently got an email from Bevan outlining how his life has changed since his Athens silver medal.

The following is an excerpt:

"Sorry for taking so long to write, but as you can all imagine my life has changed completely, and I haven't had alot of time.

Well, what can I say.... It's been one of the most amazing years for me, a World cup Win, a World Championship Win, Taking the No1 ranking on the World cup, and of course a Silver medal at the Olympics....To achieved just 1 of these and I would have considered it a good year!

Going into the Olympics I had a little pressure, however I just turned it into positive pressure and said to myself, you're World champ, you've beaten them all before, you've had the perfect build up, you're injury free, the course suits you.....

And I guess you all saw the result. I'm very happy with my silver, Hamish (his countryman who won gold) had an amazing race and deserved the gold.

Throughout my whole career I've always aspired to beat Hamish and for him to bounce back like that after I won World champs, just goes to show what a talented athlete he is.

The medal ceremony was amazing, what an honor to have your national anthem played at the biggest sporting event in history, and to have Mum, Dad and Fee there was truly special.

However the most touching thing was coming back to the Olympic village, to be welcomed by the entire NZ Olympic team as they did the Haka, it truly sent shivers down my spin. We had heard that the entire country watched the race on TV, and thought we were heros, but it wasn't until we actually arrived back into NZ that realized the magnitude of our accomplishment, the welcoming at Auckland airport was amazing, but the Ticker tape parade in Taupo beyond anything, and just showed the support I had from my home town. In fact the support has been outstanding this year and ever since I left NZ to race triathlon, with dreams of winning an Olympic medal.

Of course there's Mum, Dad and Fee who originally funded my Triathlon campaign and put up with my crap and stubborn ways. My coach Mark Elliot, best coach in the World, my sponsors who took the financial burden off me and showed commitment in supporting me. Kris Gemmell, my training partner, for giving me someone to hurt out on those long bike rides. Finally, to everyone else that has helped me over the years, be it a roof over my head, food in my stomach or kick up the butt. You can all claim a part of this success.

So where to from now.... It's just as well I didn't win Gold, otherwise I'd be struggling to find goals!!! Now I'm looking towards Beijing and hoping to get a collection of medals, different colors of course....

But next year is very exciting, I'm looking forward to retaining my World title in Japan and also these talks of a World Cup in NZ, something our triathlon NZ has really needed.

But for now I'm just going to have a few more weeks off, sleeping, eating, catching up with friends and maybe even go down to Taupo to check out the new street named after me "Docherty Place", pretty cool aye...

" Bevan Docherty - Olympic Silver Medalist

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