Ian O'Riordanfinds Ireland's best sprinter in relaxed mood ahead of the biggest challenge of his career.
SPRINTERS ARE loud and arrogant and open to all the vanities. Paul Hession is serious and thoughtful and highly intelligent. "I do have a massive ego," he assures me.
Sprinters can't handle the cold and require constant pampering and live in a Los Angeles dream-world.
Paul Hession lives in Scotland - in a spare room in the home of his 68-year-old coach - and mostly cooks for himself.
"I am highly motivated," he claims.
Sprinters are fashion statements and lazy and listen to music through large DJ headphones.
Paul Hession wears flannel shirts and brown, leather shoes and reads historical fiction.
"I want my Irish records to stand for 20 years," he declares.
Sprinters chew gum and spit and binge on junk food.
Paul Hession is a terribly fussy eater and unfailingly well-mannered.
"Galway is my favourite place in the world," he says with a smile.
These are among the many contradictions with Ireland's Fastest Man.
He's also done four years of medicine and is looking forward to going back. He's from Athenry, that great breeding ground of top-class hurlers. He's 25 and describes himself as "still raw". And when we meet for lunch at a bagel shop in town he spends so long fretting over the menu he actually comes across as a little slow - when of course he's as sharp as a pin.
So try to figure this guy out: Paul Hession the anti-stereotype of a sprinter.
Nowhere will this be more apparent than in Beijing. If he fulfils his goal of coming through the qualifying rounds of the 200 metres, perhaps even sneaking into the final, athletics followers everywhere will ask where Ireland found such a sprinter. It's a good question.
When I ask him where it all began, he makes the first of several long, searching pauses, throws his head back, and holds both hands up to his mouth: "I'll always remember going to places like Lough Key Forest Park and Claremorris to run cross-country. And I'd be trailing home right at the back. It was something we just did, but I used to hate it and was very, very bad."
Hession is among the most interesting athletes I've interviewed, mainly because having had several goes at it, I'm still figuring him out, six years after first talking with him at the 2002 European Championships in Munich. On that occasion, Jim Kilty, then his coach, was raving about this "this new kid from Athenry".
In his 200-metre heat, Hession came careering around the bend as if running with shackles on his feet and a sharp object stuck in his back. He finished last in 21.28 seconds.
Then last summer, Hession broke the Irish 100- and 200-metre records, running 10.18 and 20.30. He was a semi-finalist over 200 metres at the World Championships in Osaka. He has the complete set of Irish sprint records from 60 metres (indoors) to 300 metres. And now, he says, he's about to get going.
"I've got weaknesses all over the shop. You've written articles about me before, about my technique . . ."
"Only to show how much you've improved," I interrupt.
"Yeah, and I'm still not the strongest in the gym. I'm not the weakest anymore either. And I am thinking more about sub-20-seconds for the 200. Fewer men in history have done that than run under 10 seconds for the 100. And I can see myself going sub-20, if things keep improving the way they are over the next four years. And that would be amazing."
Here is what I do know about Paul Hession: he's motivated by an innate desire to run as fast as he possibly can; he works incredibly hard at it; his strength may be not so much his physical strength as his strength of mind, willpower and calm self-assurance. He's a very nice guy.
"Can I get a juice as well then?" he asks, modestly, when I tell him lunch is on me.
And he's come a long way. He ran the Community Games at age 11 and made the national finals in Mosney. He just took his time in making a name for himself. He never medalled in the Irish Schools championships (his best was fourth) and he didn't run at all during his last year at school as he focused on qualifying to study medicine at NUI Galway.
So I ask him about the turning points. Those European Championships in Munich gave him his first real taste of international athletics, and he liked it. He was only 19, and from not being able to break 22 seconds, he ran 21.03.
"I was almost dropping off the sport and then just started to come good. I was definitely a late developer. I think back to 2002, and I've changed so much since then. Up to that point, the thought of running in the Olympics was crazy. But now . . ." and he pauses again.
Two years later, with the Athens Olympics in full view, he lowered his best to 20.61 to win the Thessaloniki Grand Prix meeting in Greece. The A standard for Athens was 20.59. He could have learnt so much there, but of course the Olympic Council of Ireland makes no exceptions.
"The whole selection thing was disappointing. I remember watching Athens on television and just realising I could have been out there, definitely got through the heats. Maybe I was better off. You just don't know. Did that happen for a reason?"
So he started to look at the bigger picture, to think outside the box. After the European Indoors in Madrid in 2005 he reckoned he needed a new coach, to shake things up a little, and by chance more than design, he ended up going with Stuart Hogg - well-known in Scottish athletics and unknown outside it. He knew Hogg worked with some of the British sprinters he raced against, and Hession liked what he had heard about his mentality.
"Have you ever met him?" he asks me. "You'd remember him. He's unbelievably enthusiastic about the sport. Very particular about everything. I'd almost say he coaches the person as much as the athlete. I know some athletes wouldn't handle that. Paul McKee, who trains with us, says there's no way he could have handled Stuart in his younger days. But his attention to detail is scary."
Initially the coaching was done over the phone, with Hession heading to Scotland for the odd weekend. It became a more serious relationship in September 2006, when Hession put his medical studies on hold to base himself practically full-time in Scotland.
This was no small gamble. Hogg's hometown of Glenrothes in the old coal-mining country of Fife, north of Edinburgh, would not exactly be high on the list of places for sprinters to live and train, but it suits Hession just fine.
Now aged 68, Hogg remains a highly enthusiastic, and largely self-taught, coach. A qualified architect, he sold his business in the 1980s and went full-time into coaching, mainly working in Scottish football with clubs like Aberdeen, Dundee United, and Glasgow Rangers. He's good mates with Alex Ferguson.
Athletics was always his first love, and Hogg has influenced a range of Scottish athletes from Yvonne Murray to Tom McKean - mostly the middle-distance types. More recently he's concentrated on the sprinters, and has a small group that includes Hession, McKee and Brian Doyle, who was born in Scotland but competes for Ireland.
Their training rotates between the tracks at Grangemouth, and Dunfermline, both of which have a 100-metre indoor strip.
"Originally I just went over on a temporary basis, on weekends and that," says Hession. "But everything was working out so well it became more or less permanent. I often said I'd get my own place over there. But his children are all grown up, he has a spare room, and so that just made sense.
"I know some people think it's a little crazy, but it actually works out great. I don't spend more than a couple of weeks there at a time, and I don't think I could live there the whole time. I do still get home quite a bit.
"At times it can be quite boring. That's the reality of it. We always train around 11, till one or one-30. We'd all go for lunch, as a squad.
"I'd often go for a massage in the afternoon, at three say . . . People often ask me what I do with myself all day, and I think, 'I don't know'.
"One of the big things about being a full-time athlete is learning to be comfortable in your own company. Some athletes do struggle with that.
"You do spend a lot of time alone, and you need to be able to relax, because that's what you need to do, as a full-time athlete. You've got to be able to switch off.
"That's what it becomes, especially in the summer. Going from hotel room to hotel room, watching DVDs. It's not easy. Sometimes you can crack up a bit. But this year, anyway, for the first time, I don't have to worry about money. I'm not setting up a savings account or anything like that but I have enough to what I want to do. That's fantastic. I know as well you're guaranteed nothing in athletics, and could drop just like that.
"In a way it's toughest on the people around you. Like my girlfriend. She lives in Dublin. She'll kill me for saying this, but it's tough on her. I'm in South Africa for three weeks in January, ringing her every day, saying the weather is fantastic.
"And she's working away in wet and freezing Dublin. So in ways it's a lot easier for me.
"And you just don't have a social life, and that's hard. You just don't see your friends. That's not easy.
"We're a very close family as well, and I've seen them even less again this year. I love Athenry, love Galway. It's one of my favourite places in the world, and it's important for me to get home as much as I can. I find it recharging."
Sprinters all deal in the same product - hence the term "speed merchants" - but are often driven by different forces. And that's where the problem starts. To run as fast as nature intends is one thing, and to run as fast as science intends is another. What drives Hession is nature, not science, and that's why he sleeps well at night. The drug testers can come calling anytime they want (which, of course, they do).
"I think what drives me is the same as what drives most other athletes - to see how good I can be.
"It's almost a schoolyard thing. I want to win medals, sure. But it's more about how fast I can run. I want to get as much out of myself as I can. It's not like an experiment; that sounds too scientific. It's just, once I set my mind to something, that's it. That's the way I am. I'm quite obsessive sometimes.
"But it's taken a while. I've worked very hard at it. I know people have come up to Stuart and asked what is it we do. There's no secret. It's just hard work and perseverance. I know that's a cliche, but it's true.
"I won't say that it's old-school, because we do a lot of modern stuff as well. But I've stuck at it, and maybe I'm now finally getting the rewards."
At the start of the summer, he watched Usain Bolt run the 100 metres in 9.72 - and simply nodded in approval. Hession has known Bolt since the World Junior Championships, staged in Jamaica in 2002, when they ran the same heat.
"I think Usain is the most likely 100-metre world-record holder to be clean in the last 30 years. I honestly believe that. I think he's just a genetic freak. If you were designing a superhuman, you'd design Usain Bolt.
"He's always shown that potential, and was always a bit of a play-actor. He's finally got his act together, so it's a natural progression for him.
"Sure, nearly all the athletics articles you see now are about drugs. But I honestly just don't know. The sport could be 100 per cent clean. Or it could be dirtier than it ever was. I just get on with it. What else can you do? You can only assume the best, and that everyone is clean. Otherwise you'll just get down about it.
"But even if I wanted to take drugs, say tomorrow, I literally wouldn't have a clue where to go. I don't know anything about it.
"Maybe I'm too trusting, but I'm the optimistic sort anyway.
"I mean I always thought Marion Jones was clean. She was a talent, a great junior, and physically on a different planet from a lot of the girls, so it was tough to hear about her.
"But I think the ones that do take drugs just don't love the sport like I do. They want to make the quick buck, be famous. Maybe some of them are misguided as well.
"But I'm motivated by how fast my body can go. The whole sense of satisfaction I get from that would be taken away if drugs ever became a part of it.
"Friends have asked me about that, about whether I'm ever tempted, and I can honestly say, never."
If everything goes to plan - and he does mean everything - there's the chance Hession will line up again against Bolt in Beijing, this time in an Olympic final. He'll feel he belongs there, and he'll feel like this is still only the beginning.
"I'm extremely excited about it. I don't feel overawed. It's just another race. Okay, on a huge scale. But the fact that I enjoy it so much makes it easier. If the Olympics don't go well, then I can accept that, only because I'd like to think I'm really only doing this for myself.
"I run for Ireland, of course, and I'm very passionate about that. I love to think I'm the Irishman in there against the best of the world.
"But I don't feel I'll be letting anyone down. If it doesn't go well, it's down to me. If it goes well, that's great for Irish sprinting, but I'll be most satisfied for myself. I'll just have a big smile on my face.
"The other thing is I would still like to be the Irish record holder in 20 years' time. I want to take it to a whole different level. In one sense, the more the record is broken the better for Irish sprinting, but when I finish, I want to make sure it will be very hard for someone to break my records."