ATHLETICS: Ian O'Riordan talks to physical therapist Gerard Hartmann about his extraordinary gift for helping elite athletes and hears from PaulaRadcliffe why she has such faith in his methods.
Several days can sometimes be spent trying to contact Gerard Hartmann but when you do he'll always have a good story about where he's been. Maybe in the French Alps to watch over Paula Radcliffe's training, with a Clare hurler that needed instant treatment, or a consultation with the injured Roy Keane.
This time it was John Travolta.
Last month Hartmann had put all patients on hold while he worked solely with Radcliffe ahead of her world marathon record in Chicago. One of them was Travolta, who then sent his personal jet, complete with pool table, to fly Hartmann down to his pad in Florida. Apparently Travolta still does a mean dance these days, and his back needed a little attention.
"You just wouldn't believe the set-up he has down there," says Hartmann. "You just would not believe it. But you know it's not my scene. It's just nice now and again to do something like that."
Hartmann's scene is his small sports injury clinic on 2 Patrick Street in the heart of Limerick. It's the sort of place you'd walk past without noticing, the same way on this day you wouldn't have noticed Radcliffe or men's world marathon record-holder Khalid Khannouchi slip inside.
What's happening inside on Hartmann's tables has outgrown the mere treatment of an injured athlete; he's moved beyond the surface, and these days smooths an athlete's confidence as much as the state of their muscles. The finest example of that has come with Radcliffe. On the day of this visit, Radcliffe is between award ceremonies. Last weekend Monte Carlo for the IAAF Athlete of the Year, the week before Buckingham Palace for a well done from the Queen. The BBC is up next.
She is seeing Hartmann for her usual muscular overhaul, and a few minor side-effects still lingering from her two hours 17 minutes, 18 seconds marathon in Chicago - the fastest ever women's time by a minute and a half. But she's there too for advice on when and where to run her next marathon. And the new food supplements she should try. And the plyometric exercises and new arm action that he has her doing to help develop an unbeatable finishing sprint.
"Gerard has this gift for understanding the athlete," she says, "so he's not just working on the injury. He's working on your mind as well, so you believe whatever you have is going to get better. He just has this sense for knowing exactly where the injury is.
"And you can relax when you come in here, because he's so positive. You have so much faith and trust in Gerard that it's like you hand over some of the worry to him. He's just a unique person. And I do believe he is gifted, and has something that other people in the area just don't have.
"But he also works harder than anyone else. It's not like he's magic and just waves his hands about. He puts a hell of a lot of work into it, and when you spend as much time as he does doing it then of course you are going to learn a lot more about it. I remember with my knee injury before the world cross country in Dublin he was spending six or seven hours a day just with me. And he came in twice on St Patrick's Day."
Technique is certainly a big part of his act, and Hartmann's deep friction massage goes as painfully deep as it can. With this sort of reputation he could have started some world-wide franchise or churned out a series of books. Though his prices aren't charitable, and his work with Radcliffe is worth about £50,000 a year, he prefers to stick to his original idea of working closely with individuals, who typically stay two weeks at a time.
"For me it's about people that I enjoy working with," he says, "and building a relationship and a trust with them. I would never want to multiply and make the clinic much bigger. We have a unique set-up here, and we have a happy and positive energy. I want to keep that going, and never let it get messy where the athletes start getting stressed.
"And one of the main reasons I work so closely with Paula is because of the total commitment she gives to her sport. I mean total legal commitment. Right now she has a more exhaustive support system than any other athlete around.
"In terms of training environment and rest and nutrition she is two steps ahead of any other athlete I know, and that means a huge reward for anyone working with her."
But it's Hartmann's own commitment that brings the athletes to him, more than the vice versa. He's never had a pint of beer and works as long into the night as it takes, though he'll swear his hands never get tired. And while he's just passed his 41st birthday he's holding off on all plans to settle down with a wife and family.
"I just couldn't give this job the same sort of time if I had a family there as well. Right now it's that important to me, not just because I enjoy it but because I believe I've been blessed to do this job."
A COUPLE of years ago Hartmann uncovered some of his training diaries from his early teenage years. As a student at Salesian College in Limerick he was heavily into sport and running was where his talent fully bloomed, and later took him on scholarship to the University of Arkansas. When he looked closely at those diaries he was surprised at what he saw.
"I didn't realise that I was drawing these little skeletal figures at that age, about my own injuries. Maybe an ankle or a knee, and putting in things like tibialis anterior and retinaculum and other names that I couldn't have got from my biology book. And I can't figure out where they came from, except that I must have known about them from somewhere."
It would be another 15 years before Hartmann would fully return to those kind of sketches. It was 1991 and he had just won his seventh Irish triathlon title. Four days later he was back training in Florida when an armadillo hit the front wheel of his bike and he crashed to the ground at 32 m.p.h. His hip had been uniquely spliced like a diamond, and to this day he can't walk through airport security without the replacement metal plate setting off the alarm.
Suddenly the man who could swim
2.4 miles, bike 70 miles, and run a full marathon, all in under eight hours, was struggling to walk from the bedroom to the toilet. His triathlon career was over.
"I do believe that accident propelled me as a therapist, and gave me a lot more understanding and empathy for my patients. And I often wonder if there was a bigger power involved in the whole thing. Something definitely told me at the time that it was all a matter of fate.
"I remember a priest friend of mine came to see me, and I was smiling. He said later that he thought the crash hadn't hit me yet. Well it never did."
Instead it helped divert all his energy into his sport massage therapy course at the University of Florida. And a year later at the 1992 Olympics he was treating the likes of Carl Lewis and Calvin Smith and another 10 medal winners.
He moved his clinic from Florida back to Ireland in 1998 because by then most of the athletes he was treating were Europe-based. But it had always been his plan to set up in the spot where his parents had run their jewellery and optical business, where he himself had worked for a spellin 1983.
What he gets most of all out of his work is helping the athletes he treats reach their very best. He tells a story about Eamonn Coghlan and his quest to run a sub-four mile at the age of 40, and when he stayed with Hartmann for treatment in Florida. Hartmann overheard Coghlan saying he was about to go home, but told him he was going nowhere. "I've put too much work into you," he said, "and we're in this together."
A few weeks later Coghlan ran 3:58.15 indoors in Boston. Radcliffe, though, has built up the ultimate faith in Hartmann. Since 1997, when she "discovered" Hartmann while he helped cure her husband Gary's knee injury, she hasn't let a minor injury pass without Hartmann's intervention. He repays that by predicting almost to the exact second - like he did in Chicago - how fast Radcliffe can run.
"You know sometimes I wish he'd shut up with those predictions," she says with a smile, "and stop trying to jinx it. But he just knows. Gary and my coach and I say it to ourselves, but he says it straight out. What I will run. And it's great to hear that from someone you really trust, and you know is normally spot on. It gives you so much more confidence."
Hartmann is holding off the predictions for 2003. He is still trying to work out how much faster Radcliffe will run for the marathon.
