Ian O'Riordan On Athletics: Tell friends and neighbours that from next Saturday you'll be in Osaka for the World Championships and they unfailingly raise one question: "Any chance of a medal?"
All you can do is look them squarely in the eye and say, "Not really," when what you really meant is, "No chance - not this time anyway." Because when it comes to Irish athletes at major championships the conversation inevitably starts and finishes with medal prospects.
What you'd like to do, given the time, is sit them down and tell them about David Campbell, the 25-year-old from Maynooth whose main purpose in life for the past year has been to represent Ireland at the World Championships.
Campbell has absolutely no chance of winning a medal in Osaka. In fact, he'll do exceptionally well to get out of his qualifying heat in the 800 metres, definitely among the most competitive events of the championships. He's about two seconds slower that the world's best and still a relative novice at the distance. Not that he's unnerved by that daunting reality.
This time two years ago, having completed a master's degree in finance at DCU, Campbell sold his car and cashed in his small SSIA account to fund a six-month training stint in South Africa, lodging there in an old granny flat rented by a fellow athlete. He returned to Ireland reinvigorated, improved his 800-metre best by three seconds to 1:46.99, and qualified for the European Championships in Gothenburg - which he exited in his qualifying heat.
Realising he had much to learn, Campbell sought advice from Athletics Ireland and his father, John, also his long-time coach. Before leaving Gothenburg he was introduced to Nic Bideau, the Australian coach renowned for his hardness as much as his success, and still better known in Ireland as Sonia O'Sullivan's partner.
Bideau invited him to London for a week, a sort of trial without obligation. The day after he arrived Bideau put him in a session with Benita Johnson, Australia's best female marathoner. She was doing four-times-a-mile, which Campbell reckoned was no big deal. Johnson dropped Campbell on the second mile, and Bideau came to the conclusion this was the weakest, least-fit "athlete" he had encountered.
After a little persuasion, however, Bideau agreed to take him on and invited him to Australia, where Bideau's charges train during the Northern Hemisphere winter. Campbell left Dublin on New Year's Eve, sitting alone on the long-haul flight to Melbourne. In crossing four time zones he got to ring in the new year four times - each time making the same resolution: "I am going to make it to Osaka."
After a week in Melbourne, Bideau took his athletes to a high-altitude base at Falls Creek, where Campbell got to run with Craig Mottram, Australia's gold-medal hope at 5,000 metres. This time Campbell was dropped in the first of the mile repeats, sometimes even on the recovery runs. He asked himself several times if he really had what it took to succeed in the sport.
He also talked at length with Mottram, learning as much as he could about how this former triathlete from Frankston, Victoria, had built himself a reputation as the only white man who could take on and beat the Africans at distance. Campbell realised it was about attitude, that the Africans had the same insecurities, and that everything was impossible until somebody did it. Most of all it was about training to race, not racing at training.
After 10 weeks he returned to Dublin and the more mundane training routes along the Royal Canal. Everything was focused on the qualifying time of 1:46.60, the B standard for Osaka. He resolved to race like a warrior, and as a signal of his intent, before his opening race he went to his local barber and asked for a Mohican - which he's been sporting ever since.
He has missed only one day's training since the start of the year, and then only because his back was so sore he could not get out of bed.
A victory at the Cork City Sports over 1,500 metres on July 1st indicated Campbell was on his way. Two weeks later he ran 1:46.05 in Italy. The only problem was Thomas Chamney had also run inside the qualifying time, and with only one B-standard athlete permitted per event, the plane ticket to Osaka would be decided by a showdown at the national championships in Santry.
Chamney had outsprinted Campbell for the title a year ago, but this time the positions were reversed, that all-important attitude the essential difference. An hour later Campbell also won the 1,500 metres - his fourth race in 24 hours - to pull off the first men's middle-distance double since Eamonn Coghlan managed the feat in 1981.
It will be mid-morning Irish time when on August 30th Campbell goes in the heats of the 800 metres in Osaka. Bar a sensational performance, the most you'll hear of it is that he failed to progress. He won't mind; he remembers watching the World Championships himself as a kid and wondering why so many of the Irish weren't up to it.
He sees the wider picture now, how athletes need time and experience to progress. He intends on being fitter and stronger again next year for the Beijing Olympics, and later, aged 30, at his peak in London in 2012.
Campbell also reflects where Irish athletics is right now: working hard to build a better future.
At some stage then, possibly London, and if not certainly the next European championships, when someone raises the perennial question "Any chance of a medal?" perhaps we can say look out for David Campbell. And the chances are he won't be the only one.
