KEY POINTS:
Sometimes dreams can't help but burst into the real world. They're so big, so vivid, they cause a physical reaction. James Dolphin is having one of those moments. I've just asked him if he's prepared for the atmosphere he'll face when he walks out into the Olympic stadium
on August 18 towards the start blocks for the 200m sprint heats.
It's a cool winter day in Auckland, thousands of kilometres from hot, humid Beijing, but Dolphin reacts as if he's there right now. The broad smile fades into an intense, faraway look, and his muscled arms and legs flash with goose bumps. What has done this to him?
It's the thought of what will motivate him to explode off the line, in synchronicity with the starter's gun. "You know what you're there for and what you're there to do," he says. "So I'm there [on the start-line] saying thank you to my wife for all that [she's] done. My family sacrifices a lot for me. I get home at 6.30 after training and the kids are nigh on ready to go to bed.
"To my kids, I'm saying I'll be home soon. This isn't forever." Tears have welled in his eyes - though, to be fair, they're probably more to do with a troublesome contact lens.
Without the corrective lenses, Dolphin would barely be able to see to the end of the finishing strait - the result of a condition called keratoconus, a misshaped cornea. Look past the tears and you'll see Dolphin's
Olympic pursuit will be an earnest and wholehearted experience - he has invested too much over the past four years to go all that way for some wide-eyed, frivolous jaunt. "I'm not out here hours and hours every day just to go there and make up the numbers. You train your guts out to get results so everyone around you can bounce off that as well.
My goal is to make the semi-final and while I'm there, I'll reassess that goal. To be in the top 16 in the world in such a pinnacle event would be absolutely brilliant." They are the words of a confident young man but don't jump to conclusions - you can forget any of the stereotypical sprinter's ego.
At international track meetings, the fast guys are usually loud, bombastic, and cocky. Think the strutting Carl Lewis or the bling-king Maurice Greene. Not Dolphin. Down-to-earth, polite to a fault, and genuine, he's someone you'd be proud to call a friend. At 25, he's a father of two boys: Joe, almost 2, and 6-month-old Ari. He and his wife, June, were high school sweethearts, together since the third form. He works as a sales rep for sports shoe company Mizuno.
If he couldn't run so damn fast, Dolphin could easily pass as a regular guy. But boy, can he run. His best time over 200m, set in January in Sydney, is 20.56s. Next time you hop in the car, drive along at 35km/h and imagine someone running along beside you - that's how fast he burned up the track. He has worked hard to get that good, but he has natural talent to burn too.
A schoolboy rugby rep always noted for his speed, he didn't take up athletics until 2001-2002 but that season became the national 100m champion. The 2004 Olympics dangled in front of him as a goal, but it was not to be - a fate Dolphin was initially gutted by, but which he now sees made him all the more determined to make it to Beijing. Failure can be the greatest spur.
It's about nine o'clock one night in May and Dolphin is just getting home. He'd been up until 1am the night before, finishing off an assignment for his Massey University business studies, was on the road at 6am heading to Tauranga to do sales calls for Mizuno, fitted in his training sessions around meetings and then drove back home to Whangaparaoa. June is waiting with dinner.
Dolphin, a former chef, loves to cook but lately he simply hasn't had the time. You wonder how this young couple cope - what with Dolphin's studies, job and running career and now a baby. Fortunately June accepts as part-and-parcel this hectic lifestyle coupled with her husband's frequent absences away competing. "I think it's just become normal," she says. "This is what our life is like. He's missed my birthday for the last four years [it's in August] because he's been away, but that's just life and we're used to it." They miss him when he's away.
"Joe gets upset, saying 'Where's Daddy? When's he coming home?"' says June. "He used to love seeing him on TV but now he's a bit blase about it - 'Oh yeah, there's Daddy'." This year, though, is different.
June and the boys travelled to Europe with Dolphin for his pre-Olympic campaign and will be in Beijing along with his parents, sister and brother. It will be the first time June will have seen her husband race in a major championship. She's not sure how she'll handle it. At the national championships in Auckland in March, she was a nervous wreck. She chooses to stand in the shadows, pacing at the back of the stands. She had a good excuse for not being there when Dolphin ran at the Commonwealth Games two years ago - she was heavily pregnant with Joe, who was due not long after his father had finished competing.
Dolphin was planning to dash home in time for the arrival of his first-born, but like his Dad, Joe was in a hurry. When Dolphin tried in vain to contact his wife a couple of days before his first race, he grew anxious. When he finally reached her, she assured him everything was fine. It wasn't until the next day she revealed she had been in labour all day and was now in the hospital about to deliver their baby. She simply didn't want the athlete to worry. History nearly repeated itself in January, when Ari started to make his way into the world five days early.
Dolphin had been in Canberra getting some much-needed pre-Olympic competition against a top Australian field, and arrived back in Auckland just in time to see his second son born. Family and sport have always been important to Dolphin. With an elder brother and younger sister, he remembers Saturday mornings of rushing around to rugby and netball.
Cousins represented New Zealand at sailing, and a great-great-uncle was a sprint champion in the British Imperial Army in India. But no one in his immediate family has had the sporting success he has enjoyed. He's pretty sure, though, that it was an ancestor who put the kybosh on his 2004 Olympic bid. After taking to athletics at the suggestion of a coach at the Bay Cougars club on the North Shore when he was in his last year at Long Bay College, Dolphin had enjoyed a fast-track career.
After making it to the world junior championships in 2002, and the senior world champs the year later, the Athens Olympics beckoned. He went to Europe chasing a qualifying time, but the trip did not go well. Team dynamics were not working and he put so much pressure on himself to qualify, he raced badly. "Nothing really fell into place. You look at things like that and think, well, it was meant to be that I missed out.
In Greece, during World War Two, my grandfather was in a prisoner of war camp for a few years and lucky to get out, so I thought the big fella was saying, 'You're not going to Greece'." That conclusion was re-affirmed in 2006 when he was selected to go to Athens for a World Cup event. Ten days before departure, he was diagnosed with a stress fracture and had to pull out of the team. "So I'm pretty sure that was my grand-father saying, 'Stay away, stay away'."
Injuries are part of being a top athlete and he has not been immune in the build-up to Beijing. Things have gone much smoother this time around - he posted a qualifying time in January, cruised to victory in the 200m at the national champs and secured his spot on the team with victories over top-class Australian opposition during the year. But you can't help but sustain injuries when you're putting your body under such stress.
He has been training in 10 sessions a week with his coach, Belgian-born Marlon Graevert, working on the track and in the gym. It's hard work and an old ankle injury has been causing him pain - the culprit a floating bone chip which broke away during a rugby game 12 years ago. The inflammation is agonising sometimes but he is grimacing through and will have a cortisone injection (once the appropriate papers have been signed off to satisfy anti-doping agencies) to bring it under control until after the Olympics. Not that he's afraid of pain. When you have a dream, you'll do anything. "You can't go out there and train as hard as most people in athletics do without being determined and knowing what you want to achieve.
I was lying on the ground on Monday night in absolute pain, about to spew my guts out. You don't do that unless you've got something you're striving for." Or without knowing you have a proud family watching in the stands.
James Dolphin - The road to Beijing
Born June 17, 1983 in Takapuna, Auckland
Coached by Marlon Graevert
He won the national championships in both the 100m and 200m sprints in 2005, 2006 and 2007
He reached the 200m final at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, finishing eighth
Last year he made the quarter finals of the 200m at the World Championships
His personal bests are 10.41 seconds for the 100m and 20.56 for the 200m
He is 1.78m tall and weighs 75kg
Competing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in the 200m event
