KEY POINTS:
For most people, missing out on riding your team to a medal would be a crushing blow. Not to Peter Latham.
He knows precisely what a crushing blow is.
Tomorrow will be one year to the day his career nearly ended. Riding for his French pro team Albi
Velo Sport in a stage race, Latham took what appeared to be a minor tumble... and didn't properly get back up for another three months.
So when track coach Tim Carswell said, two days before the event, how the pursuit schedule would pan out, Latham was philosophical about not riding in the medal race. He was just happy to be at the Olympics at all.
"It wasn't a big crash but it was just the way I fell," he says of the crash in France that nearly crippled him. "I knew straight away something had gone wrong. For a split second, I thought I had the stitch then, all of a sudden, I couldn't breathe and they had me on the oxygen.
"But, hey, in bike racing, there are crashes and most of the time, you take a bit of skin off and it's all good. Sometimes there are bad ones and I was just unfortunate that was a bad one. The crazy thing was I basically landed on my arse and, bang, there was a compression fracture. Apart from that, I didn't have a graze."
Latham had landed in such a way he suffered a compression fracture and displacement of the T-12, or the 12th thoracic vertebrae. If you reach around with your hand to the small of your back and move it upwards as the spine starts to curve out, that is where the T-12 lives. The thoracic section supports the ribs and chest, so that is why Latham immediately felt he could not breathe.
"The next thing you know I'm in the hospital for a week and not allowed to move," he said. "They fitted me with a corset that I wore for the next three months."
The doctors took a mould of his back and built a fitted plastic support.
"I slept in it, wore it 24 hours a day. I was pretty glad to get rid of that thing after three months."
Firstly there was the small matter of getting out of a French hospital and back home. There weren't too many silver linings in this period, but he found one up in the clouds. Due to his injury, Latham could not be transferred back to New Zealand from France in cattle class.
"Air New Zealand flew me first-class with the lie-down beds. That was a treat actually. I got the nice New Zealand wine and the special olive oil and had someone meet me at the gate to drive me around the airport. I got looked after pretty good."
He got looked after pretty good at home, too, girlfriend Sally taking on the role of chief cook and bottle-washer during his convalescence.
"It's all good watching a few movies for a couple of days and then you realise that everyone's off to work, doing their own thing and you're left lying on the couch doing nothing. I was tearing my hair out after a while."
Latham watched nearly every DVD available, but that wasn't the nadir.
"I'd watch Days of Our Lives at 11 o'clock in the morning," he said, with just a trace of embarrassment.
What was eating him, though, was the fact he knew the young, dynamic pursuit team of Jesse Sergent, Marc Ryan, Westley Gough, Sam Bewley and Hayden Roulston was going really, really fast. He badly wanted to be part of that, perhaps too badly.
"The whole time I had my corset on, my motivation got stronger and stronger," Latham says "I just really wanted to be here. I think I was a bit unrealistic at the time thinking about how quickly I could come back. It didn't happen to start with but, as time went by, I had a really good season in Europe and then I got the call-up to come and help the boys out here so I was just incredibly proud.
"The culture in the team has certainly changed since I started. With Tim [Carswell] on board now, the whole team has stepped up. Everything we do now is for a reason. We do very specific training and have a sports scientist but the main thing is we have all these young fellas who want it so badly."
Latham is just 24. But with Sergent and Gough only 20 and Bewley having recently turned 21, you can see why he feels like a statesman.
His mentioning of "culture" is interesting. Public perception of the cyclists, due to Roulston's various contretemps and the indiscretion involving Ryan and Tim Gudsell at the Village during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, is of a ride-hard, play-even-harder bunch of immature kids.
Interesting, then, that while there were a few ordinary looking heads at a medal-winners' press conference last week, Roulston's wasn't one of them.
"It may look like I have," he said in reference to Bevan Docherty's admission he had been on the lash the night before, "but I was out with my family last night."
The maturity speaks volumes for cycling's ambition to be a world leader. The individual pursuit medal won by Roulston, the emergence of Ali Shanks as a genuine medal hope and Greg Henderson's reputation gives the programme validity. But it is the awesome potential of the pursuit team that has everyone most excited.
"There's a team of six of us and we're just smashing each other every day," Latham says. "We're taking it to another level. Like other sports, we train incredibly hard - like rowing, like triathlon. We like to think we sacrifice a lot. When we finish, we do let our hair down every now and then but at the same time, we're professional on and off the bike."
While Gough's disappointment still oozes, you sense Latham's injury has made him more philosophical.
"Every campaign we go on, there will be five or six riders so there is always going to be someone on the bench. I guess in the past I've been lucky enough to always be on the starting line-up.
"Two days out, we got told who would ride and the strategy. It is gutting to be left off the start line but, at the same time, really stoked, really proud to know that I've helped the boys go faster.
"I lost my voice after yelling so hard. I was so happy for the team," he said of watching the medal race. "I was lucky enough to get on the podium at the road world championships a few years ago and I felt the same way this time even though it wasn't me there. I still felt like I was part of it and to beat those Aussies was certainly pretty special."
There has been talk of making replica medals for Latham and Gough. If it happens, it will be a nice gesture. Latham, however, considers being able to help out reward enough, plus he's got his eye on a different coloured medal in four years.
"Just these last couple of months, being with the boys, has sparked my love for the team pursuit. It's not just the race, it's being with the team. We're all best mates, that's what makes it so much fun.
"The boys are all capable of riding the road and making money but having that gold medal around your neck is a massive goal."
