Kiwi Olympians: Hamish Carter

By CHRIS RATTUE

Olympic selections can be a cruel business. Just ask cyclist Graeme Miller, who thought he had done everything necessary to get to Sydney but suddenly found a stick the size of a javelin in his spokes.

Yet something more extraordinary than that non-selection was also in the wind this year.

Hamish Carter, for the last two years the world's top-rated triathlete, was apparently in danger of missing out on the Sydney Olympics by failing to meet Triathlon New Zealand's criteria.

Now that would really have been a story.

This is not exactly a country overflowing with world number ones in Olympic sports. You might count such characters on the fingers of one hand and have a digit left over to give the sort of salute that Miller aimed figuratively at the cycling bosses.

Beer-swilling couch potatoes with two-pack-a-day habits and a passion for anything deep-fried may have been moved to protest in the streets had our best triathlete been treated in such a fashion.

Some of us have enough trouble finding the motivation to walk to the bus stop, let alone swim/cycle/run at high speed over long distances. But we know an injustice when we see one.

Anyway, it was controversy avoided.

New Zealand triathletes had to finish in the top 15 at the World Cup event in Sydney or the world championship in Perth to satisfy the selectors. Carter was 32nd in the first but won his Olympic place with a fifth in Perth, celebrating his selection by collapsing at the finish and being carted off with a drip in his arm.

While Carter was revelling in the pleasure of cramp, heatstroke and dehydration, the selectors would have been sighing with relief. Game on for our No 1.

And history beckons for Carter, along with fellow New Zealand team-members Ben Bright, Craig Watson and Evelyn Williamson.

Sydney represents the Olympic debut for triathlons, a glorious moment for a sport that is only a couple of decades old.

Tennis and soccer can fiddle with Olympic fame yet they have their own, far more important stages. But the Olympics can take a medium-profile sport such as triathlons, and those who succeed at the Games, to a whole new level.

And Carter will be one of the men to beat in Sydney.

It is nearly a decade since the 28-year-old took up the sport after deciding that he was no longer big enough to succeed in rowing.

He had won national titles with Auckland Grammar and club crews but rowing was not a sport that would satisfy his ambitions.

"All I ever wanted to be was a professional sportsman. I don't know what I'd be doing otherwise," he says.

He had dabbled in just about every sport going, which meant that when he had a crack at a triathlon while holidaying at Whangamata he could swim, cycle and run fairly adequately already.

"I got beaten by a whole lot of women in that race but I guess I'm pretty arrogant and I've got to be good at anything I do," he says.

While he has never bothered with the Ironman events, Carter excelled at the 1.5km swim/40km cycle/10km run Olympic distance once he took his new sport seriously.

So where do the competitive urges come from?

Sibling rivalry is often found at the core of many top athletes, although with triathlons being such a young sport involving varied disciplines, there are not too many families of triathletes out there.

But there were some early battles that might have got the competitive juices flowing.

Carter is the youngest son of a lawyer father and teacher mother whose oldest three boys are in merchant banking, engineering and landscape architecture, while their only daughter is in advertising. Fairly conventional stuff from a family raised in the cosy suburb of Newmarket.

But ... "it was a large family and in large families you've got to stand up for yourself especially when you're the youngest," says Carter.

"You can't just sit back and let things happen. And no one ever really owned anything in our family.

"Even when we got up in the morning you had to get in first to get the best clothes. If someone got something good then everyone just tried to grab it."

Was this some kind of new-wave, high-speed, hippy commune system in the middle of Newmarket?

"No," he says. "It's just the way we were."

You would have to suspect, though, that Carter found he had a natural aptitude for triathlons and also found a way to hone it. Battling for the best gear at home against siblings up to eight years older just gave him a little edge.

As any of us mere mortals in a sport such as golf have found out, you can spend all day practising but unless you have that natural tweak and know how to develop it, all that wild swinging on the local driving range and crazed putting on ruthless greens usually leads to the same score and the same endless excuses.

There are plenty of triathletes out there with as much dedication who will never get anywhere near what Hamish Carter has achieved.

It is often the quality of the training that really counts, not the quantity, and Carter trains 20 hours a week, which he says is a good 10 hours less than many of his rivals.

Whatever the secret, it works. An early victory against the powerful Australians "opened my eyes to the possibility of being an international-class athlete - it was a big moment."

He really felt at home, and started thinking he could even be head of the triathlon household, when a group of triathletes from Australia asked him to join them at an altitude camp in Europe.

Success has brought him the comfort of sponsorships ranging from the Sports Foundation to Rexona deodorants, and being ranked as the best in the world at anything brings recognition and satisfaction beyond most of our wildest dreams.

But the Olympics, well, that's something else.

In typical Carter fashion, he does not nominate any particular opponents as the greatest threat in Sydney, preferring to say there are about 10 possible winners.

What he will say is the course is difficult on each of the three disciplines, which suits him.

Last year, Carter revealed his despair at watching the All Blacks lose five straight tests in 1998 and the struggles of the national cricket side.

He also rates the chance to support his fellow New Zealand Olympians in Sydney as one of the most thrilling parts of his career.

But he has also stated that the troubles of New Zealand's high-profile sports over the past couple of years have put an extra glow on his success.

"Normally if you have a big race on the same day as a test match you won't make the paper, which is understandable. Rugby's the No 1 sport," he said in an interview last year.

"But it's been great to have some wins right when the All Blacks have had a bad trot. The recognition makes it just that little bit sweeter.

"It's nice to get some recognition back home."

Like many going to Sydney, Carter will wonder if he can produce his best form, and if it will be good enough.

However, he knows an Olympic triumph would propel him to new heights of sporting fame, especially as New Zealand medals are likely to be thin on the ground in Sydney.

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