Adrian Leat will need to do well in some high quality European events to help his case for Olympic qualification. Photo / Nick Reed
Adrian Leat will need to do well in some high quality European events to help his case for Olympic qualification. Photo / Nick Reed
Adrian Leat, Glasgow 2014 judo silver medallist, is on the outside looking in. No guarantee of qualifying for Rio de Janeiro, he subjects himself to bouts of introspection where he'll wonder if all the sacrifices are worth it.
He'll wonder why he doesn't ditch the robe and concentrate on hiscareer as an architect, making maximum use of that masters degree he earned in between training day and night for a niche sport that receives little funding and less exposure.
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Then he'll stop and remember that he's not just doing it for himself. He'll be doing it for his friends who have supported him and the family he adores. Most of all he's going to have a decent crack at qualifying for the Olympics because it's what his brother would have wanted.
Leat, 27, has had plenty of time for introspection, since that day of bottomless sorrow in Bulgaria when he discovered his brother, Alister, had committed suicide while they were pursuing their judo dream. Leat, younger by two years, had the inconceivable task of trying to arrange to get his brother's body home from the backblocks of Eastern Europe to Auckland's North Shore.
Gone was his travelling mate, gone was his training partner of 20 years, gone was his emotional ballast and sense of self.
"I did it tough at first, like anybody would. I thought I had finished with the sport. There was nothing left for me in it. My brother was my training partner on the mat, off the mat, every day. To lose him was more than I could handle," he says.
"It was dad and a close friend - ex-Judo NZ president Dave Browne - who came to me with a proposition to carry on my Commonwealth Games dream and head back overseas to keep training and qualifying.
"That was pretty tough to even hear - people trying to convince me to get back on the [horse] and to the Commonwealth Games. I took a week to think about it and started to come around. I had to really think what my brother would want and I didn't think he'd have wanted that to be the end for me.
"To get to the Commonwealth Games was our dream for two years, and even for most our lives before that. I found some peace in that. I really wanted to achieve something big for him, but also for myself. I sacrificed a lot getting into those Games, suffered a lot of setbacks and a lot of disappointments.
"It was one of those performances where everything came together on the day. I knew he was there on the day, fighting alongside me. I really had a lot to be grateful for with him." But if Leat thought the silver medal would fill the hole in his life, he had under-estimated the enduring power of grief.
He returned to a "normal" life, only to find life wasn't normal at all without his brother.
Adrian Leat celebrates his semi-final win at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. Photo / Greg Bowker
"There have been a lot of hard times since coming back and a lot of people don't see that. The hard times happen when nobody sees you, when nobody is around. Those times when you're talking and interacting with people are the times you're distracted and truly happy. A lot of people don't see the grief, the sadness that does affect me on a day-to-day basis."
Leat and his parents haven't found closure, just a lot of confusion. But if there is the merest sliver of a silver lining, it's that he has never been closer to his family than what he is now.
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"Mum relies on me a lot and there's vice versa, still, of course. Me and dad have become more like friends and I'm very grateful for the advice he gives to me. I find a lot of strength in that relationship."
Alister and Adrian Leat were born in Perth to Malaysian parents.
His biological parents separated before Adrian turned five. His blood father moved back to Malaysia and they have no relationship ("I am happy with that at this point"). His mother, Irene, met and fell in love with Martin, a Briton who had moved to New Zealand when he was 21.
"He's my stepfather but I never call him that," says Leat. "He is my real father and he is the greatest man I know."
He has two stepbrothers, Mason and Matthew, and a sister Mars. It was dad that got the brothers into judo. Adrian was just six.
When Martin is talking it up, says Leat, he'll say it was because the boys were afraid to walk down to the shops in Glenfield because of the locals who hung out there. In reality, he wanted the boys to get off the couch, stop watching television, stop playing video games and get some physical co-ordination.
When he was at Birkenhead College, Leat started entering and winning national championships. He also developed a love-hate relationship with the sport. He loved the thrill of winning and the self-confidence that gave him; he hated the time he missed socialising with his friends doing what teenagers were born to do.
"Sometimes I came to resent the training and the judo a little bit, but it comes full circle. If you love the sport, you come back to it and in the end it's not someone else who is driving you to succeed, it really comes from yourself."
That well-spring of motivation is not linked to riches. Judo is a niche sport. It is not one of High Performance Sport NZ's targeted sports and therefore is only funded hand to mouth - and sometimes the hand is empty.
"It's incredibly hard. I'm quite lucky in that I work with people who understand what I am trying to do. It's hard to hold down a 40-45 hour per week job and train as much as you can. You don't get a lot of spare time and when you do you just want to rest, but I have to look for sponsorship or funding to try to get me overseas.
Judo's success in Glasgow has seen the national body get two instalments of $25,000 to launch a rio campaign. In Leat's time, that is the first dollar judo has received. Of that money, he might see "a grand or two", enough for one ticket to Europe.
Leat is heading to Kazakhstan via London this month. There are two parts to Olympic qualification. First, he must show he has beaten a top-32 ranking opponent in the two years before qualification. When he won silver in Glasgow, he beat two such opponents along the way. Tick. Second, he must rank inside the world's top 22 at the time of selection. The last time he checked he was ranked No 60. Cross.
Leat is going to have to progress to the late rounds in some high-quality European events and win the Oceania Championships if he wants to control his Olympic destiny. It won't be easy.
