Triathlon: Changing tack in gold hunt

Bevan Docherty has significantly modified his training in an attempt to win an elusive Olympic gold medal.

The 32-year-old won silver in Athens and bronze in Beijing and wants a gold in London in 2012 to complete his set.

To help achieve that, he has put an emphasis on running this year and, if it pays dividends, will continue that approach until London.

While top triathletes can't afford to have a weak discipline, most races are decided on the 10km run. Docherty is a good runner but he hasn't always possessed the top-end speed of some of his rivals. He is more of an endurance athlete who is able to push himself past the pain barrier and outlast his rivals.

But London's course is likely to be flat, favouring speed athletes like Canada's Simon Whitfield, Spain's Javier Gomez and triathlon's newest sensation, Great Britain's Alistair Brownlee. The 21-year-old Brownlee has won all three world championship series races this year, thanks largely to his phenomenal running.

"We are looking at a long-term approach," Docherty's coach Mark Elliott says. "Bevan has been to two Olympics already [for a silver and bronze] and he needs to make a change psychologically.

"It's a long time to London and we can't do the same old, same old. Bevan suggested we could look at running, which is what we are doing.

"We have tried to balance all three disciplines in the last couple of years but we think we have to do something different. It's not necessarily all about London but we need to keep him firing in the sport, so we are working on a discipline we haven't really focused on before."

Olympic boardsailing gold medallist Tom Ashley adopted a similar approach in the lead-up to Beijing, sometimes cycling up to five hours a day to improve his aerobic fitness. He's continued in the saddle and was even a member of a team in this year's elite Benchmark Homes cycle series.

Docherty is still dipping into the pool as often as he always has but has sacrificed time on the bike for his running. He is now riding only three times a week - one long ride, one power ride and one race specific - but is running every day.

He has trained with runners in the past but has recently hit the roads with marathon runners and ironman athletes like Craig Alexander when they are fresh.

It seemed to pay dividends when testing at altitude revealed he was running faster than ever. That was confirmed when he won arguably the closest sprint finish in top-level triathlon history at the world championship event in Korea when he edged Australia's Brad Kahlefeldt.

"The only way we knew if it was working was that race in Korea," Elliott says. "It was working bloody well, but then he got crook. The flu went chesty and knocked him back for a few weeks but he's about 80-90 per cent now. He should be finding some good form this weekend."

Docherty failed to finish two events in June - he withdrew both times after the cycle leg - before coming home a lowly 27th at a world championship series event in Kitzbuhel a fortnight ago.

He races at another world championship series event in Hamburg early tomorrow morning (NZT). Hamburg is traditionally a running race and is likely to be similar to the course in London.

Triathlon doesn't hold records because each course is different but Brownlee is taking the sport to a new level and twice ran 30m 30s to win events this year.

"Thirty minutes is still slow," Elliott says, "in the context of running." Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele holds the 10,000m world record of 26m 17.53s in 2005 but he didn't first have to swim 1500m and bike 40km.

"We are focusing on running but we are still not at the level we could go. We could step it up again. We will see how the results are stacking up and how other competitors are going.

"If Brownlee goes even faster and continues running at 2m 50s pace, we might need to re-evaluate.

"But the dynamics of the sport can change and four or five guys could come along who are very good swimmers and know how to ride a bike so we have to balance things."