It is not just athletes that put in long, hard hours to represent their country when the Olympics roll around, support staff, including Banora Point-based massage therapist Alan Downes, will also clock up the hours.
Alan, who has just flown out in preparation for the Paralympics in London later this month, is expecting some long, hard days over the next few weeks.
Not that he’s complaining – far from it, it’s all part of the adventure of working for Cycling Australia and travelling to championships, including World championships and Paralympics, around the world. This, his second Paralympics, will be no different – the Kingscliff Lions Club member is sure to be back with a lot of great stories after meeting all sorts of people during his five-week trip. Previously at World Titles, he met with former Formula One driver Alex Zinardi who turned to hand-cycling after losing his legs in an accident.
“When I was a young fellow competing in different sports, we had none of these back-up support facilities,” he admitted
“It’s good to give something back to the athletes who have dedicated their lives to working and training hard – because you’ve got to look after their bodies and I’m just the man to do it,” he laughed.
Alan said he expected it to be very tiring for the first few days until he was “massage fit” again and back into the long days support staff need to put in to get the athletes ready.
“I’ve been appointed as a massage therapist to the Australian Paracycling team for the Paralympic games in London,” Games,” he said, explaining his role.
“We have a training camp in France before-hand and then later we will fly to London to meet the rest of the team in the Paralympic Village.
“We’ve got 15 athletes and the appropriate number of support staff.”
This is not the quiet, unassuming Alan’s first trip to Paralympic games, either.
“My first Paralympics was at Beijing and I’ve done several world championships and world cup events since 2007, when I first joined this program,” said Alan, who has also worked with the Australian women’s cycling team in the past decade or.
But, while it is a trip to the other side of the world, don’t think it will be sight-seeing and tourist traps for Alan and his fellow support staff.
“Initially I’ll be driving a lot of the equipment from London down to France and I’ll be looking after a couple of the hand-cyclists and people who cannot find suitable training venues,” he explained. “That’s why we’re heading to France for that two-week training camp and then we’ll all go over to London when the Olympics are finished and we’ll have all the training venues to ourselves then.”
And Alan said to watch out for the Paracycling team this year.
“We have a very strong team,” he said.
“We’re certainly guaran-teed of at least three or four gold medals, I think. We have a couple of new athletes that have just joined the program and have shown tremendous talent. They’ve qualified for these Olympics for doing well at the last World Championships at Los Angeles.”
Alan said he finds working with the Paralympic team particularly gratifying and rewarding.
“You are dealing with people with handicaps of varying degree, from cerebral palsy to severe motor accidents, with the loss of limbs and brain dysfunction, but their attitude is that they are just ordinary people like you and me and that’s the way we treat them – as athletes,” he said.
“They don’t see themselves as being disadvantaged by their disabilities, they just treat themselves as regular people, they don’t bitch and moan about what’s happened to them, they just get on with the job. You’d be surprised at some of the times that our athletes do – particularly the cycling unit. Some of our times are up there pretty close to able-bodied performers. They really are dedicated athletes.”
And don’t be surprised if the Brits are the team to beat in London.
“Many of our athletes are on AIS scholarships, but we’d like to be in the same position as the British team who are full-time athletes. They’re paid from the huge lottery fund and they’re paid enormous amounts of money just to train and perform. If we had that sort of backing, we’d have a bigger team and better be performed in the way of preparation.
“The British have been gearing up for this for the past seven years and all their athletes are highly paid and that’s all they do.”
Alan’s campaign will start with the track events in week one and then move on to the roads in the second week of the Games.
