No pain, no gain for David Weir
Paralympic champion and workaholic talks training, targets and tattoos
But the athletes themselves will tell you that they owe their success to the endless hours of hard graft that few of us ever get to see.
So it was a rare privilege to go behind the scenes with British wheelchair racer David Weir in London recently as he filmed an interview for C4’s Road to London 2012: Paralympics Extra (7:00am, Saturday 25 February).
The five-times London Marathon winner arrives at St Mary's College in Twickenham with the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head. It's freezing outside, and he has just completed a nine-mile training session around Richmond Park, with a trip to the gym to look forward to after the interview.
Winter training is not exactly his idea of fun.
“You just deal with it," he admits. "You just get up and do it. It’s a natural thing that I do every day.”
The potential rewards for Weir could be immense – four Paralympic gold medals at London 2012, to add to the two golds, two silvers and two bronzes that he has amassed from the Athens and Beijing Games.
Realistically it’s going to be tough to get four gold medals - David Weir
The 32-year-old will compete in the 800m, 1500m, 5,000m and marathon events in the T54 class (athletes in wheelchairs with spinal cord injuries) at London 2012, but he is not getting greedy.
“My aim is just to get one gold in my home championships because realistically it’s going to be tough to get four,” says Weir. “I dream about it but you’ve got to take each day as it comes when you’re in a championship like that.
“If you set your standards too high you could pressurize yourself too much and it could all go wrong.”
Winning is such an integral part of Weir’s life that he’s literally got it written on his chest.
During the interview, he lifts his GB shirt to reveal a tattoo that means ‘winner’ in Japanese. He was going to get it covered over a few years ago so he could extend the Maori tattoo on his arm and shoulder, but changed his mind after some Japanese athletes begged him to keep it.
Once the questions are done with he’s straight off to the gym for a session with strength coach Nick Cooper.
As the students around him do some stretches and pedal away on the exercise bikes, Weir gets stuck into a serious weights routine of pull-ups, bench presses, and plenty more besides.
A rest is not even guaranteed after that, as his six-month-old son Mason will be waiting to welcome him home. That's when the real hard work begins.
Interview by Andy Fraser
You can watch the first episode of Road to London 2012: Paralympics Extra on 4OD or at 7:00am, Saturday 25 February on Channel 4.
You can find pictures of David Weir in training on the C4Paralympics Facebook page