Team Geared Up

In his life less ordinary, Paul Griffin has left behind rowing heartbreak to embark on his toughest challenge yet, qualifying for the Winter Olympics.

Paul Griffin should have guessed this was going to be one of those trips when his wallet came back to him $300 light after he’d left it on the connecting flight from Cork to Heathrow on his way to Alaska. Or when Western Union confused him with another Paul Griffin in their system who had a gladly-pay-you-Tuesday credit rating and wouldn’t release any cash to him, landing him in Anchorage with $13 and nothing but cancelled cards to his name. Or when he saw the start list for last Monday’s American National Championships and found that instead of being sent off as one of the early starters – as is the norm with the expected back markers in European cross-country skiing – he’d have to head out after three-quarters of the field had chopped up the snow ahead of him.

But if the past year has taught him anything, it’s that fate doesn’t always need a map and a torch to find its way. So he knuckled down and got on with getting on and was making a solid start in his final qualifying race for next month’s Winter Olympics until disaster crooked its finger at him a kilometre in. He came to the first steep downhill-uphill combination and got it all wrong on terrain he describes as “like the Grand National on a wet day”. He wiped out, turned himself into a small forest of skis and poles and as he picked himself up to get going again, realised he’d bent the top of one of his skis back by about half a metre. Shit.
His mind raced through a slideshow of options. For a quick second, he allowed himself the indulgence of the first one and he roared and cursed at the top of his voice just to get it out of himself before working out what to do next. He considered running back for his spare skis. No, too far – it’d take him 20 minutes before he was back on the snow. He thought about keeping going on one ski. No, that’s just stupid. For a couple of seconds, he nearly resigned himself to pulling out.
“And then, out of nowhere,” he says, “I saw this guy standing by the side of the course with his skis in his hand. He was just a local, a spectator out to watch the race, an older guy. I swear to God, he appeared as if out of heaven, standing there on the top of the slope I had just fallen down.

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