Almost: Reflections Of An Olympian Without A Medal

A far more readable piece is in the Sunday Times. This is the original: bloated, raw, warts and all. Enjoy if you have a moment.

hug the pain away

I followed the media manager, legs numb and grief-stricken, to the BBC Sport interview- through the mixed zone, past journos uninterested in the four men who had plummeted from bronze to seventh. Meltwater fell in slow, heavy drops as the yellow microphone hovered and the camera waited to roll.

Bit dramatic isn’t it?

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But that was the feeling: gloomy anticipation of the impending dissection of a third failure at the Olympic Games.

Of course, it wasn’t just me. I’m part of a four-man bobsleigh team and, as the cliché goes, you win as a team and you lose as a team. Boy, did it feel like we lost.

I could tell you about ten years of hard work, sacrifice, setbacks and resilience - the usual salves we apply to defeat - but you’ve heard those before.

Not every athlete slides into the promised land of cinematic BBC montages. Especially not when you’re an Olympic non-medallist, part of - but not quite part of - Team GB’s most successful Winter Games. I’m also a brakeman, so even fewer people know my name. In our sport, it’s the pilot’s name you’ll see on television. You’ve probably heard of Brad Hall.

I want to talk about near-miss grief. About identity when the public only knows you as a dark-visored helmet. About perspective, and worth beyond performance.

The loneliness of almost

Near-miss grief is an odd sensation - an invisible torment that leaves you vibrating between shame and pride, love and loss. It is the final note to years of graft and joy when you fall at the final hurdle - or icy track. It’s a lonely place, one I suspect some of my Team GB peers might recognise.

Shame and loss are easy to understand: no medal therefore failure, right?

But pride and love arrive too. From family, friends, and the fans who followed your journey long before Olympic rings appeared above the competition arena. Their pride in you, simply for being there, nudges you toward acceptance.

So you oscillate. Pride and shame. Love and loss. Content with what you achieved, delighted for others, all while knowing the lump in your chest is not, and never will be, the comforting weight of an Olympic medal.

It’s confusing. And lonely. How do you frame such profound disappointment when the world that loves you insists on calling it achievement?

Who are you when the stopwatch stops?

Athletes sit through many well-meaning seminars about identity and life after sport. I’ve given it more thought than most - a privilege, really, not everyone gets to end their career on their own terms. A stroke ripped my coach and best mate Bruce Tasker’s career from him before the 2018 Olympics. I may continue another year or two, but as I joked to the BBC, if Brad thinks I’m doing another four-year cycle as a sprightly forty-year-old, he can think again.

I know I want to connect with people. Through writing - scripts, stories, occasional torrents of consciousness like this - or presenting. Perhaps through public service. I nearly joined the London Fire Brigade in 2018. Sadly for my bank balance, I’m a dreamer: Olympics, television, film. There is rarely abatement in my ambition, despite limited preparation for the “real world”. I trained for years to be good at pushing heavy things - not a hugely transferable skill.

Unless the fire engine breaks down, I guess.

Life after the stopwatch stops, when the metrics for measuring accomplishment blur, gives me pause. Do I have a grounded sense of who Greg is? Is my athletic identity separate from my human one? Do I overthink it?

As you can see: yes, yes I do.

The cost of devotion

I have been devoted to winning an Olympic medal since I stumbled into sprinting as a 21-year-old pub chef. I nearly slipped through the net, unaware of the athleticism beneath the chef whites of a young bloke who didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do but knew that it wasn’t plating endless ham, egg and chips in Brockham village - with respect.

Now my body could take me somewhere, I lived with an intense fear of regret. I couldn’t let the opportunity slip. So I trained. Hard. I gave up alcohol, social events - anything that might derail a late-found dream. Coached by the indomitable Margot Wells and the polar opposite Linford Christie, I ran the 100m in 10.2sec. After injury stalled me, I escaped its grip with a sideways move into bobsleigh - sort of my own McConaissance. But instead of crap romcoms it was injury and instead of Oscar wins it was Olympic participation.

McCackaissance?

Yeah, maybe not.

There is a cost to such devotion. Relationships falter, careers delay, bodies are pushed beyond reason. We bargain the present for a future self, living in desperate hope that our names were on the medals all along.

Don’t feel sorry for us though, these are personal choices. And would I make them again?

A thousand times, yes.

Perspective under a melting roof

Back to that yellow microphone under the thawing roof.

As we arrived for the interview, my misery at finishing seventh was obliterated by an unexpected encounter. Waiting to greet us was the commentator John Hunt. A man who lost family in unimaginably traumatic circumstances, yet here he stood, back at work.

I was inspired by the strength required to endure profound loss and still meet the world with kindness. That meltwater? John offered to step under it so we could stand in the dry. A small act, vast in metaphor. Something only the real world could conjure, namely because I lack the creativity to have come up with it myself.

His example allowed me to get a grip, to mumble something semi-coherent, and to attempt living up to my family’s reminder: the medal didn’t matter, being there did. The memories with team-mates. The experiences that will outlast results.

Worth beyond performance?

Because, as Olympians, what is our worth beyond performance? Beyond medals?

Undeniably, we are a successful bobsleigh crew: World Cup golds, European titles, Britain’s first World Championship medals in nearly a century. None of that comforted me in the post-race drug-testing queue as I watched our Swiss friends receive their deserved bronze medals - medals we held after the first heat, before slipping away for reasons beyond my control.

And that’s a problem.

If a fourth-placed snowboarder or curler asked my advice, would I tell them they were losers?

Of course not. They are extraordinary.

So what does it say about our values when we preach the Olympic ethos - unity, friendship, fair competition - yet judge ourselves most harshly when we don’t bring home a medal?

The welcome home

At Gatwick arrivals, hundreds of schoolchildren screamed for autographs. It was wonderful. They wanted to meet Team GB’s Winter Olympians - perhaps imagining their own futures in sports that once felt distant and obscure.

At home, I washed my kit and folded my race suit, never to be used again. The oscillating feeling returned, a quiet heat behind the eyes, tangled with gratitude and pride.

Learning to be human

So what am I saying, beyond venting sadness at a result I didn’t want?

I think I’m learning to accept my humanity. To accept that it is OK to be disappointed. OK to believe the medal mattered. OK to wallow, briefly, in disillusionment.

Time heals. Not enough has passed - yet.

I know I will reach a point where I can appreciate the career: three Olympics, the peak of my powers at thirty-six despite daunting injury odds.

This week, somewhat hilariously, a man in my local pharmacy recognised me. He didn’t care about medals; he wanted the story. Most people, I’m discovering, are less interested in the metal itself and more in what it took to chase it.

For now though, I’ll enjoy being human for a while. I’ll cook proper meals, rediscover flavour after the austerity of Olympic Village catering, and allow perspective to return when it’s ready.

I’m a three-time Olympian, without a medal. That’s enough.

To my teammates who feel they came up short: you’re enough.

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