Hemery's determined vision for the future

There is something saintly about David Hemery. But you have to understand that, were he a saint, he would not want to be just any old saint. He would want to be the best saint.

Thirty-three years after the Olympic 400m hurdles victory which made his name, the man who stands as a shorthand for the old athletic virtues of decency, dedication and ability still has the lean frame of an athlete.

"My metabolism, I guess" he says, by way of explanation. Well yes ­ that, and the regular runs over Marlborough Downs which he still has difficulty negotiating without reference to a stopwatch. As far as Hemery is concerned, it seems, old habits don't die hard. They don't die at all. And his habit has always been, not so much to compete, as to strive.

After retiring from athletics in 1972, he turned his attention to the BBC TV Superstars programme, where he won three titles over the course of a decade. Today, as he divides his time between running his motivational company Performance Consultants and fulfilling a time-consuming and unpaid role as president of UK Athletics, the single-mindedness that drove him to the Olympic title at 24 is still evident at 56. In his own words, his current goal is creating "enhanced awareness and responsibility in the person that has to act, whether they are performing on the track or executing a business decision".

Spoken like the academic that Hemery, with degrees from Boston and Oxford University and a Doctorate in Humanistic Education, is.

At the heart of his endeavours is the use of visualisation techniques which are widely practised in modern day sport, but which he was already instinctively adopting during his own running career.

Indeed, when he lost his Olympic title to John Akii-Bua in 1972, he cited his own faulty visualisation technique for the defeat. "I had read somewhere that athletes peak at 26, and as I was 28 I had begun to visualise negatively. I was thinking 'I could lose this. I'd better come to terms with the possibility now'."

Had Hemery indulged in a little more negative visualisation upon taking up his latest role within British athletics, it might have prepared him for some of the hurdles which have loomed alarmingly into view in the last three years.

As another season gets fully into its swing, British athletics is still widely regarded with suspicion abroad following the spate of nandrolone positives that began to emerge ­ well, almost exactly at the point when Hemery took up his honorary post in 1998. For a man who once wrote a book entitled Winning Without Drugs ­ The Natural Approach To Competitive Sport, such cynicism must be hard to take.

"Indeed it is," he said. "But I would rather be on the side of saying 'We have got to do more research'."

The research currently exciting all at UK Athletics ­ whose decisions to clear Doug Walker, Gary Cadogan, Linford Christie and Mark Richardson following nandrolone positives have been swiftly overruled by the International Amateur Athletic Federation ­ is emanating from Germany.

The International Olympic Committee's accredited laboratory in Cologne is providing increasing evidence that food supplements marketed as being legal for athletes to take contain enzymes which can create nandrolone readings far in excess of permitted levels.

Although the full report has yet to be published, Hemery expresses quiet satisfaction at the way the truth of the issue appears to be emerging.

Like all who operate within the orbit of British athletics, he is now sufficiently expert in the pharmacology of banned steroids to pass examin-ations on the subject. It was not always so. Back in 1968, as he prepared for the Mexico Olympics, he heard rumours that the US hurdlers were experimenting with steroids in their training camp at Lake Tahoe. "I had no idea what they were for," Hemery recalled. "I thought they were some kind of stimulant. But in a way they helped me because I went to Mexico thinking 'Damn it, I'll show them that you can't win by cheating'."

A sentiment straight out of Boys' Own Stories ­ but Hemery damn well went and showed them. How he would have behaved had he not been able to damn well show them, is something which creates a rare phenomenon ­ Hemery Nonplussed.

"I'm grateful that I never had to experience that," he said. "I was convinced I could win. The Americans did me a big favour because they sent me into the race with my adrenaline soaring."

He is certain, however, that he would not have been tempted to take a pharmacological short cut to the line under any circumstances. Quite simply, the idea of taking performance-enhancing drugs is anathema to him.

His voice takes on a tinge of regret, though, when he recalls the athlete whom he briefly coached in 1975, David Jenkins, who subsequently went down that route himself as he felt the pressure of being one of the favourites for the 1976 Olympic 400m title.

Paradoxically it proved a dead end for Jenkins, who never ran faster with drugs than he had previously and who ended up being jailed for drug trafficking over the Mexican border. "David was hiding what he was doing when I saw him shortly before the 76 Olympics," Hemery said. "Then he didn't run to his potential. He was an honest bloke who made a big mistake."

Hemery's attitude to drug-taking was formed in an upbringing which saw him raised within the ultra-strict Plymouth Brethren Christian sect for the first 10 years of his life before his father rebelled against the restrictive rules and took his family off to the United States.

For the first 10 years of his life, Hemery never watched television nor listened to the radio. Ten years later he was appearing on both as he emerged from the American collegiate system as a hurdler of huge technical ability and resilience.

After winning the high hurdles at the 1966 Commonwealth Games, he moved up to 400m hurdles. The rest became history.

The sight of the tall, blond Englishman striding upright through the thin air of Mexico to finish 10 metres clear of the field in a world record of 48.12sec, and then ­ once he had caught his rasping breath ­ the sound of his clipped tones analysing his performance with clear-sighted modesty created a frisson of appreciation throughout the British viewing public.

It seemed fitting indeed that his medal should be presented by Lord Burghley, Britain's winner of the event 40 years earlier, who was subsequently depicted in the Oscar-winning Chariots of Fire.

But Hemery did not fit into the Burghley role in one important respect. "At that time, people didn't like to say that they had worked hard to get to where they were. But I was able to say that I had achieved what I had by working my backside off," he said.

At 56, he still works just as unremittingly, even though it is two years since he was forced to acknowledge that he could not longer outsprint the eldest of his two sons, Adrian, who is now a promising 18-year-old decathlete.

Hemery's competitive instincts ­ "I do love to compete" he muses ­ have had to be sated in political matters over the last three years as he has been a key part of the team which successfully secured the World Championships for Britain. Originally, they were due for 2003, but in the wake of Wembley debacle, they are now scheduled for 2005 at the yet-to-be-built venue of Picketts Lock in Lee Valley Park.

The recent departure from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport of Chris Smith, who eventually opposed the idea of a rebuilt Wembley sharing with athletics, has prompted fresh suggestions that there might yet be one more turn of the merry-go-round at Lee Valley's expense.

Hemery is having none of it. "Absolutely not," he says. "Because the government is fully supportive of the new scheme. Can you imagine Britain ever trying for another international event if we don't see through our commitment here?"

The choice of Lee Valley ­ a process with which he was closely involved ­ was governed by numerous factors. But there is no doubting the one which most catches Hemery's imagination. "A disproportionate number of Britain's athletes come from the north London area," he says. "There is so much untapped potential there."

Hemery has another glorious vision in his sights, and he's off and running once again.