Monners Goes For Gold
17 October 1997About half way through the world championship marathon in Athens, Steve Moneghetti had fallen off the pace. In the distance was the small pack of runners who would contend for the medals and, while he felt strong despite the heat, Moneghetti knew if he tried to bridge the gap he risked burning up valuable energy well before the final kilometres.
And so, at 34, having run in three Olympics and with a full set of Commonwealth Games medals on his mantlepiece, suddenly Moneghetti faced the most difficult decision of his career - one that meant contending with a mental barrier as well as the usual physical privations. Before Athens, Moneghetti and his coach, Chris Wardlaw, had become concerned he had finished his past few races too well. Rather than staying on the pace and toughing it out to the end, he had fallen back and then passed runners in the final stages. At Atlanta, he surged from 12th to eighth over the final few kilometres and walked from the track on firm legs.
Moneghetti believes that going through the pain barrier so often in past races had made him hesitant to run as hard as he could. Now, having fallen just off the pace, he invoked the pre-race plan to run this 42km torture test as if it were a mere 38km race. That meant taking a risk. Getting back to the pack, a move he now calls "the bronze medal decision".
"That was a great moment for me, when I got up to the lead pack," he says. "Three of them turned around to see someone had caught up, and when they saw it was me they looked as if to say "Where the hell did you come from, we thought we had dropped you'. That was really gratifying." It was a moment Moneghetti will no doubt recall often when he reminisces about the third placing he rates, ahead of his Commonwealth gold medal and city race victories, as his greatest achievement. It is also one that will have a big say in his future.
While it was assumed the opportunity for a home farewell in Sydney would have kept Moneghetti running for the next three years, he says that, before Athens, there was no guarantee he would keep going. Now, on at least three important levels, he is already beginning to plan for Sydney with absolute assurance. The first, and most important for an athlete who takes such pride in his ability to contend rather than to merely compete, is that he will be capable of winning a medal in 2000. Of that, Wardlaw has no doubts. "Athens was his greatest race ever," says the coach. "He would probably say Berlin was great and Tokyo was great, but I would argue that it was his best run competitively because the conditions were tough and it was a world championship field. It was significantly better than the Commonwealth Games [1994 victory]."
Despite the years of gruelling preparation, Moneghetti's body shows little sign of wear and tear, apart from a pair of slightly misshapen feet and buckled toes.
At the start of this year an ankle injury kept him off the track for longer than expected and he wondered if age had taken hold.
"I have to be more conscious of massage and if I get a niggle, get on to it very quickly," he says. "But I look like running 8,000km this year, which is about what I expected with the injury and, if anything, I think I'm probably training harder than before." Moneghetti says training in Ballarat with 24-year-old Lee Troop, whom he coaches, has helped increase his workload. As for the ageless physique, he believes that has as much to with how he rests his body after races as how he has prepared.
Wardlaw is not worried that age will suddenly catch Moneghetti before Sydney, as it eventually does with every runner. "I can see no reason why he can't be at his best in Sydney," he says. "One reason is that he is injury free virtually, and like Deek, he's got longevity and there doesn't seem to be any reason why he should fall over the hill."
The second benefit of Athens is that it has both satisfied Moneghetti's hunger to achieve and renewed his motivation to do even better.
Publicly, he had always said he would not be disappointed if he retired without an Olympic or world championship medal but, having achieved the second goal, he now admits there would have been a void.
The final area in which Athens has helped Moneghetti is financial. As long as he continues to be seen as a top-flight competitor, rather than merely a veteran battler, he will find it easier to maintain his core endorsements with a select few sponsors, rather than having to chase dollars. That means his commitments are limited. "I like to have something to keep me occupied between 10am and 3pm, but at the moment I can be virtually a full-time runner and everything else can be secondary. I can say no to people if I want to."
Almost as soon as he had celebrated his Athens achievement, Moneghetti and Wardlaw began to plan for the future. While that has usually been a year-by-year process, Sydney 2000 now looms large. First, Moneghetti eliminated next year's Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur from his plans, partly because the preparation needed for another hot-weather marathon - time spent training in a heat chamber, and training camps in Townsville - are too demanding and partly because he feels he has nothing to prove.
"I don't want to sound like I've done it all, but at Commonwealth level I have a gold, a silver and a bronze. I've almost got nothing to gain. If I win, everyone says "Well, he should', if I don't everyone will say "It's all over, he's going down hill again'." The most likely outcome is that Moneghetti will run two marathons in 1998, one in the northern spring and one near the end of the year.
Then there would probably be another marathon before the 1999 world championships in Seville and then, Wardlaw says, perhaps nothing until Sydney, so he goes into the Olympics "real hungry".
Sydney provides Moneghetti with a huge opportunity. For the first time, his competitors will come to his time zone and prepare for his climate, an advantage Wardlaw says can not be overestimated. Then there is the thought of running along streets lined with Australians cheering him on.
