Heart of a Champion

by Patrick Lindsay

  Mesmerised by Julie Moss’s titanic struggle, few saw Kathleen McCartney slip past and glide over the finish line. Kathleen herself had no idea she’d passed Julie and only realised she’d won when one of the TV crew told her she’d finished first. Kathleen crossed the line in 11 hours 9 minutes 40 seconds. Twenty-nine seconds later, Julie Moss, still crawling, pulled herself over the line.

  When the footage was shown around the world, millions were moved, thousands were captivated by the emerging sport and a legend was born.

  This is the world that captured the imagination of a promising young amateur runner from Sydney and drove him on. By the time he’d realised his dream and become the first non-American to win the Hawaiian Ironman World Championships, Greg Welch had effectively swum across the Pacific Ocean, ridden to the moon and run more than twice around the world.

  ‘HE WAS ALWAYS A CARING PERSON, but if he made up his mind he wanted to do something, you could never say no. HE HAD TO DO IT TO PROVE A POINT. I don’t know why, but he just had to prove that he could do it. He was like that WITH EVERYTHING HE DID.’

  Chapter 3

  The Endless Summer

  GREGORY JOHN WELCH BOUNCED INTO THE WORLD on a sultry Sydney Sunday morning on 13 December 1964. His father Pat and maternal grandfather Jack Jessup had loaded their golf clubs into the boot of Pat’s car and were heading out the door for an early hit at the local links when they heard Noelene’s warning cry. It was the first of many in a difficult birth, but eventually Pat and Noelene welcomed their second son—a tiny, noisy bundle of writhing energy.

  ‘From that moment, I don’t think Greg ever stayed still,’ Pat recalls. ‘He never used to stop. From the moment he could walk, he’d get up in the morning and he’d just run. And then he’d go to bed at night and bang, he was asleep in 5 seconds flat.’

  Greg was born into an Australia that was feeling the stirrings of deep-rooted change. It was the year Beatlemania exploded Down Under. The Beatles toured nationally and changed a generation of teenage lives. It was also the year of the surfing movie Endless Summer, when surfing went mainstream. ‘Stoked’, ‘tube’ and ‘wipe-out’ entered the language and a world-record 65 000 people watched the world’s first international surfing contest at Manly Beach in Sydney.

  Surfing music was king. The Atlantics’ smash hit ‘Bombora’ played on transistor radios, hi-fi systems or those new-fangled stereos around the country. Along with ‘Wipe Out’ by the Surfaris and the Chantay’s ‘Pipeline’, there was a stream of hits from Jan and Dean, the Beach Boys and Australia’s own Joye Boys. But none could match Little Pattie’s legendary ‘Blond Headed Stompie Wompie Real Gone Surfer Boy’.

  Television in Australia was less than a decade old, and the local talent was beginning to shine through: the boldly satirical Mavis Bramston Show broke new ground and the cop show Homicide paved the way for a stream of home-grown dramas and soaps. Dawn Fraser was named Australian of the Year before being banned for ten years for souveniring a flag from the Emperor’s Palace during the Tokyo Olympics. Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, who was about to turn 70, had just reintroduced conscription. He would soon commit Australian troops to the American intervention in Vietnam.

  It was a time of growing change around the globe too, following the stolid post-war consolidation years of the 1950s. In 1964 the American space probe Ranger 7 sent back the first detailed shots of the surface of the moon. Naval clashes in the Gulf of Tonkin sealed America’s involvement in the fledgling Vietnam War. Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for treason in South Africa. In Swinging London, Mary Quant and Vidal Sassoon led the trends.

  But all that was light years away from Greenacre in Sydney’s western heartland, where Greg spent the first decade of his life. The Welch family lived in Mimosa Road, in a small fibro cottage they shared with Greg’s maternal grandparents. It was a tight squeeze as Greg’s Dad Pat, Mum Noelene, elder (by two and half years) brother Darren and young Greg crammed into the house with Pop and Nan.

  Greg’s world was safe and predictable and, to a young child, almost idyllic. People knew their neighbours by name, barefoot kids roamed freely around the suburb, every family seemed to have a dog and nobody bothered to lock the doors of their houses or cars. Armed with a few beers, some chops and sausages, friends would drop by without warning and stay for a barbie. Neighbours would keep an eye on each other’s kids and regularly include them as blow-ins for dinner.

  To this day, Greg remembers the backyard cricket and footy as well as the ever-present corgis bred by Pat and Noelene, especially a champion Welsh corgi named Suzanne. ‘I went out one day to retrieve a cricket ball. She got out as I opened the gate and she was run over, by [former Australian Test cricketer] Len Pascoe’s father. Ouch! I was in the shitter for a bit!’

  Greg’s beloved Pop, Jack Jessup, a hard-working wharfie, had certain unbreakable house rules. The first wasn’t surprising for a man who was originally a bootmaker. ‘I had to take Pop’s shoes off after he arrived home from work on the wharves in Sydney. Then I had to shine the bloody things. Pop used to love shoving his socks under my nose after he took off his shoes. We had a cupboard which contained the shoe polish and brushes. Actually, we all had proper school uniforms and I quite liked shining shoes. We were also made to sit at the dinner table and use correct manners. But I always got out of washing up. Mum was such a pushover!’

  Another one of Pop’s rules was that the kids always had to eat every skerrick of food on their plate. ‘We always sat down for Sunday lunch. One day we had fish and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t, eat it. My friends were banging on the door and I wasn’t allowed to leave the table. They were going to Greenacre Pool—it was a scorcher of a day—and I couldn’t go. I cried and cried, but in the end I did eat the fish.’

  Noelene remembers Greg following his Pop around like a puppy. ‘He loved doing everything with Pop. My Dad was his idol. Dad had an infectious personality. He was a wonderful storyteller and joker. I see my father in Greg, entirely.’

  Greg remembers Pop always being included in every family adventure. ‘I used to call him the bald eagle—he was as bald as a badger. We got on really well. In many ways he was like a father to me. I had two fathers, almost.’

  Greg’s Dad Pat spent long hours trying to make a success of his printing business at Penshurst. Noelene did the books and worked there when her commitments with the kids allowed. It meant Greg spent lots of time with his grandfather. Jack Jessup was a natural sportsman and, like his sisters, a fine dancer. Only 20 years older than his daughter Noelene, he played a lot of tennis and golf until his wife’s health started to deteriorate. Above all, Jack was a family man, and sport took a back seat to every hour of overtime he could grab as he struggled to pay the bills, especially Nan’s growing medical costs.

  Jack cared tenderly for Nan, whose kidneys were failing. There were no kidney transplants in those days, and she died in 1966, at the age of just 44, when Greg was almost 2 years old. After Nan died, Darren shared one bedroom with Pop while Pat and Noelene had the other, with Greg and Justin, their third son, who was born in mid-1972, in the third.

  Greg inherited much of his bubbling good humour and yarn-spinning skills from his Pop. Jack Jessup was strongly built and of medium height, and he had a strawberry-red nose, although he wasn’t a great drinker. He was always the life of any party. ‘He was one of those constantly funny blokes. He’d tell jokes all day long and he was a great practical joker. He was a great guy. A larrikin. That’s where I got it.’

  Pop’s genes, passed down through Noelene—who played competition tennis, vigoro, squash, netball and softball—also gave Greg the natural advantage of great hand–eye co-ordination. Pat provided the DNA for endurance sports. Pat’s family were outstanding bike riders, competing in major events such as the Sydney to Goulburn Race. Pat was also a fine all-round athlete: he’d been a runner at school, a beach sprint champion with Garie Surf Life Saving Club in Sydney’s Royal National Park and a rugby leagu
e player with the champion St George club.

  Greg was always small for his age, known to one and all as ‘Shorty’ and remembered for his boundless energy and enthusiasm in tackling every task. From the age of 3 he was a ball boy for his older brother Darren’s rugby league team, the Greenacre Grasshoppers. Greg would dart about retrieving the balls kicked over the sideline and bring chuckles from the crowd when he ran back clutching a ball about half the size of his body.

  In those early years, Greg was so small that he was rarely picked to play football. On the positive side, Pat took advantage of Greg’s size to smuggle him in a duffle bag through the turnstiles to watch the senior football for free. He did a lot of watching. ‘I was generally left right out. Not on the wing or in the scrum, right out. I didn’t get many games. I was like a flea apparently. When I did get picked it was always on the wing because I was pretty fast. But the ball would rarely get out to the wing because someone would hog it or it’d get dropped.’

  Greg’s horizons expanded, but only marginally, when he headed off to Greenacre Primary on the corner of Waterloo Road, about a dozen houses away. From the street, the school looked like hundreds of others, but if you journeyed past the stern two-storey main building, you were faced with a vast expanse of grassed playgrounds leading down to Roberts Park, a full-scale cricket and football oval. Greg was in his element. Here he and his mates would roam endlessly, playing Cocky Laura, chasings, cricket or footy—in a constant state of motion. He was an eager and diligent young student, but it was sport that set him apart from the crowd.

  Greg’s teachers at Greenacre Primary opened the doors to his perennially curious mind. He was a prefect and also house sports captain for Wattle house, which he led in their epic battles against Boronia, Blue Gum and Waratah. At home Greg was Justin’s guardian and carer after Noelene went back to work to help the family’s struggling finances. Pat’s printing business hit hard times and things were grim. ‘Mum and Dad both had jobs and I was the babysitter and cook from a pretty young age. I’d go straight from school to pick up Justin at kindy and bring him home. I loved it. Mum would leave out the ingredients for dinner, with a list of instructions, and I’d have it on the table when everyone arrived home.’

  Greg’s first big sporting turning point came in year 5 when, after showing some early promise as a runner, he was entered in the open 800-m (0.5-mile) race, running barefoot against boys who were one and two years his senior. ‘I won it! That started my passion for running. Actually, I think it all came from warming up at footy training. The coach would always give us two laps warm up. I would sprint it while the forwards would walk. I’d finish when they still had a lap to go and the coach would send me off again.’

  It was a big deal for a kid from year 5 to win the open 800 m. It did wonders for Greg’s self-esteem. Suddenly, he was in the spotlight and he loved it. Greg’s other sporting skills were developing too. He’d pick up his Mum’s tennis racquet as soon as Noelene and the other ladies at her comp took a break for tea and cakes. They’d marvel at his non-stop energy as he pounded the ball at the wall or served endlessly into an empty court.

  Very early on, Pop bought Darren and Greg their first surfboards— special Midget Farrelly ‘foamies’ with rubber fins—during a day trip to Ulladulla on the NSW south coast. It was the start of Greg’s lifelong love affair with the beach and the surf. Every second weekend in summer the family would leave the shimmering red roofs of Greenacre and head down to the south coast beaches, usually Currarong, and the kids would surf until they were waterlogged. By the time Greg got his first fibreglass ‘woody’ at about the age of 8, he was already an accomplished rider.

  He was also a budding entrepreneur, holding down two jobs—a chemist delivery run and a paper run, both of which provided an unwitting training base for his future bike riding. The chemist run involved delivering medicines to older people in their homes or in the local retirement and nursing homes. ‘I only ever dropped something once. It was a bottle of medicine that broke. I was walking around. I thought: “That’s it, I’ll get fired.” So I told my boss and he said, “Thanks for being honest, Greg.”’

  He was just as earnest with his paper run. ‘You weren’t allowed to sell papers until after 7 o’clock—you couldn’t blow your whistle, because of the noise thing. I used to get there at 5 to get the best barrow—if it was raining, I’d get the best cover—and to get the best selection of magazines. I was always an early bird. I loved it.’ Greg showed early marketing skills on his paper run when he persuaded his clients to leave their money out so they wouldn’t have to get out of bed. It worked brilliantly for tips. ‘I still remember one vintage Christmas weekend when I pocketed $22 in tips.’ It was almost ten times his normal earnings.

  As his friends began to physically mature, Greg remembers feeling left behind. ‘When I got to about 12 years old, all the boys started shooting up and good old Greg Welch was still “Shorty”. All the boys were hitting puberty and growing up and getting beards and I’m still, you know, 2 foot tall! I remember that vividly.’

  Nevertheless, he was flourishing in a comfortable and safe world that revolved around home, school, the football oval, Noelene’s nearby tennis courts and, only two blocks away, the newsagency and the chemist shop.

  In 1977, Greg’s horizons expanded when he moved on to Punchbowl Boys High School, a 2-km (1.2-mile) bus ride away. His cheeky humour helped ease the usual transition from being ‘someone’ in the top class of primary school to a ‘nobody’ in the lowest class of high school. Greg quickly won a reputation for his sporting feats—especially as a cross-country runner and a squash player—although he also played hockey and tennis for the school and rugby league for the Greenacre Grasshoppers and, of course, there was always the surfing.

  ‘I was good at sport. I was never great because growing up the size I was, I didn’t really see an opportunity for being a great football player or a great tennis player because I wasn’t powerful enough or tall enough to go to the net. On the squash court, I wasn’t terribly orthodox in my style but nobody could beat me easily. They’d have to run me around everywhere because I’d get everything back. It’d always be a difficult match against me.’

  As they grew older, Greg and his mates didn’t let being landlocked in Greenacre prevent them from enjoying one of their greatest passions. On weekends they’d catch the 5 am train out of Punchbowl Station, travel into Central Station, change trains, catch one to Sutherland and then surf at Cronulla Beach for a few hours on their surfboards. When Cronulla started to get crowded, they’d head back to the station and travel down the south coast, checking out the waves as they went, through one station after another. They’d choose whichever beach was pumping. ‘We just explored. We all went out and we surfed and we thought outside the lines.’

  Like many Australian kids, Greg learnt through experience, almost unconsciously, about the ocean. As he developed his skills as a surfer, he learnt where a wave would break and how it would behave. He would study the formations of waves and the characteristics of the different beaches, their rips and their best breaks. Greg knew where to enter and how to ‘duck dive’ or ‘dolphin’ through the beach break, how to harness a rip to travel out behind the breakers and how to position himself to take off for the right wave. He learnt to respect rips but not be frightened of them—how, if you were caught in one, to stay with it, not fight against it, let it take you ‘out the back’, and then swim off to the side and swim back in. Later, in his triathlon career, he would always embrace the ocean swims with great confidence. ‘Even when I wasn’t one of the faster swimmers, in my first couple of years in triathlon, from 1985 through to 1988, I felt comfortable because I knew I was in full control in the ocean.’

  Noelene noticed that Greg started to blossom in the early years of high school. ‘The school had never been into athletics. Greg used to get there early and persuade the kids that they had to run from Punchbowl to Bankstown before school. They ended up winning lots of cross-countri
es and developed some brilliant runners. He was like a Pied Piper.’

  These were hectic but wonderful days for Noelene and Pat, as they ferried the boys from sport to sport. Greg began to reveal his gift for connecting with people. He’d often sit with the older men and yarn away as they watched the games. He was a great listener, and would often surprise his parents with his powers of observation. They also began to notice Greg’s determination, as Pat recalls. ‘He was always a caring person, but if he made up his mind he wanted to do something, you could never say no. He had to do it to prove a point. I don’t know why, but he just had to prove that he could do it. He was like that with everything he did.’

  To Greg, it was all natural. ‘I always enjoyed talking to people, especially the older ones, because they could tell you so much. I only had to be told to do something once. I might have been a bit of a larrikin but I listened to people I respected.’

  ‘IT WAS A HUGE BREAKTHROUGH to get an apprenticeship. It didn’t matter what trade it was. I would have taken anything. I THOUGHT, “THERE’S A FUTURE in an apprenticeship.”’

  Chapter 4

  A New Start

  SOON AFTER HE ENTERED HIGH SCHOOL, Greg’s world changed when Pop remarried. The ensuing accommodation changes saw Noelene, Pat and the three boys move to Ruse, a newly developed suburb of Campbelltown, a satellite city about an hour south-west of Sydney’s CBD. The Welch’s new home was on one of the first streets in the suburb—a new start in a new world. Close by, near the Georges River, was a beautiful wooded area with creeks and rivers. The kids found swimming holes and open spaces to explore on their bikes.