Dawkins adjusts to Olympic postponement
Postponing the Tokyo Oympics has thrown the future into sharp focus for Southland’s most decorated athlete.
Track cyclist Eddie Dawkins, a three-time world champion, Olympic silver medalist and multiple Commonwealth Games medalist, had unfinished business in Tokyo after the New Zealand men’s team sprinters had to settle for second in Rio four years ago.
“It’s a shame but it had to happen and I’m surprised it took the IOC that long to postpone it with everything going on and the terrible consequences for the public around the world,” Dawkins said of the postponement, which at this stage will see the Tokyo Games move to next winter.
“I know there’s a huge financial cost, but competitions like the NBA shut down almost overnight and they have some of the highest paid athletes in the world. I’m glad the IOC have come to the party now.”
Dawkins has accepted that his year will now look very different to what he had thought, a change which would seemed barely believable when he and team mates Ethan Mitchell and Sam Webster discussed it at the world championships in Berlin at the end of February.
“We had a conversation about the possibility of it happening at the world champs and it seemed like the media wasn’t really portraying the severity of it at the time, so the conversation was pretty light,” Dawkins recalled.
Photo: Southland’s Eddie Dawkins, left, in action against his New Zealand team sprint teammate Ethan Mitchell. Pic: Dianne Manson
“The further the world went down the rabbit hole, the more likely it looked like (the Olympics) wasn’t going to happen this year. You are preparing yourself for one particular thing, to happen at a particular time and the goalposts get shifted. It’s kind of like offseason training again, which is kind of bizarre when we had just come off the world champs and were getting ready for the biggest competition in cycling.”
With no access to Cambridge’s Avanitdrome and wife Alysha’s gym business also closed, the Dawkins’ are holed up at home like most other New Zealanders.
However, thanks to the Dawkins Performance coaching business he has been developing over the past couple of years, he’s actually pretty well placed to ride out the lockdown.
His garage doubles as a well-appointed gym, and relationships with Smart Bikes and Velo Bikes mean he has access to stationary trainers and watt bikes.
It’s from that garage Dawkins oversees the development of a range of sprinting hopefuls, aged from their late teens all the way up to their 60s.
“A couple of years ago I decided I wanted to start giving a bit back, rather than just being an athlete, give back to the next generation or anyone wanting to go down a path of trying to become a sprinter,” he said.
“It’s great. I like the development side of it, I like seeing the athletes progressing, I like coming up with new ways of training with them and seeing what suits different types of individuals. Everyone can do squats and starts and things like that, but it’s getting the combination right for each individual to get the best out of them.”
Dawkins has drawn on his own development, and his time studying at the Southern Institute of Technology and as a graduate of the Academy Southland programme, to help craft a training philosophy for his athletes which doesn’t rely on having access to a velodrome.
“Outside of national programmes, track time is really limited in terms of time, or it’s expensive. A lot of these athletes who I’ve helped over the last little bit either have families or fulltime jobs, so they can’t be spending three hours travelling to and from a velodrome.
“I like the idea of it, helping to develop the culture of sprinting in New Zealand and giving people an opportunity. It also gives me a better understanding of the cause and effect of a gym session or training plan on different athletes. Down the line I’d love to pass this on at a national or regional level, but at the moment there’s still unfinished business.”
Whether Dawkins will get the chance to settle that unfinished business is anyone’s guess. He has his doubts that the world will have settled in time for Tokyo to go ahead in 12 months’ time.
At 30 years of age, Dawkins also has an eye on the clock.
“When you’re younger all you want to do is ride your bike and go around the world and race as hard as you can. When you’ve been in the programme for nearly 15 years and you’ve done virtually everything you can do, it’s about seeing what the next big challenge is going to be in your life,” he said.
“Cycling, as with most elite sport, it’s a selfish lifestyle and when you are young and single that’s fine, you just pack your bags and leave for three months, but when you have people who depend on you it’s harder. It’s about Alysha and I talking about what we want from each other and where we go to from there.”
