David Davies, of Cardiff, added to the British run on medals with a silver in what was only the third 10km marathon swim of his career, finishing 1.5sec behind Dutchman Maarten van der Weijden after dominating for most of the race on in a rain-swept Shunyi Olympic Rowing lake.
The champion’s story is one that will be filed in the book of Olympic lore in the chapter entitled “Against the odds”: he was just 20 when he was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukaemia. Given only a slim chance of survival, his treatment included chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. Now 27, he is the first Olympic 10km marathon champion in history.
After having set the pace for almost every metre of the way, Davies put in a blistering turn of speed 1km out but he led the leading three, including Thomas Lurz of Germany down the middle of the course on the way down the home stretch and was forced to swerve across the course in the final 400m. Disorientated and drained, he went too wide, took Lurz with him and gave the Dutchman the perfect line. From 100m out, van der Weijden had his two rivals in his sights every time he turned to breath. The argument was over in 1hour 51 minutes 51.6 seconds, with Davies second 1.5sec adrift and Lurz third a further 0.5sec behind.
Davies's silver medal completes a fine performance in the open water event for Great Britain: three out of three. On Wednesday, Keri-Anne Payne and Cassie Patten took silver and bronze in the women’s race.
As he climbed out of the lake on to the pontoon, Davies collapsed and did not have the energy to fend off stretcher bearers who carried him to a nearby ambulance. Davies played down the incident when he said: "I just wanted to lie down and have a sleep, but before I knew it I was on a stretcher."
Once he had recovered, he found himself being dragged away from media interviews by overzealous Chinese marshals. A scuffle broke out, in which Davies’s coach Kevin Renshaw, and Michael Scott, Britain’s performance director, shouted at the marshals to “keep your hands off him – do not touch him.” The female marshal then shouted at Davies, who broke off from being interviewed to say: “Just shut up!” She did no such thing but before she knew it, Davies had splashed water in her face from the drinks bottle he was carrying. Scott joked: “He was just shaking a champagne bottle, nothing more than that.”
The crown went to the brave Dutchman, van der Weijden, who has recovered from cancer, made a comeback and celebrated gold after a monumental tussle with Davies, who led for the vast majority of the race, having taken the same tactic as Payne and Patten the day before, breaking to the front from the start in order to stay out of trouble. Drafting in swimming is estimated by the English Institute of Sport to save 15 per cent on energy: a lot of energy was saved by Davies's rivals in today's race drafting behind him.
Spyridon Giannotis, the Greek challenger whose mother hails from Liverpool, took the lead for 10mins half an hour hour into the race. But for that, the pace was set entirely by Davies, who hung on to the lead before surging about 1km from home. The Welshman opened up a 10m lead but Van der Weijden, Lurz and world champion Vladimir Dyatchin of Russia followed. Over the course of the next 800m, the Russian, who defeated Davies by a hand for the world crown in May, was given a red card for thumping a rival, his Olympic dream over.
The lead three raced on, but were swimming well into the middle of the lake. With 400m to go, all three had to swerve across the course into the path of the home-straight lane lines. That was decisive: Davies took too sharp an angle, Lurz went with him, while Van der Weijden took the inside lane and sprinted with his rivals in view at every breath.
After recovering from being sick and unable to walk for several minutes after the race, Davies said: "That was a once in a lifetime experience. It's going to take a while for it to sink in. At the last bit (of the swim) I didn't know what was going on. I gave everything and now I've got something to show for it. I've got an Olympic medal, it's a once in a lifetime experience. I need to learn to swim straight, I know that sounds silly. I wanted to be in front as much as possible, but I knew the others weren't far behind."
He added: I want to go on to London 2012 and that's still the aim but right now I never want to do that again. I gave it absolutely everything I had. I'm really proud of what I achieved here today."
So was Van Der Weijden, 6ft 7in and beyond a battle of a different kind – for life. At 20 he was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukaemia. Given only a slim chance of survival, his treatment included chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. The Dutchman has spent his nights in Beijing sleeping in a low-oxygen tent that simulates high-altitude conditions and wearing glasses fitted with lights that wake him up fast and early.
Van Weijden, given a medical all-clear more than three years ago, said: "Lance Armstong's story is the one that everyone knows. In his book he talks about fighting the cancer and being desperate to get back on his bike, but I didn't feel like that. I was lying in my hospital bed feeling at peace with which ever way it would go. I was diagnosed in March 2001 and didn't think I would ever swim again. I had been to the world championships in 2000 in Hawaii and finished 9th and 10th. I was 19 years old and it was expected that I'd do good things in open water swimming."
"After my treatment I lost 13kg, I couldn't sit, stand or anything. Two weeks after getting out of hospital my mother persuaded me to go swimming again, to enjoy the feeling of being in the water and start to get back into some sort of shape again. I hadn't even thought about a come back at that stage. I would look at my body in the mirror all the time and wonder if I was getting better or whether the cancer would come back, but in the pool I didn't feel any fear that the cancer would come back. I felt relaxed and happy in the water.'
The Olympic champion said: "By 2003 I was back in the team and finished 15th and 16th at the Barcelona World Championships. Before the decision that the 10k would be in the Olympics my main goal was to be world champion at the 25k. I trained a lot of hours and I didn't think I had the speed for the 5k or the 10k. I decided to do a swim across a Dutch lake, Ijsselmeer. It is 20km wide and I won in a new record time and raised E50,000 for Dutch Cancer. I believe that I didn't fight cancer, I just had the right treatment, so I wanted to raise money to help fund treatments for other people."
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