Poised for multiple take-off

The lottery is pouring money into British sport but Dean Macey still trains on Canvey Island, still does his sessions behind the sports centre where he used to work, still gets buffeted by the wind off the estuary, a wind so brisk that he cannot try pole vaulting for fear of landing on the concrete, not the mat.

On those days it is off to the indoor space at Crystal Palace but he always comes home to Canvey Island, where he was born. The family comes from Canning Town, near Rathbone Street market, where Frank Bruno used to train. They would tell you about it if you stopped in for tea. The roots are important; more, they are vital.

The family is everything; Macey's mum Pat is never happier than when they are all within reach. When he won silver at the world championships in Seville last year, Macey was still sharing a room with his brother Adam, a room not much bigger than a shot circle. When he did leave home in April, to live with his girlfriend, Macey moved only a few minutes away.

It may be that the roots, so deep and dependable, have given Macey his resilience, have shouldered him back into the fray when retirement was such a palpable and obvious option. For the injuries have kept coming.

Macey is almost glib about it, describing his pattern of existence as "six months competing, two months getting cut open and the rest getting fit again".

The latest injury occurred at the moment of his brightest triumph. "I basically knackered my elbow in the javelin at Seville," he said. "I ruptured it, so they had to get in there and re-create it. They rebuilt ligaments and muscles and put in reinforcing. A new elbow basically. I've now got titanium in my foot and in my elbow."

Macey can afford to sound philosophical, for the recovery has been fairly straightforward and complete, but it has not always been like that.

His mother tells of the moment two years ago, when he was told he needed a second operation on his left foot.

"He went mental. The mobile phone hit the wall and he broke the door," she recalls. Doctors grafted bone from the hip and put in the first titanium plate. In September 1998 Macey went on holiday on crutches and came back without them.

At that point his career was on hold. Memories are short in sport, even shorter than in politics. Macey had been a decent footballer, good enough to train with Southend, but, seeing only a big lad, they suggested he become a defender.

Southend's loss was the decathlon's gain. The talent was substantial but the desire to extend himself was perhaps too unbridled. He won silver in the world junior championships in 1996 in Sydney but the injuries were only a competition away.

Between 1996 and now Macey has completed only two decathlons. But it has not been all as a result of injuries.

Last summer he was in Gothenburg for the European under-23 championships. Macey should have been the favourite for the decathlon but fell in the hurdles. "I was lying there on my back, looking up at the sky and the only thing I could think about was that my parents had paid all that money to come and watch me win the championship and I hadn't done it," he said.

So, on Wednesday, when he lines up for the 100m, the first event of the decathlon, the stands will have around 80,000 people watching, but not one will be a Macey from Canvey Island.

Macey got his career back on track courtesy of Eddie Kulukundis, who has promoted a regular decathlon at Arles in southern France. Macey went there in the spring of last year, without having completed a full decathlon since October 1996, more than 2 years earlier, and scored more than 8,300 points.

He made the sensible decision to focus on the European under-23 championships and was in a winning position when he tumbled out of the hurdles, the first event on the second day. There was only one more available competition that summer, so he went to the world championships discounted in almost everyone's book.

Seville changed everything. Macey was not just a local hero but a national one and was completely at ease with the attention. Decathletes, though, are not fixtures on centre stage. Macey is excellent at 10 events but not brilliant at any one. Injuries notwithstanding, Macey and Denise Lewis will always be like the possums in Sydney: they are about; they are just not seen.

Macey, though, has more to do than Lewis had. There was no Tomas Dvorak in the women's event. Eunice Barber, who came the closest, did not have the mind-set for this Olympics.In addition, there have been fewer marks this summer by which to judge Macey. He will say he has made his targets in training but he will fool no one, least of all himself.

From those measured marks and timed runs, the 22-year-old knows what he can do. "If everything goes all right, I will score 8,700 and, if I score 8,700, I will win a medal," he said, placing his ambition short of the perfect goal.

"Winning it would be unrealistic for me," he added, knowing that twice this summer the Czech Dvorak has comfortably exceeded that points total.

Macey's evaluation, though, could be wrong. "I'm not a text-book Olympian. I do what I feel the minute I feel like doing it. I stand by that," he said. If for one moment during the two days Macey believes his strategy is obsolete, it will be cast to the wind. If he sees the possibility of a higher goal, he will snatch it.

If Dvorak allows him a single moment in which the imagination can take wing, it will.

When there should have been nothing in sight in Seville, Macey won a medal. There is a medal in sight in Sydney.