Simon, Where Art Thou?

Having won gold in Sydney and silver in Beijing, Whitfield stands as one of the highest profile athletes to ever grace the sport. We caught up with him to find out his thoughts on preparing for the new season and what it was like to win a second Olympic medal.

You do your career in four year stages. Can you talk a bit about this, the start of the fourth part of your career?

Fourth? Yeah, you’re right, it’s the fourth phase for me. 2001 was a bit of a recharge year, or maybe I didn’t take enough of a break after Sydney. 2005 was another recharge when I put on a bit of weight and turned up to a few races out of shape, but this year I’m probably somewhere in between, I had a fun off season but I didn’t get too carried away.

You kept training on after the Olympic Games last year. Was that one of the lessons you learned from 2005, that as you get older the body doesn’t like that long of a break?

No no, for me I just love it. I love training, I love racing. In 2005 I took a break because I wasn’t loving it anymore but this year I love being out with the guys and I feel really blessed being able to do what I do.

We haven’t had a chance to see you since the Olympics, take us back to that incredible day last summer.

I’ve had to run it through in my mind a couple of times, just really from the regret of that sprint finish [where Whitfield lost to Germany’s Jan Frodeno]. But yeah, what a spectacular venue, the Games were amazing and the Canadian support has just been incredible. It hit me later just what we had accomplished, and I’m very proud of that. Everyone wanted a medal, everyone wanted to be there, and coach Joel [Filliol] and the team got us there and I’m really proud.

Talk a little bit about making the Olympic plans a team concept. A lot of countries had talked about it, but it was a small Canadian contingent that got the job done.

Well New Zealand did it too, and Germany to an extent. Great Britain are such a great team they didn’t need to do it as they had three true medal contenders. But we had to do it, I felt strongly about that, but more importantly the high performance committee felt strongly about that. It will probably go back to more individual stuff now, but that was what we did. I’m not sure if it impacted too much on the day, but in the build up there was a great camaraderie and when we were riding we felt like we were on a mission.

With this now being a more consistent effort across a world championship series, is that something that plays to your advantage? Only you and Javier Gomez have won over ten World Cup races in the current field of athletes.

Yeah, we’ll see. I haven’t spent too much time thinking about it. I’ve really spent my time focussed on just getting in shape and enjoying training. I have to talk myself out of being old. When [Alistair] Brownlee is running 29 minutes in local 10km races, and I’m thinking “man, I’m on a bit,” but we’ll see. I’ll tackle that when it comes. It is going to take a consistent performance across the races and I’m not sure whether that suits me this year.

Peter Robertson [three time world champion] has said that somewhere in between you and him there must some sort of magic formula for winning both a world championships and an Olympic Games. One of the only things missing from your trophy case is a world championship and if you’re to get one you’re going to have to do it in a different way this year.

It’s a difficult thing to get. It’s not just something you can pick off the shelf. I’ve been top ten on six occasions. Fourth, fifth, sixth twice and then a guy like Robbo [Pete Robertson] rocks up and takes them. Bevan [Docherty] has a gold from worlds and a silver and bronze from Olympics, and so that’s a pretty spectacular résumé, and then Robbo has his three world champs golds.

You have gone from being a single guy with no responsibility to a married father with lots of commitments. How do you balance that because you’re leading a much more complicated life?

Yeah, it’s more complicated. For instance this month I’m travelling to Europe with my family. I’m going to be staying with Javier [Gomez], with Pip my daughter and my wife, and then in the summer I’ve got to figure out how I can get back to Europe for races without spending more than a week away from home. It’s a difficult situation, that’s for sure, and my email inbox explodes over and over again, and I feel like throwing my computer out of the window and starting all over again. But you figure it out, you balance it, and there are many people juggling much harder situations than me. If they can do it, then I can do it.