Ready to DELIVER
Olympic hammer thrower Chris Bennett became a Tesco driver after losing his funding and struggling with self-doubt... now he’s back on track and heading to the Commonwealth Games
IT is oddly appropriate, if slightly unusual, that it was when working the night shift as a delivery driver for Tesco that Chris Bennett learned how to bring home the bacon in his day job.
If there is a lightness to this observation then it’s reflected in the demeanour of Bennett, who is sunshine itself on a bright day in Glasgow’s West End. It has not always been so for the elite hammer thrower.
Bennett is an Olympian, a competitor in two Commonwealth Games and, in an unwitting tribute to his favourite team, he heads to Birmingham for his third with hope in his heart. But this Celtic fanatic has also overcome anxiety, depression and the loss of those close to him.
He broke down in tears after his performances in Glasgow 2014 and Gold Coast 2018. He has few golden memories of Rio 2016. The loss in 2013 of his father and then his coach, Alan Bertram, cast a pall that has been hard to shake off.
Yet Bennett, at 32, is now visibly relaxed. He accepts the past without self-recrimination. ‘I have fallen back in love with the sport,’ he says.
The disillusionment and relentless self-criticism has been banished. ‘I was always hard on myself,’ he admits.
For the committed football supporter, Hampden Park 2014 was a sore trial.
‘Leading into Glasgow (Commonwealth Games), I wanted to do well for people who should have been there but were not,’ he adds. ‘It went the wrong way.
‘I went out in qualifying with the idea of being chilled and just to enjoy the experience. They forgot to measure my first throw, so I was faffing about like a headless chicken. I made the final, so I decided to change my attitude and come out bouncing off the walls. I was in the best shape of my life and I finished stone last.’
Rio was a struggle and the Gold Coast was similarly underwhelming, culminating in tears at Brisbane airport.
So what has changed? How has the heavy psychological weight been lifted?
‘It’s a cliche but it’s simple,’ he says. ‘I learned that there is more to life than athletics.’
This epiphany came during lockdown. Stripped of central funding, he had to find work.
‘I had no personal complaint about that,’ he continues. He had admitted openly he had ‘bottled’ finals and did not deserve financial support. Bennett knows the funding system is deeply flawed but accepted the reality that he was not top of the list.
His revenue came from working with the Great Run company, speaking in schools and being a courier on Celtic European trips where he would escort fellow fans.
But lockdown stopped all of this. ‘I took a delivery job at Tesco,’ he says. ‘The woman interviewing me had a funny look in her eye when I said I was a full-time athlete but she later told me she had heard me on the radio and finally accepted she had an Olympian delivering the messages.’
The desire to compete slowly came back. The appetite for training returned. ‘I lost 25 kilos,’ he says. ‘I was out throwing in fields. I worked full-time at first, then I cut it to nights. I would train during the day and drive at night.’
Customers could be surprised. ‘I went to the door of one guy who told me that I was a guy who should be in sport. I told him about the day job. When I returned with his next lot of messages, he had Googled me and knew more about me than I knew about myself.’
Bennett’s focus and commitment returned. He soared in the world rankings from 90th to a spot in the 20s. A place in the Tokyo Olympics was just beyond his grasp but the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham has been reached.
‘It has been a lot of work but I feel it has been worth it,’ he says. He sometimes trains three times a day, always at least twice. ‘There will be two throwing sessions at Linwood and a lifting session, too,’ he says.
The weight of underachievement has been banished. It has been replaced by other, more manageable burdens. ‘I do three reps of 290 kilos,’ he says of his lifting regime. This is 46 stone in ‘old money’. His carefree, happy acceptance of this measurement is marked by a smile.
THE growl that greets visitors to the home he shares with his mother in Carntyne, in the east of the city, comes from Bruno, a 57-kilo cross Staffordshire/American pit bull. ‘He is the best sort of doorbell,’ says Bennett (right). ‘I don’t quite know what the drug testers make of him.’
He is ‘being tested a lot’ now as a major competition looms but sees this as a bonus. ‘It means I am on the verge of a big event,’ he says. This reality would once have been accompanied by nervous apprehension. He prefers on a sunny Glasgow afternoon to reflect soberly on the past and testify how trips to South Africa, if only in his mind, keep him on the front foot.
Originally from Blairdardie in the foothills of Drumchapel, Bennett was hardly brought up in the crucible of hammer throwing, at least as an Olympic sport.
‘My maw is the pushiest person I’ve ever met,’ he says. ‘She didn’t want me sitting in the house all day. I played football but wasn’t good at it. I went to rugby because of my size but I felt I didn’t fit in. So I was sent down to Scotstoun for the athletics.’
He hated running but, aged 12, he was already powerful. ‘I was good at the shot put and the discus but then I tried the hammer and I absolutely loved it.
‘I try to make it as simple as possible,’ he says about his technique. ‘You don’t provide a running commentary when you are bending down to tie your shoe laces, so you shouldn’t talk yourself through every move in the throw.’
He has, though, a tried and practised method but it is his mental approach that has evolved over the years.
‘When I go to schools to talk, I don’t give lectures,’ he reveals. ‘I speak for about five minutes and ask the kids what they want to talk about. Many want to talk about football but mentalhealth issues are huge now. How do you cope? How do you deal with nerves?’
These are daily questions for Bennett outside the classroom but he is finding the answers. ‘I have worked with a sports psychologist and a clinical psychologist,’ he says. ‘I
have the tools to cope.’ He points out that he once wanted to be successful for other people but now focuses not on results but the process.
He smiles, before adding: ‘I know this sounds very cliched, even daft, but it works for me. I’ll give you an example. I now do a mental warmup as well as a physical warm-up before I throw.’
He concentrates on breathing, scans his body to release tension and travels to his happy place. ‘It’s in South Africa actually,’ he says. ‘It’s near Stellenbosch. I went on a training camp there and never forgot it. There is a small coastal town near Stellenbosch which was beautiful and I was happy by the sea. I now hear the waves and it relaxes me.’
But he knows stress awaits. It is the travelling companion of expectation. ‘I believe I have addressed that,’ he says. ‘I would like to do a personal best. I want to be the best I can be and if that gets me a medal, then so be it.
‘I used to put so much pressure on myself. I forgot why I was doing this. I had to go back to the boy at Scotstoun who first picked up a hammer. I had to look at why I still do this 20 years on. I love it and it gives me a sense of purpose.’
He acknowledges the core function of sport. ‘I am a better person for being in athletics,’ says the proud member of Shettleston AC. ‘People in athletics like me and I like them.’
Does he ever lose that focus and allow his eyes to stray beyond the horizon of Birmingham next month?
‘Yes, I do,’ he replies. ‘I’m training very well. This has not been reflected in competition but I have to be confident that it will be. I have never lost faith in my ability. I have questioned it but my faith remains, I trust what I am doing.
‘It takes just one good throw at Birmingham to change everything.’
That would bring Paris 2024 into view. He nods in realisation of that possibility. The pain of Glasgow, Gold Coast and Rio has largely dissolved. The hammer thrower’s hopes were once, in the words of his team’s anthem, tossed and blown.
But hope survives, Birmingham awaits, with occasional visits to the South African seaside.
I had to look at why I do this 20 years on. It gives me a sense of purpose. I’m a better person for being in athletics. People there like me and I like them