OLYMPICS - Mahe lays out goals for others to follow

WHEN it comes to ticker, Mahe Drysdale tips the scales. Anyone who saw him struggling to stand, after battling illness to win bronze in the Olympic singles rowing final, would quickly have formed the same impression.
But Drysdale doesn't believe he's that special. He reckons that anyone can do what he's done in if they have the determination to follow the goals they set.
"I think ultimately for success - not just in sport but in any part of life from my perspective - you've got to have goals otherwise you've got no guidance or nothing to go after," he told Kamo High School students last week.
Motivation certainly has something to do with it as well.
An "overweight couch potato," he received his rowing mission via satellite in 2000, watching Rob Waddell win gold at the Sydney Olympics.
A casual rower at school, he set his first goal right there and then - to make the New Zealand elite programme. Within three months of starting training, he made the Kiwi elite rowing squad and the rest is history.
Goals are more achievable than they often seem he said, and can be set over any period - from daily to four-yearly.
"Saying that I want to go 10 seconds faster in a race seems impossible, but if you think about it and then break it down, then over a year it's just a fraction of a second faster for every training session," Drysdale said.
Team sport is more complicated, but that doesn't mean that shared goals aren't also achievable.
"When I was rowing in the four, I was setting myself personal goals, but also sitting down with the whole team to have a discussion about what the crew's goals were and how to achieve them," he said.
Having a reliable person to share those goals with, so they can check your progress, is also pretty important.
"Because it's pretty easy to fool yourself you're achieving your goals, or that not reaching them doesn't matter and that's the end of it."
The three-times world rowing singles champion was at Kamo High School with his partner - fellow Olympic rowing finalist in the women's double Juliette Haigh - last Friday to talk to groups of the school's students. The pair have been on vacation since the Olympics, doing things that "normal" people do, like including a visit to his auntie Denise Donald - which brought him to Whangarei in the first place.
"It's really nice being able to relax and do a few different things and live a fairly normal life - I haven't had a break like this since I started rowing in 2001," he said.
The 29-year-old was born in Melbourne, but grew up in Tauranga before finally settling in the home of New Zealand rowers, Cambridge, to be near Lake Karapiro.
His break in Kamo is helping him set his next goals.
"Everything is still up in the air at the moment, but I'm leaning toward the idea of going back [to the Olympics] in 2012 - I feel I've still got some unfinished business to settle," he said.
And you would think if he sets his mind to it, there would be few doubts about his ability to achieve it.