Mark Pollock’s efforts to overcome adversity are an example to us all
mnConsider what he has gone through and continues to endure and, as I discovered on meeting him recently, gets on with it with a big smile on his face.
He has had his very difficult days. Pollock recently left the National Rehabilitation Clinic in Dun Laoghaire, where he had spent eight months trying to recover from an accident that nearly killed him, having spent months previously in an English hospital.
He fell in July 2010 from the second story balcony of an apartment in which he was staying during the Henley regatta. He survived the fall, barely, but his back was broken and his skull was fractured. He was lucky to survive the fall and then the various infections to which he nearly succumbed during recovery. He has not recovered the ability to walk and he is now confined to a wheelchair although, thankfully, he has the use of his arms.
In normal circumstances that would allow for independent living but there is a substantial complication. Pollock is blind and has been since 1998. He used to get around in normal day-to-day living with the use of a guide dog, but now he can’t wheel his chair and use the services of a dog and stick at the same time. He needs fulltime help.
As if that isn’t bad enough, Pollock is now unable to do many of the things that kept him going after losing his sight. He had suffered from poor sight since he was four years old, depending mainly on one relatively good eye. He had avoided non-contact sport for fear of injury to that better eye, developing instead as a rower, especially during his time at Trinity College where he studied business and economics. He lost his sight aged 22 when an operation to deal with his detached retina was unsuccessful. Most of his career plans were lost: how was he going to persuade employers to hire a blind man?
Pollock adjusted however and how. He developed his already substantial rowing skills so that he competed in the 2002 Commonwealth Games for Northern Ireland, winning silver and bronze medals as part of the teams in which he was a member. Then he took to involvement in long distance endurance events. He ran six marathons in seven days in the Gobi desert, accompanied by a sighted partner, to raise funds for Sightsavers International.
He competed in the North Pole Arctic Marathon in 2004 and then in January 2009 completed his most extraordinary feat to date. As part of a three-man team called South Pole Flag, he and his team-mates Simon O’Donnell and Inge Solheim completed the Amundsen South Pole Race, making him the first blind man to reach the landmark.
What a trip that was. Pollock, O’Donnell and Solheim travelled 770 kilometres over 22 days, averaging 14 hours journey time each day, while lugging 90 kilogram sleds behind them. His blindness slowed his team down significantly and created extra difficulties for his teammates who, despite their exhaustion, had to carry out the duties in which Pollock could not participate, such as pitching their tent each evening. The conditions were terrible. Temperatures dropped as low as -50C during the expedition and the team members suffered blisters, hunger, extreme exhaustion and in one case, frostbite. But the satisfaction gained by overcoming the pain and exhaustion made it all worthwhile.
On his return Pollock sought new challenges. A couple of weeks before his accident he had completed the Round Ireland Yacht Race as a fully active sailor. Here’s how he had explained his behaviour since he lost his sight: “It was only when I lost my sight completely that I began to look at myself and see who I really was.” Unfortunately he had to go through that process all again last year.
When I interviewed him recently he admitted that he had come near to despair as he realised that he might never walk again. The rehabilitation process has brought him no closer to doing so. But he decided that he could not give up, or feel overly sorry for himself. To have done so would have made a mockery of all of the motivational speaking he had conducted in recent years. He had to be true to himself again and at all times.
On Wednesday, November 16, there will be four special fund-raisers for Pollock, to be held in Cork, Dublin, Galway and Belfast. People are being invited to “Run for Mark in the Dark”. For an entry fee of €25, participants are being asked to run distances between 4km and 10km. Doing so at night time is unusual, but it is apt. The money being raised will be used to help contribute towards Pollock’s living expenses but also for scientific research towards possible cures for the injuries that he received which would allow him to walk again. He has become involved in Project Walk, an American initiative that uses aggressive physiotherapy methods in an effort to re-educate the body to walk. The chances of such success are slim but Pollock has shown himself willing to engage with whatever chances are available to him.
I’m going to run the 10km for Pollock. It will be a challenge of physical endurance for me but a very small one compared to what he has had to go through. Hopefully many other people will join us in doing so.
PLEASE indulge a last word at a week’s remove on what happened during the Presidential election campaign. I have known Mary Davis for over 20 years and was saddened by what happened to her during the campaign, by some of the very unfair criticism that was thrown her way, by people who judged her superficially, on the basis of some very unfair assumptions. This excellent women has been denigrated by many who know little about her, but who jumped to conclusions.
I first met her back in 1988 when I was a young sports journalist, straight out of college, and was sent by a newspaper to cover that year’s Special Olympics at Belfield. She, and friends, co-ordinated a very successful event, and did so for no selfish reason. The games in Ireland developed and I remember the night in the mid-1990s when the conversation developed about bringing the World Games to Ireland. She led the project so successfully that Ireland was selected and the 2003 World Games were organised superbly, an event of which Ireland, and Davis, should always be proud.
It was no surprise that Davis was asked afterwards by many other voluntary groups and by various corporate boards to become involved. She did many of the former for free, the latter for the going rate fees. It is surely no crime for a woman to get involved in corporate bodies; the idea that she was an ‘insider’, interested in personal profit, is ludicrous. As for complaints about her six figure salary: her job with Special Olympics was an international one that took her away from home for weeks at a time, that required constant early morning and late night flights and which took her away from her family. Mary Davis is actually a very modest woman who I’ve never known to be motivated by money. In conversations with her and husband Julian over the years I have known of their genuine commitment to contributing to a better society.
Mistakes were made during her campaign, especially in the use of air-brushed posters that made her look younger than she is. She found it hard to explain some of her corporate involvements and, as the saying goes, when you’re explaining you’re losing. The polls portrayed her as losing ground, which became self-fulfilling, and she didn’t have the type of approach required for a political dogfight.
Why did I not write this before or during the campaign? Well it wouldn’t have made any difference to the outcome of the election, because I don’t believe my endorsement would have counted for much with any voters. I also believe that broadcasters have a duty not to allow personal friendships intrude on what they say publicly, which is why I never say for whom I intend to vote. I try to treat all candidates on the same basis, as fairly as possible. But in these circumstances, after what happened to her, I feel I should say that Mary Davis should be remembered by voters as a decent, honourable woman.
How Ireland Really Went Bust, the new book by Matt Cooper, has been number two in the non-fiction best-sellers list in each of its first two weeks of release.
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