BLIND AMBITION;

When Mark Pollock lost his sight he thought his life was over. Now he's close to rowing at international level, writes Malachy Clerkin

From Sunday Tribune - 28/04/2002 (1203 words)

Malachy Clerkin

HE'S MUCH the same as all the other rowers. Same build, same swagger, same freakish devotion to a sport that gives him nowhere near as much as he gives it. And yet there are subtle differences. They drag themselves out of bed at silly o'clock in the morning, throw on whatever clothes they see lying near them, race out the door to their boats in no time. He drags himself out of bed at even sillier o'clock, fumbles for the alarm, eventually makes it into his clothes and waits for his lift. By the time he gets into the boat at 7am , he's already been up for over an hour. In a sport where utter devotion to a spartan lifestyle is taken as given, Mark Pollock makes more sacrifices than most.

He's blind, you see. Has been for just over four years now. Lost his sight the day the Good Friday Agreement was signed. A 26-year-old Belfast man, he can't be bothered wondering whether there's some maudlin metaphor in there somewhere.

He always had poor eyesight. Born with two weak retinas, he lost the sight in his left eye when he was five years old. The other retina was always in danger of becoming detached at some stage, so childhood was spent keeping away from rugby, boxing and soccer, and any other activities where a bang in the head might be likely.

So he tried rowing. A bit of sailing too, but rowing mostly. Did it at school and became quite good at it. When the time came for him to choose a college, he liked the look of the Trinity crew. They had an especially strong eight at the time, including a brute of a chap from Belfast called Brendan Smyth. So he found a college course he could put up with (Business and Economics as it turned out) and moved down to Dublin .

He made his way through college comfortably enough, the books never getting in the way of the boats and vice-versa. Come fourth year, he was part of the team that would take on UCD in the Gannon Cup. He'd also managed to get called for a second interview at the London Stock Exchange.

And then in February 1998 his life changed forever. He was circuit training when all of a sudden he felt dizzy and dazzled. His head was light and his vision patchy. He couldn't focus, he could hardly see. He stopped immediately, thinking that maybe he was just pushing himself too hard. The next day he went back to Belfast to see his doctor and a week later he was in London having an operation. By July, the doctors had told him he'd never see again.

"When it happens, that's it. You don't ease into it. Once it happens, it happens and you have to get on with changing your life to suit it. It took me a while to work out a system for myself. Like, I got a talking alarm clock, but then I couldn't find it one night, so it was no use to me. And then there were times before I'd got Larry his guide dog when I'd be walking down the street holding on to a friend's arm and people would be bumping into me. To them it just looked like I was guy walking down the street arm-in-arm with someone.

"If I'd known I was going to go blind eventually, I'd have done things differently. I mean, yes, I'd have done all the blindness things like learn braille and find out about computer software that could help me and so on. But I'd have done other things too. Like, I'd probably have travelled around the world or gone to see things that I'd read about but never got around to going to see. You never think of those things when you have your sight. And although my eyesight was always bad, it never occurred to me that I might one day not have it at all." And so he had to adapt. Little things that no normal-sighted person thinks of suddenly became central to his life. And, in time, he found a way around his blindness, a way to muddle through.

"You come to rely on other people for everything. You can't go out of the house without the help of others. You go walking down the street and you get paranoid that everybody's looking at you.

It's strange even when you're on the bus because you're just relying on other people, people who are just complete strangers, for everything. You have to get someone at the bus stop to tell you when a certain bus is coming. You have to get the bus driver to tell you when a certain stop is coming up. You have to get somebody to hold your arm while you're getting off the bus. It's frustrating at times." He took stock of his life and initially things looked bleak. He didn't think he'd be able to work.

He didn't think he'd be able to travel. He didn't think he'd be able to stay in Dublin or move to London or avoid any scenario that didn't involve going back and living with his parents. He didn't think he'd be able to do anything he'd previously enjoyed.

And then it hit him. He could row. All the other stuff would either be impossible or at best difficult to achieve, but rowing was different. He'd spent years working on his technique, working on his feel, working on the mechanics of his stroke. He'd spent endless hours of training being told to keep his eyes closed by coaches, to work on what he felt and not what he saw. All he had to be able to do was count, to keep rhythm. If he kept his fitness level up and was prepared to keep putting in the insane hours that every other rower was putting in, he could definitely do it.

So he got into it again and got good at it again.

He'd become friendly with Smyth during college and approached him about the possibility of becoming a pair. Smyth wasn't so sure at first, and people told him he was mad to be rowing with a blind man, but eventually he came around. He's never regretted it.

"When we're in the boat together, Mark is just so smooth and reliable that the difference is hardly noticeable, " Smyth says. "Sometimes I forget myself when we're out of the boat and forget to tell him when we're crossing a street or something.

I've just become so used to him doing his job perfectly." The two of them go to Nottingham next weekend for the Commonwealth Games trials and if they get selected as Northern Ireland 's pair, they'll return to the same lake in August with an outside chance of a medal. Pollock is back in Trinity doing his Masters at the minute, juggling the books and the boats once again.

For a man who thought his life had ended when he lost his sight, he's never looked back.