The iron couple

BY PETER GIBBS

Competing in some of the world's toughest sporting challenges is a way of life and a way of living for Nelson couple Richard and Elina Ussher.

If you were casting a movie about a glamour couple in the upper reaches of world adventure racing and multisport, you couldn't go past Richard and Elina Ussher.

Elina is petite and attractive with a flashing diamond in her front tooth. Richard is well-built and looks slightly roguish, with what could be designer stubble on his face.

But this is not a fantasy world. The Usshers are serious professional athletes who train hard 20-30 hours a week and meticulously plan their training and their racing.

Between them they've won just about every important adventure race in the world over the last decade. They are now in a race against time to make the most of their prime athletic years, knowing that they can't stay at the top of their game forever. With each of them now 33 they give themselves between two and four years more on the professional circuit. That's not long to establish a financial and employment base for a lifetime and there's also the question of having a family.

Richard has been an athlete for nearly half his life. He grew up in Wellington and moved to Wanaka at the age of 17 to take up skiing.

"I was pretty terrible, but I spent the next three years skiing every day here, in Europe or in Canada."

He then qualified for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, finishing 25th out of about 40.

"I was disappointed in the result, even though in hindsight it was probably about as good as I could have hoped for really. You always want to do better."

He stuck with the sport for another season, "but it was just financially too hard – there was no support in New Zealand, just constantly money going out and none coming in". He gave up skiing and took on various "odd jobs" while also starting to take an interest in multisport.

"I saw it on TV and didn't think Steve (Gurney) looked that fast. Gradually the sport seemed to take more and more of my time and the results got better and better."

He joined up with Nelson-based multisport athlete Nathan Fa'avae in 2003 and spent two years racing with him, including winning the world adventure racing championship in Norway and Sweden in 2006. On Fa'avae's retirement, Ussher joined Nike USA and continued adventure racing all around the world.

The couple met in 2005, while racing in South Africa.

Finland-born Elina was by then was a well established adventure racer in her own right, competing for the Nokia team.

"My background was cross-country skiing. I was skiing there pretty much at national level, which is really high in Finland. I couldn't make the national team, but I was just below that level. In 2000 we had the world champs there and seven of the women's team got fired in a doping scandal, many of them my friends."

Disillusioned, Elina sought an alternative.

"At the same time there was some adventure racing going on in my home town and I was racing there with some of my friends.

"Team Nokia were racing as well and they were looking for a female to join their team. They called me and asked if I wanted to race in their team in Mexico.

"That was my start – I was racing with those guys for four or five years around the world

"We won world champs in Switzerland, we won Mild Seven [Borneo]. We did really well, we were one of the best teams in the world.

After four years, travelling in the same group, tensions arose. Nokia decided to focus on snowboarding and Elina drifted, still racing, but without a regular team.

"For a couple of years I was racing with anyone who wanted to race with me – American teams, Spanish teams whatever. I was with an American team in South Africa and that's where I met Richard. And that was kind of my new start.

"A couple of months later, in October 2005, I moved to New Zealand."

In the new country came a new quest: "I wanted to do Coast to Coast. Richard told me I shouldn't because I didn't know the course. I didn't know how to paddle those kayaks, because in adventure racing you usually paddle wide plastic boats. I still wanted to do it. I was, `yeah, right, I'm going to do it' and I did it."

In 2006, Elina was second in the one-day event behind Emily Miazga. Now she's done Coast to Coast four times and that first race remains her best result.

You sense it's unfinished business, when asking how she copes with not being first.

"I want to win. I don't mean just that race, I mean always. I'm learning. Some years ago I was really angry if I didn't win, but in sport you cannot win always."

If the Coast to Coast is a small obsession, it's not the main focus and there seems to be a sense that both of them are ready to move on, as Richard already has after winning the race in 2005, 2006 and 2008.

From the time they got together, the focus has been on deciding the best plan to move their careers forward.

One of their first targets together was the Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge in 2007. They had no sponsor, but Elina was insistent that this was a career move that wouldn't wait.

"I said we just have to go there."

"We made it to Abu Dhabi on our credit cards, which would have pretty much broken the camel's back if we hadn't won," says Richard.

"In Abu Dhabi it [the prize money] is $US40,000. That year I think we probably made about $2500 each after expenses – it was a huge investment to go and do."

The gamble paid off. Although not many people get to watch the race from the sidelines, it has a worldwide television audience of 350 million. A win at Abu Dhabi can set up sponsorship and race opportunities for years ahead.

Incredibly, the Usshers have now won the race three times in a row. They're in a position to pick and choose.

"The first thing we do is to go through the calendar. We pretty much look at which races have good money and then we just make a list and try to slot them into the calendar", Richard says.

"Some of them get counted out because they're in the too-hard basket. Others, they might be good money, but it might be an expedition race, which takes a lot longer to recover from rather than a stage race, so we might take that one off. We're not racing for million-dollar purses or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, so we've got to race quite regularly to make it worthwhile – you can't always put all your eggs in one basket.

Elina says there are three adventure races they'll be going to do this year.

"We'll race twice in China, then in Abu Dhabi again, and then Richard is doing some Ironman races."

Ironman is something quite different from adventure racing. The crossover is not easy or obvious.

Richard has already competed in four races over the distance – two in Ironman New Zealand (March 2008 and 2009), then his breakthrough event in Roth, Germany, where he established the fastest time ever by a New Zealander, 10 minutes quicker than multiple Taupo Ironman winner Cameron Brown has ever done.

His most recent success – his first win over the distance, was in Wanaka, on January 16 this year, when he set a race record with a convincing performance.

The question remained as to why would he move out of his comfort zone in adventure racing to tackle such a hugely competitive discipline as Ironman racing?

"It's starting to become more lucrative, definitely. There's a little bit more money at the sharp end of the field than in multisport racing. It's definitely equivalent to a quarter share in a big adventure race, maybe a little bit more sometimes, but it definitely seems to have been quite attractive from a sponsorship point of view – it's just that much more international and that much more well known.

Prize money is important to the Ussher family finances, but so, increasingly, is sponsorship.

Richard says the balance of their income from racing and from sponsorship is changing: "It would be very close to 50-50, but until this year we were making a lot more money from prize money than what we were from sponsors".

"Subway is our major sponsor and that pretty much covers our expenses in New Zealand. It covers us going to all the races, our food, running our business essentially – so we can pay our mortgage. If we were just to stay in New Zealand that would be fine."

Elina says they still have to win races.

One problem, says Richard, is that a lot of their racing is outside of the country.

"We're really fortunate that we've just picked up Planet X, a UK bike company. They're doing all of our bikes now." ."

The Usshers are confident they will be able to make a living from sport when their racing days are done.

"There are some good opportunities already," Elina says.

Richard says that through Planet X they are designing a range of clothing and helping with the bike designs: "We can see opportunities starting to expand. There's things built into the contract that are not only money, but shares and things like that."

Athletes vary in terms of longevity in their field, but the longest Richard sees himself racing is probably another four years. "Realistically if a good opportunity came up two years down the track I'd probably be almost ready. I don't think I'd ever walk away from competing completely. I'd probably just target one or two races a year, or just do races socially, but there'll definitely be a time when there's new challenges to be had."

For all the talk about career prospects and building a financial base for the future, there's a sense that both Richard and Elina are true competitors – that no matter what other factors are in play, they want to win. For Richard, the world Ironman title in Kona, Hawaii, is an almost unspoken goal – it's the holy grail. But getting there is a challenge. To race in Kona, athletes need to qualify at an accredited Ironman race, and he's already ruled out the qualifying race at Ironman New Zealand this year.

"I'm just organising going to Lanzarote [in the Canary Islands] at the moment. The Ironman there is a good one in lots of respects. It's a really well known race – an iconic sort of race and it should suit me as well.

"The other reason why I'm looking at races outside of New Zealand is that I don't really want to get trapped into that psyche of, `when March comes around you've got to do this race'.

"One of the things we both love about racing is that we go and see different parts of the world, and sometimes that means you've just got to step outside of your comfort zone and go, `Okay – let's go somewhere different'."

Richard says that's one of the other big drawcards that Ironman has – it's made up of something like 30 or 40 different races around the world and the majority of them have at least a few very good athletes there.

In the short term, the ball's in Elina's court. The Coast to Coast beckons in just two weeks. Will this be her year?

- © Fairfax NZ News