Daniel Greig

http://www.danielgreig.com

Daniel Greig

Personal information
Born	13 March 1991 Adelaide, South Australia
Height	172 cm (5 ft 8 in)
Weight	69 kg (152 lb)
Sport
Sport	Speed skating
Coached by	Desley Hill
Medal record Representing  Australia Men's speed skating World Championships 2014 Nagano Sprint

Daniel Greig (born 13 March 1991) is an Australian speed skater. Greig was selected for Australia as a speed skater during the 2014 Winter Olympics for the men's 500, 1000 and 1500 m events.^[1] During the 2014 World Sprint Speed Skating Championships he took a bronze medal.

Daniel Greig is Australia’s best speed skater, currently holding records in the 500m, 1000m and 1500m events.

Daniels formative years were spent as a world class inline skater before at age 17 he began taking the steps to make the Olympics and moved to the Netherlands to learn how to skate on ice. In 2013 Greig showed his rapid progression in the sport with a strong series of finishes before capping it off in 2014 with a bronze medal at the World Championships in Nagano and competing in the Sochi Winter Olympics.

He currently holds the Australian national record for 500 and 1000 m.

Daniel Greig Australian speed skater 2014, 2018 Olympics

ORIGINS Daniel Greig (pronounced greg) was born on 13 March 1991, in Adelaide, the capital of South Australia (800 km west of Melbourne). “There are lots of churches, and lots of winemaking.” Greig’s family moved to Melbourne when he was five. Daniel’s parents are Debbie and Mark Greig, now separated. He has one younger sibling, Kelly.

SCHOOL When he was 14, Greig was accepted into Melbourne High School, a traditional, all male, military-style public school for exceptional students. Greig was one of 6,000 kids/year who took a six-hour exam to qualify for 200 available places. He receives high marks in school and is presently pursuing a mechanical engineering degree at Deakin University.

INLINE SKATING When the Greigs moved to Melbourne in 1996, they settled in a neighborhood where the local hang out was a roller rink. At six he got his first pair of roller blades for his birthday. “I don’t think my parents had any idea what they’d started when they decided on that gift for me.” Greig excelled at any sport that didn’t include a ball, but really loved inline skating. “I just like to go fast, I suppose.” Greig and his dad started attending Saturday morning sessions at the neighbourhood rink, where Greig quickly became a regular fixture and eventually part of the local skating scene. 1996 and on: Greig spent much of his free time at the rink growing up. His social circle was filled with kids from the rink. By the time he was in charge of his own free time, his plans always included roller blades. 1999: Greig started working with coaches and training for competition when he was 8. At first he didn’t like official racing, going to meets but competing mentally. “I would go to the training and I would make sure that I was as fast as the fastest guy there, but I would never put in the extra effort it would take to win. In my head that was good enough.” Eventually he came to the races to toe the line, but again his metrics for success were nonstandard. Greig would make sure he could win if he wanted, but would save himself the effort of crossing the finish line first. Often his method resulted in placing him second. In this fashion he advanced to the Australian National Junior Championships. 2002: When he was 12, Greig started working with Mark Gainsmith, who was the best sprinter at the skate club in Eltham at the time. Gainsmith’s own journey inspired Greig to set goals to win and train with intention. Gainsmith and Greig have remained close, and Greig makes sure to see Gainsmith when he is home. 2005: Though winning didn’t sink in during Greig’s early years, his coach trained him to aim for Olympic gold. When Greig was 14 he started working with Desly Hill, who was living in Melbourne at the time. Within a year of working with Hill, Greig had advanced to 9th in the world (Junior World Champions, 2006). Greig trained with Hill for a year, until she moved to the Netherlands to coach the Dutch inline skating team. Their coach/athlete relationship continued despite the distance. For the next three years, Hill coached Greig via surrogate through inline speed skating medal holder Deb Beverage. Greig’s neutrality about competing lost its final battle when, at age 16, he got the chance to compete in the 2007 Junior World Championships. Doing well at the National Championships inspired him to try to be the best in the world. Greig set his sights on the 2007 Junior World Championships. He was Junior World Champion in 2007 (age 16); and 2008 (age 17).

SETTING SIGHTS ON OLYMPIC GOLD The year Greig won his second Junior World Championship (2008), inline skating debuted on the short list for consideration in the Olympics, and Greig started dreaming of ascending the Olympic Podium. Subsequently, inline skating was rejected as an Olympic sport. By then Greig’s Olympic dream was unshakable. He traded wheels on asphalt for blades on ice and pursued speed skating. “In my head they were almost the same thing.” On graduation from high school in 2008, Greig used his summer break to emigrate to the Netherlands and train with “the best in the world”.

TRANSITION BETWEEN SPORTS Rather than the easy transition he reckoned it would be, taking up speed skating was very difficult for Greig. “I just had to start from scratch and learn a whole new sport.” He took encouragement from believing that the only things standing between himself and his goals were investment in time and effort. And by 2009, getting to the Olympics was paramount. The first chance Greig had to compete for Olympic gold was in Sochi, Russia, in 2014. But despite his well-laid plans and being a medal contender, Greig took a fall in his first run of the 500 meter race, leaving no possibility of reaching the podium.

CHALLENGES The season before the Sochi 2014 Olympics was Greig’s break out season. He was consistently in the top 15 in the world. “Just before the Olympics I got much closer.” Three weeks before the games (December 2013), Greig was ranked third in the world. “Then I went onto the Olympics... and I crashed.” Repetitive motion injuries had become a significant factor for Greig in the months leading up to Sochi. He was training with inflamed tendons that pressed on the bursa of his knees. By the middle of the season his knees were popping—a symptom of synovial plica syndrome, which is an inflammatory condition of the knee joint capsules. By the time he reached Sochi, the health of his knees had become disconcerting enough that Greig would schedule surgery directly after The Games. Instead he took the fall that defined his Sochi Olympic experience, and left his sport to spend long, hard months rehabilitate his knees. The subsequent surgery removed spurs and reshaped his kneecaps, and shaved scar tissue from his tendons. After a year of failed rehabilitation, Greig was diagnosed with neuropathy in both knees and now trains through chronic pain. The hardest thing Greig has ever endured was the struggle to recover from knee surgery. But Greig is not one to shy from a challenge. “I’ve put a lot of obstacles in my path because I like my life decisions to challenge me.“ Though the news they gave him was disheartening, Greig would not let any doctor’s prognosis about his future racing dissuade him. “The doctors couldn’t site a previous study of athletes with the injuries like I had.” All the relevant data couldn’t compete with Greig’s drive to get back to the Olympics. “As an athlete, I’m always trying to defy the limits of my prognosis.” In Winter 2015, Greig’s rehabilitation had progressed enough that he could return to racing. He started at the bottom rank of his division and worked his way to 16th by the 2016 Winter Championships. Through all his challenges, Greig remains undeterred. “My tenacity has never come anywhere close to failing.” Another factor inspiring Greig to continue pursuing Olympic gold in 2018 is his standing just prior to Sochi. “I want to have at least a shot to claim a medal, and I knew I was close before Sochi.” Since graduating high school Greig has been living in the Netherlands, to get the best training in the world. There is no specific visa for an athlete in The Netherlands, and proving income to maintain his visa status is a challenge. INSPIRATION Greig derives a sense of satisfaction doing things that have never been done before. He gravitated toward speed skating because it was exotic—a relatively unknown sport in Australia. Greig became the first person from the Southern Hemisphere to win a speed skating medal on the world stage.

UNIVERSITY Greig is in his last year of study at Deakin University in Melbourne. Two weeks per semester he is on campus for practical exams. “It’s pretty flat out, but it works really well for me.” Otherwise he is an online student, doing his group work and class presentations by video correspondence, with Australian Embassy officials proctoring his final exams. Greig will likely complete his degree requirements after the 2018 Olympics.

References

1. "Daniel Greig". Olympics.com.au. Retrieved 11 January 2014.