Heart of a Champion

You're swimming a kilometre offshore. Without warning, your heart-rate shoots up to 320 beats a minute. What do you do? Call for help and try to get to hospital urgently? Not if you're Greg Welch. He was officially the fittest man in the world, unbackable favourite for Olympic gold. Adrenaline was his best friend. Greg Welch would rather die than give in. He almost did. The pint-size Aussie larrikin they call Plucky became world champion in five sports: surf, duathlon, Olympic distance triathlon, long course triathlon and Ironman. But with the 2000 Olympics in sight he was forced to quit his sport and fight for his life. Heart of a Champion tells his story, from cheeky paperboy to the heights of success and the depths of darkness that followed the diagnosis of a near-fatal heart condition, through to the hard-won contentment of his life now.