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BRIDGEND triathlete Marc Jenkins is an inspiration to fellow athletes and a real "strongman".
A lesser man than Jenkins would have given up triathlon by now, but the determined 29-year-old has always bounced back from adversity in resilient fashion.
 He was originally left out of the British Olympics team for Athens in 2004 but was called into the triathlon squad as a last-minute replacement and went on to provide one of the stories of the Games.
During the cycling discipline, which follows the 1500m swim, disaster struck for Jenkins when a collision midway through the 40km ride left him with a broken wheel.
Most competitors would have thrown in the towel at this stage but instead of giving up, Jenkins put the bike on his shoulder and ran for two kilometres to the next wheel station before finishing last after completing the 10km run, the final discipline in triathlon.
At the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, Jenkins was competing in his first triathlon in 11 months after suffering life-threatening deep vein thrombosis and had to call on his reserves of courage to come 14th and clock 1:53.41 hrs, more than four minutes behind gold medal winner Bradley Kahlefeldt of Australia, with New Zealand's Bevan Docherty and Australia's Peter Robertson taking silver and bronze respectively.
But the fact Jenkins was on the start line at all represented a triumph as he had spent six months on the sidelines before belatedly returning to full-scale training.
"I've gone 11 months without a race and that's a long time when you come up against the best in the world," said Jenkins, who had been in contention until the 10km run. "Five weeks training from nothing is not a lot of time, but I actually feel pretty fit and I don't think that's a reflection of where I am at the moment. But I felt like I did when I was 16, I got off the bike and had a stitch. I felt comfortable in the swim, but I haven't run off the bike for so long and I had nothing on the run.
"I wanted to get top 10, but I knew that was going out of the window on the run as I couldn't breathe very well. It was just survival for me then."
Jenkins endured a week in hospital after suffering a blood clot in his right leg last summer then was forced to suffer the "torture" of a three-month rest in a bid to cure the problem.
And Jenkins - second at the 2002 World Cup race in Madeira - said, "One consultant told me I'd never be able to do sport again. But at no stage did I think about quitting triathlon despite his advice - I always knew I'd come back.
"I'm not going to give up doing the things I love without a fight. I'm a positive kind of guy and I'm a firm believer it's a case of mind over matter - and let's face it, no one ever thinks they're going to die. I didn't think it when I was laid up in hospital with my right leg twice it's normal size. But now that I've been diagnosed, I'm constantly monitored so I'm at less risk of getting DVT again - or so I hope!"
A double British Triathlon champion who finished 10th at Manchester in 2002, Jenkins said he viewed the Melbourne Games as a whole new start - "the first race of the rest of my life".
Jenkins' girlfriend Helen Tucker is also a glutton for triathlon punishment and, despite her personal worries for her boyfriend, had her breakthrough last year by finishing with a bronze at both the Salford and Beijing legs of the World Cup just weeks after Jenkins had left hospital.
The highly-rated 21-year-old is a former British youth champion but she could only manage 17th place in Melbourne after a crash in the cycle leg ended her medal hopes.
"The swim was very rough and when we came out together on the ride we went very hard for the first kilometre," she said. "I don't know what happened. I can just remember lying on the floor, looking up at the sky! I've just got a few scrapes."
Jenkins returned from Melbourne to an uncertain future as some of his funding has been cut due to his inactivity and he is not entitled to enter World Cup races.
"I've just got to see what happens in the next few months, but it's hard for me to plan as I'm not in the World Cup squad," he said. "But I'm not going to chase races as this year is all about being confident racing again."
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