The triathlon  promises to be one of the most popular Olympic sports. Recently it has drawn huge crowds attracted by athletes swimming 1,500m, cycling 40km, and then running 10km, without stopping. But what makes an attractive 17-year-old give up everything for the doubtful pleasures it offers? Melanie Sears has not yet learnt those often-repeated phrases about personal satisfaction, mental challenge and higher targets that most athletes use when asked similar questions. "You swim for 1,500m, then run out of the water and jump on your bike, still wet. Of course, then you freeze. When the40kmcycle ride is over, you haveto run10km, which is a long way when you're feeling exhausted. But it's great fun, and all worth it in the end," she says. Melanie entered her first triathlon at 14 and she won the junior section. Full of confidence, she entered the National Championships, and although she had the second fastest swim and the fastest run, she came nowhere. "I was following this man and suddenly we came to the sea. We realized then that we had gone wrong. I ended up cycling 20 kilometers too far. I cried all the way through the running." But she didn't give up. "Sometimes I wish I could stop, because then the pain would be over, but I am afraid that if I let myself stop just once, I would be tempted to do it again." Such _ draws admiration from Steve Trew, the sport's director of coaching. Melanie was top junior in this year's European Triathlon Championships, finishing 13th."I was almost as good as the top three in swimming and running, but much slower in cycling. That's why I'm working very hard at it." She is trying to talk her long-suffering parents, who will carry the PS1,300 cost of her trip to New Zealand for this year's world championships, into buying a PS2,000 bike, so she can try25kmand100kmraces later this year. But there is another price to pay. "I don't have a social life," she says. "After two hours' hard swimming on Friday night, I just want to go to sleep. But I phone and write to the other girls in the team." What does she talk about? Boys? Clothes? "No, what sort of times they are achieving." How does Melanie differ from other athletes, according to the writer?
She worries less than they do. She expresses herself differently. Her family background is not like theirs. Her aims are different from theirs.