WRITER - Vancouver Lifestyles -
Mighty Mike
It’s the Hummer, the bright yellow Hummer. That’s the give-away.
Forget the other two guys in warm-ups suits who have the air of recent and violent tumbles from Middle Europe.
-Mike?
-What?
-One of you is Mike Talic?
-What?
Then the Hummer glides ominously to the curb, strangely silent for such a giant, extra-terrestrial machine.
And the moment he steps from the all-leather cab to the street, you know this is Mighty Mike. Mike Talic. “The Coach.” Trainer to the Stars, trainer to the Guys & Dolls, the Judges and the Angels. The equal opportunity Trainer to the Unions and the Free-Lancers, the Workers and the Owners.
How’s this for a list? Faye Dunaway. Trevor Linden. Kirk Douglas. Daved Benefield. Hakeem Olajuwon. Ross Rebagliati. Bob Rennie. Jyrke Lumme. You get the picture.
-She’s my friend. He’s my friend. Everyone’s my friend.
And why not? Mike is so easy to like. Short, compact, and past 50, he is still a beautiful physical specimen. Rudy cheeks and ready smile. Hell, he even smells nice.
Frank Palmer, the head of Palmer Jarvis, Canada’s most successful ad agency, was once asked why he was so successful.
-Do you like me?
-Sure, you’re a nice guy.
-That’s it. People like me.
And that is indeed the through line of Mike Talic’s extraordinary Canadian success story – people just plain like him. And they will do another ten reps on the machine for him and they will start their workout at 7, or even, yes, 5 a.m. And they will stick to their program and lose weight and give Mike all the credit for their sweat
Mike Talic – along with his very good friend Kyle Washington, the Chairman and CEO of Washington Marine Group - is the man behind the 2003 World Weightlifting Championships held in Vancouver from November 14-22. 650 athletes in a dozen different classes. Men and women. 86 countries represented. Canada Place and the Wall Centre completely occupied. The Road to Athens, 2004, Summer Olympics. Never before has Vancouver seen such an event. All of it a great warm-up to 2010. All of it because of “The Coach,” whose own Road goes way, way back and very far away
Mike Talic was born in Mostar and grew up in Sarajevo, Boznia-Herzegovina, so he comes naturally to Olympic Games and upheaval. But he is also grounded, solid. His father was a vet and his mother an elementary school teacher. They taught him well.
-I was a chubby kid. Always I fight. When I was 14, I do track and field, hammer throw, you know. But my coach move to Belgrade, so now what do I do? But my neighbour, he is champion in super heavy weightlifting, so I try.
You must be quick and explosive to succeed in weightlifting. Mike is quick and explosive. He started to compete in 1961, and by the late 60’s he was three times champion of Yugoslavia. All the time, he’s working out 3 times a day, trying Powerlifting as well, working as a bouncer at a youth club and, hold onto your hats, studying law! So little, chubby Mikey grows up, marries a beautiful, smart lady (Jadranka is a civil engineer who now works for SNC Lavalin, designing, among other things, tracks for Skytrain), has a son, practices law in Sarajevo, becomes the General Manager of a local publishing company, and in his spare time, racks up the following resume: Four Olympic Games as coach and official, 15 World Weightlifting Championships, and Mayor of the Olympic Village for the 1984 Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo. Here is a man with a law degree who in 1984 becomes the youngest ever president of his country’s weightlifting federation.
Then comes The Great Disaster, the Bosnian War. It is 1992. So, of course, Mike is in Barcelona as coach and representative of the Yugoslav Weightlifting Federation for the Barcelona Olympic Games. While everyone is strolling down The Ramblas and wondering when they should take some time out to see the Sagrada Familia, Sarajevo is collapsing in on itself. Mike never makes it home. For seven months he doesn’t see his wife or son or dog. He hunkers down in a little apartment near Dubrovnik and waits for the worst to pass. Finally, at the end of August ’92, he is re-united with his family in Budapest, and he applies to the U.S. to emigrate.
-I want to be so far from the problems of Europe.
But, at the American embassy, the nice lady at the counter says, “Sure you can come, but not your wife and kids. They’re not eligible.”
Here is a seasoned, accomplished man who has worked in Australia, Indonesia, Monte Carlo, Moscow, Spain, Portugal and New York City and he is without a country, without the means to support himself and his family. Gone are the apartment in Sarajevo, the cottage in the mountains, and the house on the Adriatic Sea.
-I go to the Canadian Embassy. They say, “You are welcome! Your family is welcome!” Can you imagine? I feel like billionaire!
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