For Jobie Dajka, there was no comeback

FOR a while, people dared to hope the old Jobie was back. At the Tour Down Under in January, he was mingling with the international riders at their base in Adelaide, smiling and fit, just as he was when he was the brightest prospect Australian cycling had seen for years.

FOR a while, people dared to hope the old Jobie was back. At the Tour Down Under in January, he was mingling with the international riders at their base in Adelaide, smiling and fit, just as he was when he was the brightest prospect Australian cycling had seen for years.

Yesterday, as friends and family came to terms with Jobie Dajka's lonely death in Adelaide, Australia's close-knit cycling community was asking what more could have been done to help the young man who climbed so high then crashed harder than anyone could imagine.

A former world champion and Commonwealth Games gold medallist, 27-year-old Dajka never recovered from being dumped from the Australian Olympic team in 2004 for lying to an inquiry into doping allegations involving friend and then teammate Mark French. French was ultimately cleared and fought his way back into the green and gold; for Dajka, however, the world closed in with alcohol abuse, depression and convictions for assault and drink-driving.

He was found dead on Tuesday in the neat brick house he rented five minutes' drive from his parents' home in the northern Adelaide suburb of Paralowie. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances.

For all his talk about making a comeback to top-level cycling -- as recently as last month he was texting South Australian Institute of Sport cycling head coach Gary West about his prospects -- Dajka was struggling with the demons that had overtaken his life.

He had lost his job as a car salesman and was reluctant to step outside the front door. On Monday night, his girlfriend came around to cook dinner; a neighbour said yesterday a blonde-haired woman made the grim discovery of his body on the living room couch about 5pm on Tuesday, when a 000 call from the address was logged by police and the ambulance service.

Former Olympic cyclist Gary Niewand was one of those who had tried to help Dajka. Niewand, who won four Olympic medals and gold at the Commonwealth Games, knows a thing or two about falling from grace: in 2006 he was jailed for breaching court intervention orders concerning his former wife and for harassing an ex-girlfriend, the culmination of personal problems that had made him suicidal. Dajka was talking to Niewand about getting back into training for the 2012 London Olympics. He had already spent time in Melbourne working with Niewand and top coach John Beasley.

"He had been back from Melbourne living in Adelaide for a good year and he was working and doing well, trying to get cash together for an Olympic comeback," Niewand said.

He agreed that Dajka had never fully recovered from the shock of missing the 2004 Olympics: "He was shattered."

Niewand said elite athletes were often built up to such a high level by sporting organisations, the public and media, and then left to fend for themselves when it all went wrong. "That is the case with Jobie, but I am not going to point fingers," he said.

"What we have to do out of all this is we have got to try and move forward, and get something in place where we work with fallen athletes."

Niewand said he understood all too well the lows Dajka had experienced. "I tried to suicide twice and thank God I failed," he said. "But Jobie never talked about suicide with me."

In 2005, when he was still reeling from being cut from the Athens Olympics team, a court was told Dajka had threatened to kill his family and then himself after trashing the home of his parents, Stan and Christine.

Later, he was convicted of the criminal assault in 2005 of Australian cycling coach Martin Barras and banned from the sport for three years. In 2007, he was charged with driving without due care after crashing his car in Adelaide. By Dajka's own admission, he had turned to alcohol and was downing up to six litres of wine a day to "numb the pain". His once-lithe frame ballooned.

Dajka fought back, however. In Melbourne, with Niewand and Beasley driving him, he shed 20kg. By the time Australian cycling's showcase road race, the Tour Down Under, rolled around in Adelaide in January this year, Dajka was looking much like his old self.

West, who coached Dajka as a junior in the late 1990s, said their most recent contact was last month when Dajka had sent texts and messages seeking advice on how his return would be received.

"It sounded very much like he was back on track ... that he was getting his life in order."

The question West had been about to raise with Dajka was whether he had the commitment and desire to go places again in cycling. "He was getting to the point where he was going to demonstrate he was serious ... that he was legitimate and fair dinkum," West said.