He has cycled around the world in 80 days, done the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, lost a kidney when he was hit by a car during a training ride, and cheated death a number of times, but he’s still standing at the age of 78.

Born in 1946, Colin grew up in bayside Melbourne where he attended Brighton Technical School and discovered ice skating at the nearby St Moritz Ice Rink through school sport. His older brother John was a keen skater and was also playing ice hockey, so young Colin also started training and racing in junior competition, where he came under the wing of triple Olympian and speed skating pioneer Colin Hickey.

Colin Coates was also a keen sailor and was advancing through the competitive ranks there, winning national titles in his 14-foot dinghy. In the early days he thought that if he “was going to go anywhere it would be in sailing’’ although he was also a competitive cyclist. But in 1967 while competing at the Australian speed skating championships in Sydney, he discovered that whoever won the national title would be selected for the 1968 Olympic Games in Grenoble, France.

Aged 21, he won a close final, but he still had to do a skate-off to confirm his place in the Olympic Team, which he won convincingly. However, he faced another hurdle before he could make his Olympic debut. He contracted hepatitis working as a plumbing apprentice in late 1967 and had to convince a doctor that he was fit enough to travel.

Colin had never competed internationally so he pulled together a shoestring budget and took himself off to Europe a month before the Games to train in Norway. Australia only had short indoor ice tracks (100m ovals) but the Olympic competition would be contested on a European style outdoor long track (400m oval), which he had never seen.

“I didn’t even have a pair of (long track) skates,’’ he recalled. “The skates are totally different and so is the technique. At my first Olympics I had no idea what I was doing.’’

One of three Australian athletes competing in Grenoble, Colin finished 41st (500m) and 49th (1500m), but thoroughly enjoyed the experience, partly because there was abundant free food in the athletes’ village.

“I was pretty hungry when I arrived because I hadn’t been eating much,’’ he said.

His performance encouraged him enough to stay in Europe and go to the World Championships in Sweden, where he finished in the top 30. On returning to Australia he decided to return to Europe for the next winter season.

“I wanted to see how good I could be,’’ he said. “In Australia I was fast but in Europe I was run-of-the-mill.”

He based himself at the Heerenveen skating hub in the Netherlands, which became his home away from home for the best part of two decades, supporting himself by working in construction when he wasn’t racing or training.

At the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo he cracked the top 20, finishing 18th in the 10,000m, and skated across the programme, competing in the 500m, 1000m, 1500m and 5000m.

By 1976 in Innsbruck he was the Australian Olympic Team’s Flag Bearer (also carrying the honour in 1980 at Lake Placid) and he had become one of the best speedskaters in the world, despite having none of the coaching and team support that the best European skaters enjoyed.

He gained three top-ten places in Innsbruck, finishing eighth in the 1500m, tenth in the 5000m and sixth in the 10,000m, then the best-ever performance by an Australian Winter Olympian. In the wake of those performances he was approached by both the Dutch and the Swedish teams to switch nationalities but he declined.

“I am Australian – why would I want to skate for another country?” he recalled.

Australia’s long-serving Winter Team Chef de Mission Geoff Henke remarked in 1979 that if Colins “had the proper attention, finances and coaching he could be the world champion. But he wanted to race for Australia.”

Instead, the knockabout Colins lived on his wits and handouts from his friends in the big winter teams to support his skating dreams. He hitchhiked across Europe, earned money at one event by skating in a striped “jailhouse” suit, bunked down in spare beds or on the floor in other skaters’ rooms or in the changerooms at the ice rink during competitions and training camps.

When training at the world-renowned rink in Davos in Switzerland, he remembers the Canadian team providing him with “the leftovers from their lunch packs” so he didn’t go hungry.

He kept his hand in sailing when he was back in Australia and also excelled at cycling, doing road races in the US, Canada and Norway.

Colins had high hopes for the 1980 Games but he contracted influenza in the Olympic Village, which ruled him out of the 1500m, although he still competed in the 5000m and 10,000m while feeling “like a building fell on me’’.

Afterwards, he went on a skiing holiday with friends in the Dolomites in northern Italy, where his career, and his life, almost finished in an instant. One day the group decided to walk up to a peak beyond the groomed slopes. Colins walked ahead through the snow and suddenly found himself sinking, first to his ankles, then to his waist and then he fell into a void below.

“I said ‘goodbye, cruel world’ and woke up 20m below on an ice table with my arm hanging over the edge of a crevasse that went 450m down,’’ he said. “I didn’t know if I was in heaven or hell.’’

He had miraculously survived the fall, but was severely injured. He had compound fractures in both arms and the bones were sticking out through his skin, and his nose and jaw were broken. Despite the pain, he thought clearly enough to push the bones back through his skin and pack the snow around him, while he shouted for help.

“I’m pretty good with pain,’’ he said with heavy understatement. “I was very lucky, and I don’t get shocked or stressed by things like that.’’

Eventually, his friends found him and called the mountain rescue service, who then had to work out how to extract him from the predicament.

“They nearly killed me getting me out of there,’’ he said. “The best part of the trip was the helicopter flying over the Dolomites – terrific view.’’

He was transported by military helicopter to the hospital in Cortina d’Ampezzo (one of the two host cities of the next Winter Olympics in 2026) where his bones were pinned and set and he began to heal. But after three weeks he was bored with the hospital routine, so he checked himself out and hitch-hiked back to the Netherlands, despite the handicap of being unable to use his arms.

He was left with a permanent injury to his right arm – he still can’t straighten his elbow – but he was unperturbed and resumed his skating career the next season.

Four years later in Sarajevo, aged 37, he divided his attention between his own performance and that of a younger Australian skater he was coaching, Mike Richmond.

By 1988, aged 41, Colin was mostly coaching and was technically selected for the Calgary team as a coach-manager, but he was registered as an athlete with the International Olympic Committee because it allowed the Australian Team to include an extra official in its quota. He was under strict instructions from the Australian Skating Union not to compete, but when Danny Kah decided he did not want to race in the 10,000m, that created an opportunity for his ever-competitive coach who did not want Australia to be unrepresented in the event.

He kept his intentions secret from the officials, and only appeared moments before the race. Henke only realised that Colin was on the ice after the race began and stormed down to the side of the rink, but it was too late to stop the skater, and that was how Colin became the first Australian to compete at six Winter Olympics.

He finished in 26th place, having skated the fastest 10,000m of his career.

“I didn’t tell the Australian Team because I didn’t want to get anyone into trouble,’’ he said.

His actions may have been frowned on by officialdom at the time, but his achievement was immediately celebrated by the media and the public.

After a couple of years coaching, his adventurous spirit took him back to Europe where he returned to sailing and delivered yachts for a few years. He was hired on to the crew of the US maxi yacht Sorcery for the 1994 Sydney-Hobart race, where the yacht finished fourth across the line.

In 2007 he took on the role of coaching the French national team, working with them for almost three years before he returned to Australia.

He no longer skates but he still sails and cycles. When he reflects on his skating career, he reckons that the lack of a full-time coach cost him “five to ten percent” and that might have put him among the Olympic medallists.

“I’d still do it all again and I’d do it the same way. I had great friends and I had such a great time.’’

And his intrepid life has given him great stories to tell.

Nicole Jeffery