Back in the day, Graham Brookhouse was Cheltenham’s answer to national sporting pin-up boys Gary Lineker and Will Carling.

While Lineker was wowing the footballing world with his goalscoring exploits in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups and Carling was leading England’s rugby team into a brave new era in the late 80s, Brookhouse was doing his bit to put Cheltenham on the sporting map by winning a bronze medal at the 1988 Olympics.

The now 55-year-old was one third of the Great Britain modern pentathlon team – a team that included Gloucester’s Richard Phelps – that finished behind Hungary and Italy in those pre-Lottery funding days when Olympic medals for competitors from these shores were a lot rarer than they are today.

What made Brookhouse’s achievement even more remarkable was that he had only taken up the five-discipline event five years earlier.

While already a good swimmer and a decent runner, the young Brookhouse had to learn the hidden arts of horse riding, shooting and fencing on the job.

Born in Birmingham, he swam for Camp Hill Swimming Club and played water polo for Aston in the national league, before heading 50 miles west down the M5 to Cheltenham in 1981 at the age of 19 to take up a four-year BEd course in PE, at what was then the College of St Paul and St Mary and is now part of the much more grandly named University of Gloucestershire.

So why Cheltenham?

“Because they had a good water polo team,” laughed Brookhouse. “They’d always been one of the stronger water polo teams and I wanted to carry on playing.”

It wasn’t just in the water that Brookhouse was making a splash, however, because he ran in the first two runnings of the London Marathon in 1981 and 1982.

“I ran two hours 42 in ’82 which was pretty good,” said Brookhouse with justifiable pride.

Within a couple of years of coming to Gloucestershire he had met Richard Phelps – who was to become his long-time ‘rival’, team-mate and good friend – and Brookhouse’s life changed forever.

“Richard was already doing modern pentathlon and his family were very big in the sport,” said Brookhouse.

“I’d always wanted to go to the Olympics and I thought the modern pentathlon was the easiest way for me to get there, even though I’d never ridden a horse and never done fencing or shooting.”

Fortunately for Brookhouse he was a quick learner – “It was easy to be fast-tracked because of all the support I got from the Phelps family,” he said – and it wasn’t long before he was competing in his first modern pentathlon.

So how did it go?

“It went okay,” said Brookhouse. “It was the Army pentathlon at Arborfield near Reading in June 1983. I was still a junior but it was a senior competition and I finished third.”

He was up and running and things were about to get even better for Brookhouse, who although a fierce competitor always liked to have fun once the competition had finished.

“I got selected as a reserve for the junior world championships in Los Angeles. I didn’t compete but that was a nice trip,” he chuckled.

Brookhouse’s progress was halted in 1984 when he contracted meningitis, but he was fit and firing in 1985 and eager to make up for lost time.

“A few people had retired after the 1984 Olympics and in 1985 I competed in my first senior international for Great Britain – the Honded Cup in Hungary,” said Brookhouse.

And it went even better than Brookhouse could have imagined, even though he didn’t score too well in the horse riding.

“I set a new British record for the shooting,” he said. “I scored 198 out of 200. I was just in the zone. That’s when I really started to think that I could do the modern pentathlon.

“That was when the team for the 1988 Olympics started to come together with myself, Richard and Dominic Mahony.”

And a good team they were too, securing bronze in the world championships in Moulins in France a year before the Seoul Olympics in ’88.

“Going into ’88 we thought we had a good chance,” said Brookhouse. “We knew that if we all performed to the best of our ability we could get on the podium.”

As with so many best laid plans, however, there was a major hiccup along the way.

“Dom tore a ligament in his knee,” said Brookhouse. “He had to compete in the whole event wearing a knee brace. I didn’t know how bad it was, but all I knew was that when it came to the run – the last event – it was very close.

“It was a 4K race and I just remember our team manager Ron Bright, bless him, coming out with this brilliant coaching quote with 1,000 metres to go when he shouted at me, ‘Run for your life!’.”

It may not have been out of any coaching manual but Bright’s words worked because Brookhouse, who finished 21st in the individual event, helped his team get on that podium and celebrate one of just 24 medals won by GB in South Korea. “We were so pleased to get that bronze,” Brookhouse added.

What made the success extra special was that for so long they’d done it the hard way.

“I got a grant which amounted to about £500 a year but that was pretty much it,” said Brookhouse. “Richard would drive me to competitions and we’d drain the petrol from cars in his family’s scrap metal business to save money.”

Brookhouse did receive some help in the run-up to Seoul, however, from Mike Naylor of Endsleigh Insurance.

“He was brilliant,” said Brookhouse. “He took me on as a financial adviser. I didn’t actually advise anyone on finance – I didn’t know anything about it – but it kept the wolves from the door.”

Brookhouse’s first experience of the Olympics had been everything he’d hoped it would be and once he got a taste of the Games he wanted more.

“I never thought about retiring,” he said, “I just wanted to keep going.”

The ’92 Olympics were in Barcelona and Brookhouse, who also won two national titles over the years, went into them in the form of his life.

“My best years were always the Olympic years,” he said. “We went into Barcelona thinking that we had a really good chance of getting a team or an individual medal.”

Brookhouse’s confidence was understandable. He’d already won a competition in Portugal and a pre-Olympic grand prix in this country.

“I felt really good,” he said.

What they weren’t prepared for, however, was the heat of Barcelona.

“It was so tough, so hot,” Brookhouse remembers. “In those days there was no knowledge of acclimatisation or sports drinks. During the fencing, if you wanted something to eat you’d open a tin of rice pudding!”

Brookhouse battled bravely throughout, finishing seventh in the individual competition, while GB came joint fifth in the team event. They were just a handful of points off a place on the podium, something that Brookhouse admits was “disappointing”.

Brookhouse and his mates soon found a way of getting over their disappointment, however.

“Our event finished on the fourth or fifth day,” he recalled, “which meant we still had another 10 days of the Olympics to watch.

“Each day we had the pick of going to whatever sporting event we wanted. We watched the rowing, all the athletics. We saw Michael Johnson in the 400 metres, Linford Christie win the 100 metres and Sally Gunnell the 400 metres hurdles. It was every sports fan’s dream.

“And once all the sport had finished we went to the nearest nightclub. I never got home before 5am!”

But while Brookhouse was doing the quickstep to Julio Iglesias and the like in the Catalan capital, there were changes afoot in the world of modern pentathlon.”

“Instead of being spread over four or five days it was decided to hold all five disciplines on one day,” said Brookhouse. “I didn’t like it and for the first time I stopped enjoying the event.

“You didn’t get to spend a week in a foreign country. You’d fly in, compete and fly out again. It took away a lot of the fun for me.”

Brookhouse had a quiet 1993 although he still earned Great Britain their individual spot in the 1993 world championships in Germany.

“Only one person from each country could go but I didn’t want to,” said Brookhouse. “I was taking a year out so Richard [Phelps] went instead and of course he won it.

“I always pull his leg and tell him that he only became world champion because of me but he deserved it for all the years he’d put into the sport.”

Brookhouse wasn’t yet finished himself, however, and in 1994 helped GB to another team medal in the world championships in Sheffield.

“That was on home soil and was quite fun,” said Brookhouse. “We had quite a lot of people watching and there was a good atmosphere.”

That was pretty much Brookhouse’s last hurrah as a modern pentathlete.

“I contracted testicular cancer in 1995 which wiped out that year,” he said, “and by 1996 I didn’t have the fitness levels needed to qualify for the Olympics in Atlanta. After that I retired.”

By now 34, much of Brookhouse’s time was soon taken up by his first love – swimming – and after a spell as head coach at Cheltenham he took on a similar role at Gloucester City, a position he held for 10 years until 2010.

He enjoyed coaching and there were some good swimmers who came under his guidance during his time at GL1.

“Jamie Cooke, who competed in the pentathlon in the Rio Olympics, was one,” Brookhouse said. “Vicky Holland, the triathlete who won a medal in Rio, was another and I also coached Hayley Palmer, who represented New Zealand at the 2008 Olympics.

“We produced some good swimmers and some good athletes.”

These days Brookhouse doesn’t coach but is the major shareholder in two businesses – Swimwell Teaching Services in Gloucester and Stroud Swim School.

It allows him time to pursue his other sporting hobbies which include Ironman – a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bicycle ride and 26.2-mile run.

His first was in Roth in Germany in 2011 when he completed in nine hours, 23 minutes and he has recently returned from the Hawaiin Ironman where he was competing in the 55-59 category.

“I enjoy it,” said Brookhouse, who nowadays lives in Frampton-on-Severn. “It gives you a focus, a reason to train and to keep fit.”

He also rides out for Cleeve Hill racehorse trainer James Grassick which he describes as “good fun” but says he no longer fences or shoots.

One event he does have half an eye on though is the London Marathon in four years’ time.

“If I run a sub-three-hour time in 2021 I’d set the record for the longest number of years between running two races under three hours,” he chuckled. “Chris Frapwell, who used to coach Olympic runner Dan Robinson, says I should go for it.”

But what does Brookhouse think?

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do it, I’ll be nearly 60 by then,” he laughed.

Hmm…, don’t bet against it. Graham Brookhouse likes to have fun but he is also a very serious competitor. If he decides to have a go at something, his track record suggests there’s every chance he’ll succeed.