Body Lengths

by Leisel Jones

  ‘Ken!’ I call.

  Then Tarnee appears beside us and bursts into tears. She’s overcome with the emotion of it all. I give her a hug and for a moment the two of us could be back on the pool deck at Redcliffe. Training partners, teammates and nearly – but not quite – friends, even in this instant. It feels just like any old day at training – until Nicole Livingstone starts to interview us for the Nine Network broadcast. I’ve never met Nicole, only watched in awe as she swam at the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games. Now she’s talking to me on live TV.

  ‘Teammates at Redcliffe Leagues Club and now teammates on the Australian Olympic Team – wow!’ Nicole says. ‘Leisel, what did you think when you touched the wall and had a look at the scoreboard?’

  ‘I’m absolutely amazed,’ I say, and when my voice comes back at me through the microphone it’s tiny and squeaky and straight from the school playground. I sound like a kid. I sound like I’m sucking on helium. ‘My first Olympic team at fourteen? Uh, I never imagined it … I was just hoping to do well!’ I couldn’t have been any greener if I’d tried.

  Tarnee, meanwhile, is in floods of tears. She tells the camera that, with Ken, she’s been working towards this moment for fifteen years, and when she tries to thank him more tears flow. ‘This has been a goal of mine for so long and I just can’t believe it’s happened!’ she says, and when she talks you can’t help but be moved, because it’s so obviously genuine and so very heartfelt. It’s exactly what Nicole wants to hear.

  In the next few weeks, I learn a lot about what the media wants to hear. The Olympic trials go for eight days and after that it’s straight back to school for me. But things have changed since I left a fortnight ago. Media helicopters arrive, ferrying news crews to my playground. Channel Seven rocks up to my maths class to interview me and my classmates. A Current Affair cordons off half the library to film a story about me carrying out a ‘normal’ day at school, which is hilarious, because ‘normal’ doesn’t usually involve a TV camera crew. When I left to go to trials, I told my teachers I was ‘just popping off for another swim meet’. ‘What homework can I take with me?’ I asked them. Now I’ve come back with my homework half-finished and a TV crew in tow.

  Because Ken Wood (with his uber-squad) is the swimming coach at Southern Cross, there are other Olympians on campus here. Tarnee White, for one. And Geoff Huegill. But it’s the fourteen-year-old freak who’s the really big news. I have journalists following me between classes and trailing me to training in the afternoon. Everyone wants a quote; everyone wants a cute story. As a gawky teenage girl who doesn’t want to stick out, I find the whole thing weird. Bizarre. It’s off-putting, intimidating and embarrassing, to be frank.

  Not that you’d know it from my happy-go-lucky interview patter. I have received no media training from anyone yet – no constructive advice, not even from Mum, whose guidance on my newfound fame, on everything in my life, runs to ‘Just do your best’ – but I know enough to be all Queensland sunshine for the camera. I’m all blonde hair and toothy grin. I am the kid next door, the up-and-comer. The Australian Tourism Board could bottle this stuff.

  But for all my apparent sunniness, my smile is as manufactured as the ones the journalists flash back at me. I learnt a hard lesson at trials when my red fingernails and alleged ‘V’-for-victory sign made me front-page news. Kids stop in the playground and flash me the two-fingered ‘V’. Everyone saw what I did. Everyone knows and they think I was lording it over my rivals.

  So I am a little wary of the media now. I’ve seen how they can twist things. So I decide I won’t give the press much wriggle room. I will be squeaky clean. I will make sure there is absolutely no way the media can misconstrue what I say or do. In the days and weeks after I return to Redcliffe, as I begin to build my new training regime, I begin to build a new self too.

  From now on, there will be no mucking around in front of the media. No more jokes, dares or silly stuff. I think about all the times I’ve enjoying casting myself as the butt of the joke, all the times I’ve gone after the cheap laughs. Those days are over. I pack them away like that Valentine’s rose from Josh Bettridge back in Burpengary, shoved under the bed to be forgotten. I am a professional now –an Olympic representative. I will no longer be my dumb, daggy self.

  I become self-conscious and serious and I filter what I say. I am always polite and obliging, but I talk in clichés and ‘sports-speak’. I self-censor. I’m bland and predictable. I am whiter-than-white. In short, I have become a marketer’s dream.

  The Olympics are in September, but before that is orientation camp. This is the final camp before competition and it’s always held in the same region as the Olympic host country so we have a chance to acclimatise and get over jetlag, but never so close that we’re in our competitors’ pockets. This August we’re heading south.

  ‘Melbourne!’ I yell to Mum as we chug down the M1 on our way to Brisbane airport. ‘Do you think there’ll be time for shopping?’ Olympics be buggered, I am still a teenage girl.

  ‘Using whose money?’ Mum yells back, laughing. We’re both shouting so we can be heard over the noise of our old, beat-up, green VL Commodore station wagon as it bangs and shudders its way down the highway. It whinges and complains and carries on.

  Until suddenly it doesn’t. Suddenly, we’ve stopped.

  ‘Oh my God,’ whispers Mum in alarm. ‘Oh my God, we’ve broken down!’

  I stare at the itinerary in my lap. I am horrified. I’m about to travel to my first Olympic orientation camp and I can’t even make it safely to the airport?

  ‘Don’t move!’ Mum orders. Then she leaps from the car and starts running down the freeway to find an emergency telephone.

  When she gets back several minutes later, she is red and sweaty and teary. Her shirt clings to her back.

  ‘They’re on their way!’ she says. We sit in the car in nervous silence as we wait for the RACQ (Royal Automobile Club of Queensland) to come and rescue us.

  ‘Reckon you could do with a trade-in,’ the RACQ guy says jovially, when he arrives thirty minutes later. He takes one look under the bonnet and shakes his head. Still he gives it a go, dipping sticks and checking tubes, until – amazingly – he thinks we might be good to go.

  ‘Take it easy,’ he tells us. ‘No hooning, you hear me? She might not take it.’ He taps the bonnet to indicate he’s talking about the car. But one look at Mum and he could just as easily be talking about her.

  We get to the airport in the nick of time. When we set out from Redcliffe that morning I’d laughed at Mum and her urge to always be embarrassingly early. ‘Who takes two hours to do a half-hour drive?’ I had teased her. Turns out we do.

  As we pull into the drop-off bay, I turn to face her. She’s teary again. Her baby is going away.

  I shrug and grin. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ I say sheepishly. For getting us going early. For getting us here in one piece. For everything you’ve ever done throughout my entire life to get me to this moment.

  I give her a hug and clamber out of the car. I think about everyone else on the team cruising to the airport in their Range Rovers, Volvos or flashy Mercedes Benz people-movers. No-one else seems to have the money problems we do. Here are Mum and I, povo Redcliffe bums, in our terrible green Commodore that almost didn’t make it. But looking at Mum – at her literal sweat and tears – I know I wouldn’t swap with anyone else.

  ‘Have fun, kiddo,’ she says through her open window. I wait for it. ‘Just do your best,’ she says, predictably. Then she’s off and I am alone. I wander inside the airport to find my new Olympic family.

  We have a great time at camp. This is a good bunch of people. There are a lot of big personalities, but everyone works together. We are a team: the Aussie team. We are here to get to know one another, and I like what I find. Because it is my first orientation camp, I am a ‘rookie’ and therefore required to embarrass myself by performing a skit at ‘Rookie Night’. I don’t need a second invitation. A few of us get together a
nd organise a send-up of Perfect Match, the 1980s TV dating show. I dress as a boy and Ray Hass, the backstroker, as a girl: the two of us are the perfect match at the end. Everyone thinks we’re hilarious. We bring the house down.

  Sometime during camp, word gets out about my car breaking down on the way to the airport. Typical me, I lead the charge, joking about it among my new teammates. ‘“Leisel the bum”, that’s me,’ I tell them. ‘Anyone got any spare Olympic medals I can take to Cash Converters? I thought I’d buy myself a pushbike …’

  We laugh and I pretend it’s not half true.

  You can imagine my astonishment when someone actually takes me seriously. Someone like Ford. When I get back home after the Sydney Olympics, there is a brand spanking new Ford Laser in the driveway.

  ‘Uh, who’s visiting?’ I ask Mum, as we pull up alongside it in our clapped-out green machine.

  ‘No-one,’ she says. ‘It’s yours. The Ford sponsorship guys dropped it off for you while you were away.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ I’ve never been inside a new car, let alone owned one.

  ‘Leisel! Language!’ I might have just scored us a sponsorship car from Ford but I am still a fourteen-year-old kid. ‘Don’t swear,’ Mum admonishes me.

  But when we take the new car for a spin around the block, we’re both as juvenile as each other. We go for a cruise by the beach at Redcliffe, windows down, radio pumping, hoping the neighbours will see us. We giggle like sisters as we run our hands over the showroom-fresh upholstery and across the shiny new dashboard.

  ‘I can get used to this. This is me,’ I say to Mum, even though I have never – neither of us has ever – owned anything as expensive as a new car in our lives.

  Never mind that I am still two years too young to drive it.

  Mum rolls her eyes. ‘C’mon, it’s time for dinner. Then homework, miss.’ And we head home to eat more two-minute steaks.

  When I make the Olympic team, I join the Swimming Australia payroll. Well, sort of. I don’t get a regular salary, and I’m certainly not considered a medal contender, so I don’t receive any of the medal incentive money from the Olympic Committee that’s sloshing around. But I do get a one-off payment of $5000. It is deposited directly into my bank account on a Thursday afternoon, and a fortnight later it’s still there. I’m too scared to touch it.

  ‘They’re paying me to swim?’ I am gobsmacked.

  I’m told I can only ever expect to receive sporadic lump sums for being an Australian representative swimmer. Say, one payment per Olympics, and perhaps quarterly payments during non-Olympic years, all around the $5000 mark. That adds up to about $20,000, maybe $25,000, in an Olympic year, as my full-time earnings. It’s not nearly enough to live off, but I think it’s Christmas. I’m too conservative with my money to spend it frivolously, and because we have no money at home my earnings are quickly used up paying for groceries or school stuff or household bills or going towards the rent. But I don’t mind: I’d rather help pay for the electricity than sit in the dark.

  Mum never puts any pressure on me to earn money. Not once. But she also doesn’t have the luxury of saying ‘no thanks’ when the money comes in. We need it: it’s that simple. After I started swimming with Redcliffe Leagues, Southern Cross College offered to waive half my school fees if I went there. They knew the only way they could get me to swim for the school was for them to drop the price. Without discounted fees there’s no way Mum could have afforded it. And if I had to accept a scholarship so I could go to school there, so be it. I could deal with that.

  I view my swimming earnings in much the same way. If swimming can help us financially, why wouldn’t I let it? You think I’m so proud I’m going to send that car in the driveway back to the showroom? That’d be crazy.

  In the past I never took much notice of the fact I was one of the poor kids at school. But now that things have changed, I’m aware of a difference. All of a sudden, I’m bringing in more than any of my friends could ever dream of earning at Macca’s or KFC or wherever they’re flipping burgers at weekends. I’m earning so much money, I’m supporting my mum! I cannot wipe the smile from my face.

  But while I’m busy counting my dollars (and my lucky stars), I fail to see the greater cost. Because in that one race at trials – in that one minute and eight seconds, when my life changed irrevocably – my relationship with swimming changed too. I became a swimmer, but swimming became a job.

  Swimming has always put food on our table and saved us from being homeless. The money Mum makes as a swimming instructor has been our only source of income for years. But for the first time, I am the main breadwinner.

  And that’s a heavy responsibility for a fourteen-year-old.

  6

  Sydney 2000

  I am off to swim at the Olympics. But first, let me tell you about the time Kieren Perkins rejected my request for an autograph. That’s right. Kieren Perkins, OAM. Olympic gold medallist and one of the best long-distance swimmers on the planet. Swimming’s Mr Nice Guy. Rejected my request for an autograph.

  It goes like this. I am competing alongside Kieren at the Queensland State Championships in Chandler, Brisbane. It’s my first State Titles, whereas Kieren is an old hand. He is the VIP of the VIPs here, and that’s saying something when you cast your eye across the pool deck. Hayley Lewis, Susie O’Neill, Glen Housman, Grant Hackett, Sam Riley – they’re all here. But Kieren’s star shines brighter than them all. He’s already picked up gold in the 1500-metres at both the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics and he’s well on his way to repeating the trick again in Sydney. I am in awe.

  Over the next two days, I watch Kieren from afar. I am hoping for an autograph, so I carry my club cap and a black marker with me everywhere I go (even when I go to the ladies’ toilets). But the Queensland State Championships are massive. They’re by far the biggest state swimming meet in Australia, with thousands of kids competing. So whenever I see Kieren, he is surrounded by a crowd of adoring fans. The only time he is alone is when he is in the pool. And sure, I want an autograph, but not enough to scuba-dive into his lane to get it.

  But late on the second afternoon of competition, I see Kieren standing alone on the pool deck. He’s just finished his race and is heading for his swim down. I realise it is now or never. I am painfully shy and incredibly nervous, but I force myself to walk up to my idol and hold out my cap and pen.

  ‘E–excuse me,’ I stammer in a tiny voice, skinny and awkward in my Redcliffe club uniform. Kieren stares at me. ‘Mr Perkins? Please can I get your autograph?’ Asking Kieren Perkins for an autograph is more nerve-wracking than competing in any of my races this week.

  For a moment, I can see he’s confused. Now? I can see his brain trying to process it. Is she really asking me now? He is red-faced and dripping wet: he looks exactly as you would expect someone who has just swum one and a half kilometres at full pelt to look.

  ‘Not now! I’m about to swim down!’ he barks. ‘It’s not the right time!’ And he walks off past me and heads for the warm-down pool.

  I slink away, burning with shame.

  In retrospect, it was a terrible time to ask him. After his race, the poor guy probably wanted to lie down for a week. I would have after a 1500-metre event! And there I was bugging him to sign my cap.

  I do everything I can to bury that memory.

  Now, less than two years later, I am staring at Kieren Perkins again. He’s much drier this time. And happier too. Elated even. Also, he hasn’t just swum 1500 metres. No, this time he’s walking, quite leisurely, around the Sydney Olympic stadium at Homebush while 3.6 billion people – including me – look on. It’s the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, and Kieren is marching as part of the Aussie contingent. I watch him smile and wave to the crowd.

  I’m not marching, because today is Friday and my first heat is on Sunday morning, so I’ve been advised to skip the ceremony, as it means a lot of standing around getting hot and tired. A bunch of us from the swimming team are watching the cer
emony on TV together, inside the athletes’ village. I watch Kieren and the others stroll proudly across the screen in their green and gold. I look down at my uniform, then back at the screen. It seems impossible I’m in the same uniform, on the same team, as the great Kieren Perkins. Two years ago I was asking him to sign my club cap and now here we are, on the same team. It sounds so corny, but I feel like a winner just being at the Sydney Olympics. Just taking part, just getting a t-shirt. (I actually got one this time – unlike back at Redcliffe!) I feel like my life is complete.

  My friends at school are going to be so jealous! I think gleefully. I stare at the screen, soaking it all up. Everything is so big, so overwhelming and so terribly exciting. The theme from The Man from Snowy River is belting out while dancers perform elaborate simulations with Victa lawnmowers. It’s mad. It’s spectacular. The whole thing is surreal.

  I can’t take it all in. I can’t believe my eyes. As ever, I’m gasping for air – but this time I love it.

  One morning during competition, I sit beside Kieren. We’re high in the stands above the pool, with a bunch of other people from our team. Kieren chats politely, taking an interest; he couldn’t be nicer. I don’t mention the autograph. We watch the athletes on the pool deck below warm up, bouncing on the balls of their feet and swinging their arms wildly across their chests as if trying to grab onto this incredible experience. Sitting here with Kieren, watching all this, I feel on top of the world.

  I am probably really annoying to my teammates sitting around me. To these people – who have dedicated the past four years to training, not to mention the entirety of their lives to their Olympic dream – I am a little kid who can’t keep still, can’t settle down.

  But I can’t help it. I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve snuck into a party. A party at Disneyland. After dark. Without any teachers. I am underage and overawed. I am having an absolute ball.