by Leisel Jones
I watch Petria butterfly like a demon. Then Susie, our anchor leg, brings it home hard. In the end, we finish second. Another Olympic silver medal!
We cheer and high-five each other; we hug with joy.
The USA have won in 3:58.30 – a new world record. And we set an Oceania record. Japan came in third and they’re ecstatic with that. The Japanese girls bounce around the pool deck, grinning.
But I can’t shake the feeling that I have let my team down. Was I too inexperienced? Too slow on my changeovers maybe? My teammates are full of praise but I am quick to criticise myself.
The day after the medal ceremony, I take out my telephone card, the one issued to every member of the Australian team, and I use a payphone to call Mum.
‘Hey, it’s me.’
‘Leisel?’ Mum sounds surprised to hear from me.
She’s staying with her sister, Morny, and her brother-in-law, Jeff, in the north-west Sydney suburb of Ryde. She’s seen me at the pool complex a few times, and we spent some time together after my 100-metre final, but we haven’t really been in touch much during the Games. Mum will stay with Morny and Jeff until the Games are over, but given how little we’ve been able to see each other, she may as well be back in Queensland already really.
‘Yeah. It’s me. How are you going Mum?’
‘Good. Morny and I have just been watching the women’s basketball on TV. Leisel, are you alright?’
I could say: Am I alright? Mum, I’ve just won two Olympic silver medals! Of course I’m alright. I’m on top of the world! But Mum knows me better than that.
‘Um, yeah. It’s just, I was thinking … I might kinda be ready to go home.’
There’s a pause while Mum considers this. ‘Home?’
‘Yeah. Like, um, now I’ve finished racing maybe I could come and stay with you and Morny? Or maybe we could just head back home? Not much point hanging around …’ I trail off.
‘Leisel, has something happened?’
‘What? No, no, nothing like that. It’s just, you know. I dunno. It’s a bit lonely here, I guess. And I just wondered what my friends at school are up to …’
Because amid all this newness, amid all these foreign and exciting things – or perhaps because of them – another feeling has emerged. I am homesick. I miss Mum and my friends. I am lonely in the village. I don’t know many people and there’s no-one my age here. Everyone is so busy, so focused on their jobs, and I am lost, awkward and shy, and I want to go home.
Mum and I talk for a bit and she’s patient with me. She’s softly-spoken and considered, but she’s also very firm. ‘Leisel, don’t you think you might regret it if you leave now you’ve finished racing?’
Maybe, I concede.
‘I know it’s hard and that you don’t have your friends around you, but this is an amazing thing you’re experiencing. An Olympic Games here in Australia. This won’t come around again. This is once-in-a-lifetime, Leisel.’
She is right, of course. As far as first major meets go, swimming at an Olympic Games, in your own country, at the turn of a millennium, is the pinnacle. Most people begin their careers with a Pan Pacs or, if they’re lucky, a World Champs. But an Olympics? The size, the scope, the pure festival madness of it all … The Olympic Games are a whole new level of crazy. They’re bigger and louder than anything else on earth. To be exposed to this so early in my career is such an advantage for me. It should mean that everything that comes afterwards will feel like a cakewalk.
Or maybe an anti-climax.
And I didn’t expect the feeling to hit me quite so soon.
The Sydney Olympics have been incredible. My medals are amazing. It will take months, maybe years, for me to fully comprehend the last couple of weeks. But right now? I am ready to pack up and head home.
‘Stay,’ Mum urges me. ‘Stay and soak it up and try to enjoy yourself. Oh and Leisel, promise me one thing?’
‘Sure,’ I say uncertainly.
‘Go to the Closing Ceremony, will you? No matter what happens during the next few days, going to the Ceremony will give you closure.’
‘Uh, sure thing, Mum.’
Closure? I just want a buddy, someone to hang out with. But Mum thinks I need closure?
Nonetheless, I promise Mum I will get some closure. And I promise her I will hang around for the final week of competition and try to have some fun.
One of the main problems is that at fifteen I can’t go out drinking with the rest of the team, and that seems to be the main way they let their hair down. I could sneak out, of course. Use a fake ID. But that’s hard to do when the whole country knows your face. When you’re ‘that famous kid from the Olympics, the one who’s just fifteen’. No bouncer is ever going to fall for it.
But I bunker down to try to have some fun. I go and watch some of the other sports events, tagging along with some of the older kids on my team. And I march in the Closing Ceremony, although I’m not sure if it really brings closure.
It will be years before I get much of that in my life.
7
Training for Gold
Here’s the worst-kept secret in swimming: everyone wees in the pool. The boys are the worst, turning the pool orange with their vitamin-infused pee, or swimming out to tread water at the 5-metre mark for no reason other than it’s 4.45 a.m., it’s cold and dark and they can’t be bothered getting out of the pool to wee. A bloom of orange trails them back to the wall like an algae bloom. Some people sit on the grate at the side of the pool to do it. It’s a little less antisocial than doing it right in the pool, but gross all the same.
Personally, I prefer to make the trek to the toilets. Aside from anything else, it’s a good way to waste some time and miss a few sets.
There’s trouble when the new ‘super suits’ are introduced. Ever tried weeing when you’re cling-wrapped in rubber? There’s nowhere for it to go. It’s like taking a bath in a hot pool of wee. These things are not designed with weeing in mind.
Pool peeing etiquette. Cold mornings. Early starts …
Life returns to normal after the Sydney Olympics. I slip straight back into my old routine. It’s nice to be home. The Olympics were amazing but I’m more of an everyday life kind of person. I like the rhythm of hard work, the routine of training. I’m more comfortable in Redcliffe than on the world stage, any day. And while winning two silver medals at the Olympics was incredible, it’s only made me more determined to win gold.
I’m still training with Ken, and it’s still as intense as ever. I am up each morning at 4.10 a.m. and standing outside the roller doors of the pool twenty minutes later. But before we can get wet, the covers have to be pulled off the pool. This is a job for the youngest of the team, with no exceptions. Being an Olympian doesn’t grant you any special favours at squad. As the runt, every morning my freezing hands drag on the wet metal wheel and the rollers inch the covers off the pool. I haul and scrape and slip and ache. I get a workout before I get in the water.
We drag down our trackies and shiver and whinge. Then Ken appears on deck, handing out A4-sized whiteboards and issuing us with chinagraph pencils. We take our pencils and begin to write down today’s drill:
Tues. AM.
4 × 250 free/back
8 × 50 drill
3 × 400 individual medley on 6 min 30 sec
5 × 500 freestyle
4 × 200 paddles and fins
10 × 50 kick/drag
So we’re doing a one-kilometre warm-up today, alternating between freestyle and backstroke. Then a 400-metre drill. Our main set includes individual medley (all strokes), plus 2.5 kilometres of freestyle. This is followed by a swim-down using paddles and fins for 800 metres, and then finally 500 metres of kicking, wearing a drag suit. That’s almost 6.5 kilometres all up.
Faces drop. Lips pout. But there is no such thing as an easy session. We scribble down our sessions from Ken’s main board, then stick our pencils to the board with a blob of Blu Tack stuck on the end. We will use the Blu Tack again
at the end of the week to rub off our sessions after they’ve been recorded in our logbooks.
Right now, though, we kick off our thongs and slap on our goggles. We are in the water at 4.45 a.m., running and diving and breaking the glass-like surface. Maximum impact. Minimum cold. We do anything to get out of this cold morning air.
There are tears this morning, just as there are most days. Stinging eyes, goggles full. ‘It’s the chlorine!’ we say if anyone notices us sniffling through each set or sobbing at the turns. Why am I doing this? I want to go home. Will this be my mantra forever? I want to go home.
One hour gone. Then slowly, another. And then at last the session is over. I survived! I made it! And suddenly things don’t seem so bad. A hot shower. A bowl of cereal. Now we’re all laughing and joking and mucking around. ‘Nice goggle marks!’ ‘Who nicked my deodorant?’ And then: ‘See you again this arvo!’ Because remember? We’re doing this all over again this afternoon after school.
Training never changes. It never will.
The other thing that doesn’t change – will never change – is Ken. It’s like he prides himself on it. He is consistently tough, consistently consistent. This man will be poolside for the rest of his life.
So when event camp rolls around, we know what to expect from Ken. Event camps are held each year and bring together the top fifteen swimmers at that time in a particular stroke. This year, the breaststrokers are off to Cairns. All the top coaches are invited along. The idea is that we’ll all bond a little and have a break from our usual training routine, while getting some valuable racing experience.
But Ken sees event camp as an opportunity for one thing and one thing only: showing off. With all the best coaches in Australia assembled in one place, and the cream of the competition there, just asking to be psyched out, Ken is in his element. He’s at his gruelling, merciless best. Look what I make my swimmers do! his walk says. He strides poolside, his pants hoisted high. You call that a set? This is a set! His mouth twitches under his ever-present black toothbrush moustache.
Ken isn’t satisfied unless he has worn down the best swimmers that the rest of the country has to offer.
We start our day with 5 × [4 × 50 brst – 45 on 3:30]: four lots of 50-metre breaststroke (that is, 200 metres of breaststroke in total), and each lap on a 45-second time cycle. I do the lap in about 36 seconds, which means I have 9 seconds to rest before it’s time to go again. This whole set is on 3:30 minutes, which leaves me with about 30 seconds of rest between each round. And there are five rounds, or 1 kilometre, of this to endure.
Or then there’s 20 × 100-metre breaststroke, with each 100 metres to be completed in 1:30 minutes. That’s about 30 minutes of solid swimming, on a freestyle time cycle. I know professional swimmers who couldn’t do two laps that quickly in freestyle, let alone breaststroke! I touch the wall at 1:24 and have six seconds to catch my breath before I have to go again. And we are supposed to keep this up for 30 minutes?
Or the worst one: 20 × 100-metre breaststroke/freestyle combinations on 1:30, with a dive. That means one lap of breaststroke, then one lap of freestyle, quickly jump out of the pool and then dive in again. And this whole rigmarole is to happen in under 90 seconds. And be repeated for half an hour.
It is insanity. People cry. People throw up at the side of the pool. People drop out, one by one, until I am the only person left in the pool. Which is exactly what Ken wanted. Look at me! his demeanour shouts. He strides along the pool deck, trying not to grin. Look at me and my fifteen-year-old prodigy with the Olympic-sized heart! He keeps pace with me, walking along the edge of the pool and willing me on.
There’s no-one else in the whole of Australia who can keep up with me right now. There’s no-one in Australia who’s dumb enough to try. Ken’s sets are gruelling. They’re ridiculous. But because he is my coach, because the gauntlet has been thrown down, I plough on. I will make this happen. I will cry and quiver and burn till it is done.
When it is done, I am inwardly proud. But I am also fuming. I am raging about how Ken went about it. I hate showing off. I hate being watched. If I’d completed those sets at home, in private, unnoticed by anyone else, I would be happy. But to do it here in front of everyone else? That’s not my style.
I am still fuming later that day when we all go out on a boat trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We’re bonding, us breaststrokers, us fish people, at the Reef. Bonding by spending an afternoon out of the water: on top of it instead of in it for a change. Tarnee White is here, and all the boys from our team, including Regan Harrison, Ryan Mitchell and Brenton Rickard. Regan is my mate, but Ryan intimidates me. He’s so suave, so confident. Confident people scare me. But we’re all here today, all in it together.
Once we’re out at the reef, we get the chance to jump in the water again. People plop over the side to scuba-dive.
I’m on my way to get kitted out when Ken approaches and stops me. ‘You’re not going in.’
‘Huh?’
‘You’re not allowed to swim. I don’t want you swimming.’
I don’t want you swimming. Coming from Ken, these words sound comical: ridiculous.
‘What do you mean? That’s what I do. I swim.’
I don’t add: And you’re not my dad. You can’t tell me what to do. But I’d dearly love to.
‘You’re not swimming here,’ he says. ‘Not in the ocean. You’ll get an ear infection.’
Then he wanders off and joins the rest of the coaching staff.
If I was riled before, now I am seriously mad. Who does he think he is? He can’t tell me what to do!
But he can and he does. He is my coach and is not to be argued with. Because of my age, my relationship with Ken is very much a parent–child one. I am the kid he never had. I am by far the youngest swimmer in his charge, so he takes his responsibilities with me very seriously. I am allowed no opportunity to make mistakes (or to learn any consequences from making them).
To be fair, Ken is more of a father than my real father ever was. He is also much stricter than Mum: Mum is a firm believer in skinning a knee rather than being wrapped in cottonwool. She’s a have-a-go Mum, a be-it-on-your-own-head Mum. She’s fail-and-learn, not stay-safe-at-home.
When Dad left, Mum said things were up to me now as far as staying in touch with him went. ‘It is completely your choice,’ she said, ‘whether you stay in contact with your father or not. If you choose to still see him, if that makes you happy, then go for it. But I will not have an opinion. It has to come from you.’ We were in the car on the way to training when she said that. Given what she was going through at the time – the separation, adjusting to being a single parent – I was impressed with her strength. She was not in touch with my father at all, but she was happy to support me if I stayed in contact. She was adamant: ‘I am not going to persuade you either way. This is your choice. It is your decision. I can’t make it for you.’
Ken, on the other hand, is more than happy to make my choices for me, more than happy to stop me from diving on the Great Barrier Reef in the pristine ocean waters that are probably ten times cleaner than some of the pools I swim in every day.
I’m sure he didn’t tell Geoff Huegill not to go in the water. Geoff would have said, ‘Screw you!’ And rightly so.
But I cannot say that. I am little Leisel. So, after all my back-breaking hard work in the pool that morning, I miss out on scuba-diving in the afternoon. According to Ken, I am too young and too precious to risk getting hurt. I am his little protégé. Everyone else is allowed to go swimming but my little ear canals are too sensitive. Yeah, right! I am old enough to train in the water all morning long, but by mid-afternoon I am too young to go swimming? Ridiculous. I’ve swum with a broken toe before! That didn’t stop me training. But now he’s worried about my ear canals? I scowl. I sit with crossed arms. He makes me feel like a racehorse, not a teenage girl, like my body is a machine to be maintained, not to be enjoyed. I have no control, no independence.
My relation
ship with Ken is reaching its limits.
There’s no time to dwell on this now though; I’ve got other things to worry about. Shiny things. Gleaming things. We are off to the World Championships in July and this time I want gold.
The 2001 World Aquatic Championships are to be held in Fukuoka, Japan. They will be two weeks of top-notch competition; every major swimming nation in the world (more than twenty countries) will be represented. In terms of prestige and significance, the Worlds are a big deal. But while Fukuoka will be impressive – the Marine Messe indoor pool, for instance, will seat 10,000 spectators and cost US$4 million for the two-week period – it won’t be the same as Sydney last year.
And that’s a good thing! I think to myself. In Sydney I won silver, and this time it will be gold.
Gold, gold, gold.
I was a wildcard in Sydney. No-one, least of all me, seriously thought I would make the final. No-one dreamt I’d win silver. But now in Fukuoka, the pressure is slowly beginning to mount. It’s mostly coming from me, but there is talk from other quarters too. There’s a bit of buzz, a little bit of hype. After Sydney, people are more used to seeing me on the podium in the green and gold. They’ve come to view it as normal. But they are also aware that I am still two months’ shy of my sixteenth birthday, and so no-one dares to hope for too much yet.
I, on the other hand, expect the world. World Championship gold. Gold, gold, gold.
At the team hotel in Fukuoka one morning, our manager gathers us together for the birthday of one of our teammates. When we’re assembled, a cake is produced. A real cake! Chocolate frosting and everything! We are hushed with reverence. A cake is good. A cake is a big deal. Our team dietician is in charge of birthday food around here, and normally we’re only allowed a cupcake or a mini-mud cake – something tiny and portion-controlled, often in a serving for one, which means the birthday boy or girl gets to eat while the rest of us stand around salivating. But this time the dietician has gone all out. She’s been to the beautiful cake store out the front of the hotel and found us a cake in the shape of a fish.
