Body Lengths

by Leisel Jones

  So I am. I do. There’s less than two hours until I’m due in the pool, till I’m back to the business of being an Olympian.

  I have less than two hours to prove what I’m worth.

  Picture Section 2

  Trying to find my smile in Sierra Nevada, 2009.

  ‘This is my office. I know what to do.’ Focusing during the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games.

  With Blair Evans and Meagen Nay in Shanghai, 2011.

  In Shanghai in 2011 with Kelly Stubbins.

  It’s all about balance: hitting the gym in Brisbane in the lead-up to the London Olympics.

  With backstroker Sophie Eddington at training camp in Hawaii, 2010.

  The other athletes head off to the Opening Ceremony as we watch from our balcony in the London Olympic village.

  Watching the London Opening Ceremony from at home in the village.

  Old habits die hard: my painted nails at London 2012, bearing the initials of our relay team (Emily Seebohm, Alicia Coutts, Mel Schlanger).

  Never leave your hair extensions lying around – helping myself to a mullet in the village at London 2012.

  Getting some closure at the London Closing Ceremony with Meagen Nay.

  At the London Closing Ceremony.

  Mum and Nanna in early 2013, just months before Nanna died.

  Biting my nails before going on stage for TedX Kurlipa, where I talked about success in 2015.

  20

  Relief

  Thinking back, I can still remember the relief. Sheer, cool, white relief. Relief so palpable I could wear it like a blanket. Relief so real I could smell it.

  I feel good going into the race. I stand on the edge of the pool and splash myself with water to lessen the shock of the cold when I dive in. Despite the events of the last few hours, I feel calm and relaxed: quietly powerful. I am one hundred per cent in the zone. Around me is a circus of colour and light. There are blue bleachers and blue banners; the blue of Beijing 2008 is everywhere. There are flags of every nation, every colour of the rainbow, swinging from the rafters. And there must be 17,000 people in here today, all shouting, laughing, waiting and hoping. But I block them out, I don’t hear a thing. The only voice I hear is the one in my head speaking softly and gently for once.

  This is my office. I know what to do.

  Every moment has led to this. I know how to do this. I don’t think about anything but where I am in this instant.

  I am standing behind the blocks. I am here in the moment. I am now. It’s as if the more I have to block out, the more present I feel.

  The first whistle blows and we’re ready to start. I think about what I have learnt over the years. From Rohan and his enthusiastic, US-style cheers. From Stephan: ‘Let’s control the start. We can’t control the last 25 metres, because we’re not there yet. Let’s control the start and get the best one we can.’ This is my office. I am bouncing and windmilling my arms. I am blowing out air. I think of Ken and his advice: ‘Just swim bloody fast.’ I think of Col back in Burpengary with his backyard barbie and his Mars bars and his bloody besser brick. I hear Mum speaking to me now, with her simple mantra: ‘Do your best, Leisel.’ That’s what she always says: just do your best.

  I will do my best. I will control the start. I will swim bloody hard. I will do them all proud. I will get that gold.

  The second whistle blows and I step onto the blocks and arrange myself for my two-footed start. I shift and blow out, and wriggle my hands.

  I wait for the whistle. I have waited my whole life.

  A pause. Then the whistle. Away we go!

  I’m off and I’m in, and oh it feels good. I break the water and head into slipstream. Hands up, palms down. Think slick, think slick. I feel smooth and beautiful. I feel easy in the water. This is how it’s meant to be.

  The water doesn’t gush past today. Instead, it surrounds me and takes hold of me. It is carrying me along. I press my hands down and slide into my pull-out, breaking smoothly at the ten. Control, control. Don’t rip, don’t rip. I ease into my 42-stroke rate as easily as slipping a car into gear.

  Easy, easy. Today it’s so easy.

  This is my office. I know what to do. This is my office, and today it is easy.

  Today I am a fish. I am at home. I am feeling the water. Holding it. I am sleek and slick, smooth and light.

  Three long strokes and I’m 25 metres in. Now is the time I begin to build. Build, build, build. I shift up a gear. Build, build, build. I am feeling it now.

  I am the first to the 50-metre mark, and the first off again as well. I hit the wall fast but with absolute control. Hands to feet, hands to feet. Hit, flick, swish. I am gone. All those hours in Rohan’s mini pool have paid off. I pull up and turn faster in the water than most people could on dry land.

  I am 0.2 of a second off the world-record split at the turn. But I don’t need a stopwatch to tell me that. Today all of the elements are working together. I glide off the wall. Slick and smooth, long and lean. I am where I am meant to be.

  But then it’s time to build again. Pull, breathe, pull, breathe. Build, build, build. I shift up another gear. I can feel the burn. I can feel the fire.

  I explode into the final 25 metres. Build, build, build. My lungs are on fire. Build, build, build. Pain engulfs me. My forearms are burning; my fingers are stiff. My legs feel as though they are made of dead weights.

  Build, build, build. I am burning alive. I can hear myself breathing. I am ragged and old.

  But I am steaming home now, powerful and strong. I am coming home fast. I am gasping and burning. I hit the wall hard.

  I am empty: done. I have given all I’ve got.

  I breathe hard and I cannot see. I turn and blink. I am blind.

  I squint to see if my life has changed.

  It has.

  I’ve got gold. I’ve done it.

  Ugh, thank God. Thank God for that.

  Relief floods my tired brain. It seeps from my ears and out every pore. I’ve finally won the gold. It’s unbelievable.

  Oh. Thank. God. For. That. I’ve won.

  I smile, I think. Did I manage a smile? I am still gasping to breathe in air. I single out Mum in the crowd and I give her a wave. Next to her, Marty pumps his fist in the air. I lean on the lane rope and hug Mirna Jukic from Austria. She came second and is grinning from ear to ear. I hug Rebecca Soni from the USA after that. She is third and I couldn’t be happier for her. I thump her back in congratulations, flashing my racing-red fingernails.

  I spring from the pool, calm now. I’m relieved. I do my media interview, talking to my friend Dan Kowalski, in a light-headed daze.

  And then I see Rohan and I run up for a hug. He squeezes my shoulders and pats my back. ‘You did it. You did this,’ he says to me.

  ‘I feel bad,’ I tell him. ‘All I can feel is relief.’

  It’s true. It’s as if I have no other emotions. I’m not happy, not even excited. All I can feel is relief. Sheer, pure relief.

  ‘Yeah, but you did it. You got that monkey off your back.’

  Monkey? I turn to my coach and this time I smile for sure. ‘Rohan, that was no monkey. It was a silverback gorilla.’

  21

  Fallout

  ABC radio reports my win: ‘Another gold medal in the pool in Beijing, and this one was a long time coming. Leisel Jones has been the dominant women’s breaststroke swimmer in the world for most of the last eight years. But there’s been one thing missing from her trophy cabinet: an individual Olympic gold medal … Now that has changed. Leisel is lethal! She’s finally got that gold. It’s 1:05.17, outside the world record. But who cares? Finally, Leisel has done it! She’s got the full set!’

  The full set. That’s what I have now. The full box and dice. The kit and the caboodle. But most importantly, I finally have peace. I’ve done it. It’s finished. I’ve answered the question. I don’t have to justify or explain any more. I have nothing left to prove, no more races to swim. I don’t have to go to another O
lympics again.

  I soak in every minute of the medal presentation. I absorb it, relish it, cling to it tightly. This is why, I tell myself as I stand on the podium. This is the reason for all the 4 a.m. starts, the hard kilometres in the pool, the weight vests, the chin-ups and all the bloody soups. It was all for this moment: it must be worthwhile. It has to mean something. I’m so grateful. It has to be worthwhile.

  This is for the hard work, the hard times. For all the times I have come second. It’s for every time I’ve had to stand in second place and hear the American national anthem!

  I’ve waited my whole life for this. Other girls dream of their wedding day or of being a princess or something. But all I wanted was this: the green and the gold. Especially the gold! But just as a wedding day whizzes by fast, so does a medal ceremony. I try to take it all in, but it flies by. I want to bottle it so I can open it up and taste it any time I like.

  But I do feel earthed, in the moment. I do not waste a single second. I sing our anthem and I swell with pride. This is for something greater than me.

  I am composed and complete: in control. I walk around the stadium, waving and thanking the fans. But then I spot Mum in the crowd and she’s run down to the front of the stands. She is hanging over the fence and she’s waving like a dag. Like a POO. God, I love that woman. And this is when I lose the plot. I am bawling – she is bawling – we are a silly, wet mess. Mum leans down and I touch her hand. It’s the only way I can say how much she means to me, how much she has done for me. Say thank you, thank you, thank you some more. For all the driving, all the cooking. All the everything. Ever.

  And in this moment, this one right here? This is when it’s all completely worth it.

  After the 100-metre event, I have less than forty-eight hours to turn myself around for the 200-metre heat. I rest, train and rest some more. I leave my phone with Rohan. I can’t see Marty (or Mum, or anyone else for that matter) until I have finished racing, so I don’t do anything to celebrate my gold medal. I just get back to work.

  I qualify for the 200 metres just behind Rebecca Soni from the USA. But when the Friday morning final rolls around, I feel off. To be honest, I just feel exhausted. I’m not myself at warm-up and I can’t do my 4 × 50s (descending) like I usually can. After the elation of winning the 100 metres, and the emotional turmoil of my week with Marty, when I hit the water, I just don’t feel like me.

  It shows in my race and I come second to Rebecca Soni in a time of 2:22.05. I am numb when I finish. Not elated, not disappointed. Not anything at all. I exit the pool and do my poolside interview.

  Then I stagger away and collapse on the deck.

  Everything goes black and for a few moments there I’m worried I will lose consciousness. But, although the room wobbles and swims in front of me as though this giant bubble really might float away, I manage to hang on.

  ‘I’m fine. I’m fine,’ I insist, as a crowd gathers around me. ‘I just dug so deep in that last 50 metres, I kinda forgot to breathe.’

  This is true, in part. I did forget to breathe. But I’m not wobbly and faint and feeling sick to my core just because I am short of breath. If I ate a decent meal once in a while; if I didn’t have boyfriend dramas; if I was nicer to myself occasionally; then maybe I wouldn’t be laid out on the tiles for the world to see, hoping the TV cameras don’t get a shot of my swimming-tog wedgie.

  I am done. Physically, emotionally, mentally wrecked. I start to feel pretty bit gutted I didn’t win the 200 metres. I should have won it – just think: I could have been in the running for three gold at one Olympics.

  But then I realise I just didn’t have it in me. I have nothing left in the tank. And that is some consolation. I tell the press later that I gave it everything, I couldn’t have done any more; it just didn’t happen for me on the day. So I don’t feel like I lost the gold: I feel like I won the silver. I decide I’m not disappointed, just relieved. Relieved it’s done. Relieved I survived. Relieved that this week is almost over.

  Almost over. First, of course, there’s the medley relay and our chance to give our old foes, the USA, a good spanking.

  I love the relay. It’s always so much fun. But today, as Emily Seebohm, Jessicah Schipper and I are in the marshalling area waiting for Libby Trickett (formerly Libby Lenton) to arrive, things start to go pear-shaped. Libby’s not here yet because she’s out in the race pool, swimming her heart out in the 50-metre freestyle final. This is Libby’s event, her big chance to shine, but instead of winning gold she fails to medal at all. This is bad. This is very, very bad.

  ‘Right,’ I say to the girls. ‘Libby will be coming in here in a minute and she will be angry. She will be pissed. She will be absolutely filthy after that race.’ I train with Libby. And I know when she comes into the marshalling area she will not be skipping. Who would be? I sure as hell wouldn’t.

  ‘What we’re going to do is actively change her attitude,’ I tell them. ‘We’re going to sing, we’re going to dance, we’re going to be absolute idiots. We will be over-the-top and loud and ridiculous and fun – and we will turn her around and make her happy. You in?’

  ‘Yup,’ says Schipper.

  ‘Let’s do it,’ says Seebohm.

  The American team are deadly serious. In their hoodies and headphones, they are here to win. They don’t talk, don’t smile, don’t communicate at all among their team. Do they use telepathy? I wonder. How are they so silent?

  We are the polar opposite. We are loud and proud and not afraid of bad singing. When Libby arrives, she is just as I predicted, but we are determined to lift her up.

  ‘Forget about it,’ I tell her. ‘I get it. You’re pissed. I would feel exactly the same.’ She shoots me a black look.

  ‘But that race was so ten minutes ago. Leave that shit at the door, Trickett. And prepare to have fun!’ She raises one eyebrow sceptically.

  But to Libby’s credit she does a complete one-eighty. It’s not easy to change your attitude like that, in such a short time, but within minutes she is singing and dancing and being as obnoxious and rude as the rest of us. It’s big of her.

  And dammit, we have fun. ‘Screw you guys,’ is the message our bad dancing sends to the USA. ‘Screw you,’ we say with our sprinklers, our moonwalking and our mashed potato. You and your serious attitudes. You who are so cool. We’re Australian and we’re loud! We’re here to have a good time!

  We are Australian and we are here to be ourselves.

  The USA get off to a flying start with 100-metre backstroke gold medallist Natalie Coughlin, and we are back in fourth place at the end of the first leg. But I am having none of that and I swim my guts out and bring us up to poll position. By the time Jessicah Schipper finishes the butterfly leg we have a three-metre advantage over the Americans, before Libby brings it home in her usual style.

  We win the race in world-record time. We win the race our way.

  Aussie-style. Aussie-girl style.

  Oh, yeah: all six of Australia’s gold medals in the pool at Beijing are won by its women.

  As soon as I finish racing, I check out of the Olympic village. I’ll be back for the Closing Ceremony. (Yes, closure, Mum, closure.) But that’s it. I’m in a rush to see Marty, to spend some time with him and sort things out, so he and I move into the shoebox serviced apartment with Mum. She stays for only a few more days, and then finally Marty and I are alone.

  And then the real fights start.

  Never have 50 square metres felt so tight. Marty and I are constantly at one another’s throats: arguing, bickering, driving each other mad. There is one moment when he threatens to go home, and I am so angry and so stubborn that I agree that, yes, he should. But he doesn’t go through with it.

  During the week after my wins I’m required to do a lot of media stuff. Interviews and signings. Marty knows the deal. He’s been there and done that a hundred times himself. And yet he puts pressure on me to skip my commitments and hang out with him instead.

  ‘This is my
time to shine,’ I tell him. ‘I finally made it.’

  But he sulks when I tell him I’ve got interviews to do, and I can feel myself being pulled in two very different directions.

  Make that three. Because I’m missing out on time with my teammates, too. The rest of the Aussie contingent are back in the village and I’m keen to see them, to hang out with them. Especially my relay team girls. I want to party! Let my hair down! Gold, schmold: the best part about the Olympics is the parties. Put 10,000 fit, ripped, mostly twenty-somethings together – twenty-somethings who are on a high, who are having perhaps the greatest experience of their lives and who have been working their arses off for the last four years to be here; who have been denied alcohol and fast food and going out and doing all the things that twenty-somethings do – put these people together in a village for two weeks and see what happens.

  And did I mention everything’s free? Marty and I go to one party – the Speedo party – and the food, the booze, the whole shebang is free. They’re handing out stuff left, right and centre. Freebies. Gift bags. And this is common. All the major sponsors are doing it. Red Bull, Omega, Nike. It’s huge. It’s chaos. It is so much fun.

  But I skip most of that to hang out with Marty. I pass on going out with my teammates and going nuts, being stupid. Pass on dancing and drinking and losing my shoes at 3 a.m. All that dumb stuff everyone does as an eighteen-year-old but that most athletes never have the chance to do because we have to be up for training at 4 a.m. the next morning. But now, quick! Here’s your chance! Here’s your chance to go crazy!