Body Lengths

by Leisel Jones

  Training seems easier now I have a friend. I’m doing a lighter load these days: four or five kilometres per session, nine sessions each week. I get Friday afternoons off. The rest of my squad are still training like a much younger squad would: ten sessions per week and up to seven kilometres each time they hit the pool. Knock yourselves out, kids! I’ve earnt my stripes. After thirteen years, and more than 50,000 kilometres in the pool, I reckon I deserve my Friday arvos off.

  But despite all my experience, around this time I start to doubt myself. What am I thinking, acting like I can make an Olympic team one more time? Why have I wasted my life for the past three and a half years, pretending I can be an Olympian again? My weight is starting to sneak upwards, my motivation spiralling down. Olympic selections only take the fastest two people in the country in each event, and even then you have to make qualifying time. And I think I can do that? In the state I’m in? Look at me! I’m a mess, a wreck. I’m on antidepressants, and I am still living at home with Mum. I’m on the phone to my sports psych, Lisa, once a week. I’ve just started at a new squad, in a new state. And I think I can make the Olympic team in four months?

  But there is something I am even more afraid of than failing – something that haunts me: the prospect that I might succeed. Do I really want to make another Olympic team? Can I do that to myself? Because qualifying means more effort, more pain, more training. Qualifying for the Olympics means more swimming.

  The thought drives me to 7-Eleven to pick up a donut. And then another. Last week I ate a whole pack of mini-Mars bars. This is my plan. I will self-sabotage to make sure I don’t qualify. Only, because I’m training so hard, my attempts at self-sabotage don’t amount to much. Any poor eating choices I make are like tapping the brake while I still have one foot on the accelerator, going full speed.

  26

  London Calling

  In March 2012, I find myself at the Adelaide Aquatic Centre for the Australian Swimming Championships, which double as the selection trials for the London Olympic Games in July. Of course I’m here. You think I’m going to miss this? No way.

  I am here because I have come too far not to be. I am too stubborn to let myself just drift away.

  I am not bothering with the 200-metre event at London. It’s 100 metres or nothing, 100 metres or bust. I don’t really want to be at trials. I don’t want to be anywhere much. I am still struggling to get through the days, still struggling to be happy, to be my old self again. But I’m here and I force myself to commit. Let’s do this. Let’s get this job done.

  I feel a strange sense of relief at trials: as if whatever happens now, things are out of my hands. Win or lose. Qualify or not. I can’t control these things. It’s no longer my decision. Whether I go on or not is not up to me. My job is just to give this thing one last go. My job is just to give it a crack.

  And I do. I swim my heart out in the heats and make it to the semis. Then I win my semi and progress to the finals.

  I am stoked, dazed. I feel woozy with relief. Then just woozy. I stagger and hold a hand to my forehead. I feel like my brain is swimming in fluid. I feel the way you do when you have a virus. I wave to my coach and call him over to help me. Something’s not right. Something’s definitely wrong.

  Inside the medical rooms, a doctor I’ve never met before tells me she needs to run some tests.

  ‘We should probably do a blood test because you’re very overweight,’ she tells me.

  Sorry, what? I’m very overweight? I’m currently the number two breaststroker in the world and I’m swimming at the Olympic trials. How overweight could I possibly be?

  ‘There could be something wrong with your thyroid,’ she adds quickly, sensing my mood.

  Really? Very overweight, did you say? If only you knew what I’ve been through to get here, I think. Sierra Nevada flashes through my mind.

  ‘Thanks, but my thyroid is dandy,’ I say.

  No-one knows I’m on antidepressants, and that’s the real reason I’m putting on weight. No amount of donuts could cause this weight gain, not with the distances I’m swimming every day. Not to mention all the dry-land training I’m doing. This doctor is not the first person to notice my changing physique. But what do I say? Do I tell them how I have been depressed for years? That things got so bad I was going to kill myself? Or do I let them think I’ve just had one too many desserts?

  I’m not as strict as I used to be, but this is my fourth time round at the Olympics and I’m not doing another bloody soup diet. I am sick of being disciplined, sick of being unhappy. Even so, old habits die hard and a ‘bad’ diet for an athlete is still pretty amazing by normal standards. Throw in forty-odd kilometres in the pool each week, plus five or six gym sessions, and you could hardly blame much of my weight gain on indulgence. No, most of it is down to depression and antidepressants. But I’m not prepared to tell anyone that.

  I am still woozy with a virus when I swim in the final. But I don’t feel too bad once I hit the water. I swim a good race, my own race. I am happy with that. When I come second to Leiston Pickett and my time, 1:07.64, is under qualifying time, I am stunned.

  I made it? I made it! I am off to the Olympics again. I look around at the screaming fans in the stands in astonishment.

  ‘You did it!’ Lisa cheers down the phone to me later, when I’m back in my hotel room. ‘Just look what you can do!’

  ‘Look what you can do even when you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel,’ I joke. I am happy; I can joke for the first time in weeks.

  ‘Yeah, when you’re really, really desperate!’ Lisa laughs.

  And it’s true. Everyone competing at trial is in peak physical condition. They’re all prepped, primed and ready to go. They’re young, hungry and out to win, whereas I just feel grateful to still be alive. I am so underprepared, so underdone compared to these kids.

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent of the population couldn’t make the Olympic team at their best, and here you are qualifying at your near-worst!’ jokes Lisa. ‘I’m proud of you,’ she adds. ‘Look at what you can do.’

  And for a moment I am proud of me too. I’m pleased I had the guts to stick it out this far, and I’m chuffed I’ve made the team. I’ve booked my ticket and that’s all I had to do. Mission accomplished. I’m stoked.

  This baby is off to the Olympics, again.

  I go back to Brisbane and work hard. I work my butt off. And there’s plenty there to work with, if the gossip back at squad is to be believed. ‘Too fat, too slow,’ that’s the word on the street. What, you don’t think I hear the other girls talking in the change rooms? Before trials, things at St Peter’s Western were pretty tough; afterwards they are just horrible. There are cliques and ‘in-crowds’; there is social exclusion. There are rumours and narky comments and there’s bitching galore. I try to just ignore it, to get on with the job. I am too old and too tired to be bothered with this.

  But one day I swear I will confront the ringleader of it all. If she pushes me too far, I will have it out with her. That’s my style. That’s how I do things. I’d rather say it to your face than talk behind your back, any day. So I will wait until she is alone, until she’s not protected by her little gang of followers, and then I will confront her and ask her: why? Why the hell are you making my life such a misery? What have I ever done to you?

  Ah, but I can already guess what will happen. She will look at me blankly with those doe-brown eyes of hers, as if to say ‘Who me?’

  Yes, you, Stephanie Rice.

  I’ve been told it is Steph who is saying nasty things behind my back and bad-mouthing me to my coach. She has dropped me completely since those early days at squad, when she was my BFF. Now she seems hostile and it’s making my life at training a misery.

  I don’t care if people like me or not. That’s their prerogative. Not everyone is going to like me, and I’m fine with that. But the sort of bitchy behaviour Steph Rice dishes out is unnecessary and hurtful, and I won’t stand for that. I’d much rather have it
out with her if she has an issue with me.

  But I don’t say anything to her now. I bide my time. Instead, I watch as the rest of the Aussie contingent leaves for London while I stay behind. They’re going three weeks ahead of competition, which is too long for me. I’ll fly later in July. Besides, I have doctors’ appointments at home to attend. I see specialists: gastroenterologists. I have bleeding stomach ulcers that will not heal. I stay in Brisbane and endure the indignity of colonoscopies.

  27

  Toxic Team

  I arrive in London and discover our Australian swimming team could also use a colonic. The whole thing could do with a cold hose down.

  We have a new head coach for the 2012 Games, or an acting one, at least. Leigh Nugent is officially in charge (having been acting in the role since 2009), and this is his first Olympics since he was head coach at Athens in 2004. Back then, he was only in the role for a short time before he left to resume working with the youth squad. Now he’s back in the top job after Alan Thomson took leave.

  The other difference in our team is that it’s packed full of newbie swimmers, many of whom have never been to the Olympics before. Not that you’d know it. With their sense of entitlement and their obsession with fame, these Gen Ys are acting as if they’ve long ago earned their stripes. It’s funny, given that there were much bigger names on the Aussie team in years gone by and they never acted like they owned the pool: people like Hackett, Thorpe, O’Neill and Trickett. Serious stars. Back then we all encouraged each other; we pushed each other to be better athletes. Hackett and co. had every right to be full of themselves – there was something to be full about! – and yet they always remained all about the team, not just about themselves.

  So our new-look Aussie team feels anything but fresh. It feels rotten. Gone bad. Decidedly off. There’s no camaraderie, no team spirit. Not much sense of a team at all. The culture is terrible; people’s attitudes stink. This squad needs a clean out. This swimming team is toxic.

  In London, Aussie swimming is all about the individual. It’s about my performance, my sponsors and my horde of Twitter followers. About selfies, image and ‘This is my Games, don’t you know?’ Our team is ruled by a small elite of big personalities; everyone else is pushed to the narrow periphery. There’s no sense of encouragement or support. And there aren’t many friendships here either.

  For a start, we can’t use the term ‘rookies’ anymore for the new members of the team. Rookies is politically incorrect, it’s offensive, we’re told. We must use the more obscure ‘tyros’ instead (which sounds like a very American way of saying ‘novice’ to me). And Rookies Night is thrown out too. When I think back to how we dressed up and poked fun at ourselves during Rookies Night back in 2000, I feel sad that these kids are missing out on the fun. But these new tyros are too special to have a laugh at themselves. It’s too embarrassing, too uncool. Better to do Stilnox initiations instead.

  Also out the window is the expectation that we will support one another during competition. In the good old days, whenever you weren’t swimming you were required to sit in the stands and watch your teammates swim. Heats, semis, finals, whatever. You attended and you cheered. We supported each other and we were happy to do it. We did what was right by the team. In 2012, however, things have been updated. We no longer have to go along and watch our teammates swim if we think we have somewhere better to be. Somewhere like bed. Or the games room. Or wherever else we might feel like being. People are skipping sessions, or turning up halfway through after deliberately missing the bus. And nothing is said or done, no-one is punished in response. It is poor form. During the Don Talbot era we would have been berated if we dared to try something like this. Back then there were standards – gold standards – and we all knew exactly what they were.

  Worse, however, than those swimmers who don’t turn up are the ones who come along and then cheer for other countries. That’s right: there are people wearing the green and gold who are sitting in the stands gunning for the USA, for Britain or for Japan – for anyone but Australia to win. I cannot believe my eyes. When Emily Seebohm lines up to race Missy Franklin, Steph Rice nearly shouts herself hoarse cheering for the American girl to win. It seems we’re uncool compared to the States.

  But then James Magnussen steps onto the blocks and suddenly everyone is doing it. There’s a whole bunch of Aussie swimmers cheering for Maggie to lose. And yet the Australian swimming management doesn’t say a word.

  Prior to racing, we have a special ceremony inside the Aussie swimming camp. It’s an initiation of sorts, our version of handing out the baggy greens, and it happens at the start of every Australian swimming Olympic campaign. This year the ceremony takes place in a darkened basement, deep underneath the Olympic village. Here in the low light, to the strains of Waltzing Matilda, each swimmer – old or new, medal-cert or up-and-comer – is met by Laurie Lawrence. He shakes their hand earnestly, congratulates them on being chosen to represent their country, and presents them with the pocket square from the team blazer, showcased under glass, in a hardwood frame. The pocket square is only small. It’s forest green, edged with green and navy grosgrain ribbon, and it bears the golden embroidery of the Australian coat of arms – the kangaroo, the emu and our Federation star – along with the Olympic rings and the place and date of these Olympics: ‘London 2012’. The frame has a plaque for the athlete’s name, and receiving it is one of the proudest experiences you could ever hope to have.

  Even after four Olympics, the ceremony still gives me goosebumps. It’s a beautiful occasion – and a proud one too. What greater honour is there than representing your country?

  We have a team photo taken, and all sing the national anthem together. And then it’s over and we’re back upstairs, standing blinking in the daylight again. It takes, maybe, forty-five minutes all up.

  This year, Steph Rice and James Magnussen (Maggie) and I are due to have a press conference together immediately after the ceremony, so I hang around in the foyer to wait for them to come up from the basement. But then Maggie saunters in from outside the building.

  ‘Maggie, were you in that meeting?’ I ask.

  ‘Nah.’ He walks past, distracted, looking for someone else.

  I trail behind him. ‘Why not?’

  He can’t see who he’s looking for. He seems frustrated. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Why weren’t you at the meeting just now?’ I ask.

  ‘I didn’t want to go.’

  I can feel my blood boiling. ‘You didn’t want to go?’

  ‘Yeah, my coach said I didn’t have to go if I didn’t want to. That I could rest instead.’

  ‘Since when was that the rule?’ I ask loudly. ‘I’ve been to a few of these things now and that’s never been the rule. In fact, the general consensus is that this is a bit of a proud moment and that receiving your pocket is one of the greatest privileges there is as an athlete. Most athletes would kill for it. And you couldn’t be bothered because you’re too tired?’

  Maggie looks at me like I’m crazy, like it’s none of my business what he does. Like we’re not on the same team or something. The papers have taken to calling me ‘mother hen’ on this trip, because of the way I’m looking out for the younger kids. Right now I don’t feel like a mother hen. But I do feel like I’m doing some hen-pecking.

  Hen-pecking that Maggie could do without, apparently. He shrugs. ‘Yeah, well. We’ve been travelling and stuff and I thought …’

  ‘You thought what? Who do you think you are? We’re all fucking tired, buddy. This is my fourth time around the block. You think I’m not tired? If anyone’s going to be fed up of these things, don’t you think it might be me? But no – I’m proud to be here. I’m proud for our team to come together and to sing the national anthem and to shake Laurie’s hand and to get my pocket square. You shouldn’t have go along. You should want to be there. You should want this thing! This is your first Olympic team and it’s a fucking privilege to do this, buddy!’

  Mag
gie rolls his eyes and slopes away. What does he care what I think?

  Why do I care so much? I can’t help it: I do care. I care a lot. This team is important to me. And the fact that our gold-medal hopeful can’t be bothered turning up to this ceremony is pretty pathetic. People are taking it upon themselves to bend the rules here and do whatever suits them, not what’s best for the team. And I hate it. All Maggie had to do was turn up and look interested. To sit on his arse for forty-five minutes. That ceremony makes the hairs on my arms stand up, it makes me swell with pride. With Aussie pride. This is us taking on the rest of the world! And he couldn’t be bothered? What a terrible attitude. During the Games, wherever the Olympic flag is displayed throughout London it must fly higher than the Union Jack. (This is a requirement of the International Olympic Committee as a sign that the Olympics is bigger than any one nationality.) I think about James Magnussen’s attitude towards being an Australian representative swimmer. No-one is asking him to choose between seeking Olympic glory and being an Aussie. He can do both. James Magnussen is not a flagpole; he doesn’t have to put one higher than the other. And yet he still puts himself before the rest of the team.

  What’s more, he’s not the only one.

  I eat alone in the Olympic village. I am fed up with them all. I read, listen to my iPod and relax on my own.

  Then one afternoon I see Stephanie Rice on her own in the change rooms. It is the first time I have seen her without her posse. I see my opportunity and I’m not going to pass it up.

  ‘Ricey?’ I start. ‘What the hell is your problem with me?’

  She looks up in surprise.

  ‘When I started at St Peter’s you were as nice as pie to me,’ I say. ‘What happened? What changed? I’ve heard that you’re spreading rumours behind my back. What is your problem? What is it? I’m not competing against you. I’ve done nothing to upset you. I’m no threat to you in any way. We don’t like the same boys, don’t swim in the same races. So what is it? Do you just not like me? Do I annoy you? Is that it? Well, that’s fine. But for God’s sake just leave me alone!’