In at the Deep End Page 3

  I thought I was capable of doing it at that time, although I was a bit over-rested. I’d missed out on the 400 metres freestyle but it was all about the 1500, nothing else mattered.

  In the final I went out for it and knew I was going to win straight away, knew I was going to swim under fifteen minutes. I remember that with the last one hundred metres to go I was on thirteen minutes fifty-eight; the crowd went absolutely wild. Every coach, every swimmer, was waving. I remember breathing towards them every time for inspiration. The roar was enormous and when I finished the feeling was one of relief because it was all over. The Olympic trials are so emotional and it doesn’t matter how confident you are, even if you know you’re going to get it, it’s still a massive relief when it’s all done.

  I gave Mum a hug, Dad a hug and Dave a hug because even he was emotional. Now we could move on again.

  Chapter Seven

  Heading for Athens

  Before we move on to the lead-up to Athens and the Olympics in 2004, there’s something I should explain. You will see the word ‘taper’ mentioned a few times in this book, and it’s something swimmers often refer to … so what is it?

  A taper starts three weeks out from a big meeting, and it means that each week the training volume will come down. For example, from seventy-five thousand metres of swimming to sixty-five thousand the next week, then to fifty-five and between forty-five and fifty thousand metres in the final week.

  Also the distance of my main sets, the individual parts of sessions, will come down from three thousand metres the first week to two and a half thousand and gradually decrease, with the balance of the swims changing from endurance-based to speed-based as you become more race-specific. You get a couple of lie-ins as well.

  The reason we taper is that when we train, we train very hard and very intensively. Your body is not sharp, it’s in training mode and not ready to race. To get it into race mode you have to step your training down so that your muscles become rested. When they are not feeling so tired, they get more speed and become more charged. So when you race you feel very fresh, very sharp and after you shave down and put your racing suit on you’re in the best shape you can be.

  I loved every minute of the Athens experience and took it all in my stride. It all made sense. Not just the two weeks of the Olympics, but the whole year before that. After qualifying I went straight away with the team on an Olympic preparation camp in France. Then I came back to Cardiff, had a long weekend off to celebrate with friends and family, and went back to work. There wasn’t a day that went by without the motivation of the Olympics on my mind. You just couldn’t escape from it.

  Letters arrived telling us what was happening, what to expect, the itinerary, when to pick up the team kit.

  My dad drove me up to Earls Court in London in my little Corsa to pick up that kit.

  I expected a few T-shirts and a suitcase to go to the Olympics with. We actually came back with a great big suitcase in the passenger seat; I was crammed into the rear with boxes, other bags, and all the other kit.

  In all, we had 50–60 kg of kit, which included everything you could possibly imagine. Although we were going to Athens, we had fleeces, hoodies, coats and gloves! It was amazing. And it was all really good stuff. I remember unpacking it and my dad saying, “Can I have one those T-shirts?” Then my sister saying, “I’ll have that polo shirt,” and the next day my gran coming down and claiming, “I can play golf in that.” “Let me wear it first,” I said. “When I come back from Athens I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  I trained really well for the three weeks at the Olympic training camp in Cyprus. I think that’s where I won my Olympic medal. I met up again with Bob Treffene and the training was both consistent and consistently good. I was able to compare notes with Bob as he had Kieren Perkins’s training records and I was actually on a par, if not slightly better than he was. That gave me enormous confidence. Also I loved training with Graeme Smith in a fifty-metre outdoor pool in the sun. All I had to do was to be patient.

  We went to Cyprus again just before going into Athens. It was a week earlier than everyone else. It was quiet, very low-key, just getting on with the business, swimming on my own, very relaxed, being looked after by Dave and Bob, my two grumpy pensioners. We all knew I was going to swim well, with just a bit of fine-tuning needed here and there.

  When I finally got to Athens I went up to the Olympic village with the rest of the team. Dave and Bob were staying in a hotel as they didn’t have accreditation. The plan was that every day I would meet them at an off-site pool and do my training and just go on my own to the competition pool.

  This worked so well – there was a lot of drama in the British swimming team around the pool as some things had not gone well. Some of the coaches were upset and there was conflict with the National Performance Director, Bill Sweetenham, who was a fiery character. But fortunately I was out of all the drama.

  Chapter Eight

  A great day

  When it came to race day I was totally ready.

  I didn’t know about expectations resting on me as I wasn’t aware of what the media was saying. I wasn’t reading the papers or watching television, not answering my phone or reading texts.

  Race day was all about what I wanted to do. I wasn’t thinking about medals too much. I knew there were four guys who could win medals and I was one of the four. I was on the start list but you never know what is going to happen.

  The guys around me when I went to watch other finals were saying things like, “He’s our only hope now”, “It’s Luke Skywalker”, “Don’t leave him alone; don’t let him hurt his leg or anything.” But it was only wind-up banter and I didn’t think too much about it.

  Steve Parry had won our only medal, a bronze in the 200 metres butterfly, but there had been a lot of other disappointments, and the team had got really down.

  The heats were on a Friday morning on a boiling hot day. Again I was down at the pool on my own; I warmed up by myself, with Dave in the stand. He said, “Morning, son, are you alright?” and I was totally relaxed. It’s funny looking back at it now, but we were just ready to go.

  I felt great in warm-up, got my swimsuit on and went down to the ‘call room’. It didn’t bother me at all. I saw my main opponents, Larsen Jensen, Grant Hackett, Yuri Prilukov, all of the big guns in the race, and then walked out onto the pool deck. I felt comfortable in the arena.

  I was in lane four for the first heat, and was about half a body-length up by fifty metres, a body-length up by one hundred and felt in a very good rhythm swimming the fastest heat time ever, a British record of fourteen minutes fifty-seven seconds.

  When I finished I felt that it had been unbelievably easy, an absolute doddle. I was cruising most of the race. I got out of the pool with a lot of energy and had to calm myself down. I did a quick interview and got through the media area, which is called the mixed zone. Dave Haller said to me, “That was easy, wasn’t it? Just making sure, because it did look really easy.”

  I said, “It was, I promise you it was easy.” Dave told me to go and swim down; he and Bob were starting to get excited now. They were trying to climb over the barriers with anxiety, wanting to get me away from the press and distractions from the job in hand.

  Somebody informed me how the other heats were going – that my time would have won the second heat, and when the last heat came in they didn’t swim under fifteen minutes either. I was the fastest qualifier and knew I’d be in lane four for the final.

  I still couldn’t see anyone outside the main four swimmers getting a medal and I knew that I was in great form. I knew I would go a lot quicker in the final, which was taking place in the evening of the next day.

  The day of the final was a lonely one. Most of the swimmers had finished their events and I had to stay away from them and I didn’t have my coach in the Village. I went down to breakfast on my own, and then for a light paddle at the pool. There wasn’t much said between Dave and me, just a couple
of reminders about technique, turns, and not being out of the race at the start.

  In the afternoon I went down to the pool early on my own. It was bizarrely quiet because there were only a couple of events left, so I had a lane to myself to warm up in.

  It all clicked into place for the final. It was one of my best performances to date and I won the bronze medal. If I’d gone out a bit more quickly maybe I could have won gold. That’s with hindsight, but I don’t believe I gave it my all in that race.

  I felt almost embarrassed to be on the feet and then the hips of Grant Hackett, having been five metres back at one stage. Larsen Jensen and I churned it out between us. Maybe I should have gone with him and then had a go at Hackett.

  I touched the wall and I knew I’d got my medal. In fact I knew I had one with two hundred and fifty metres to go, once Yuri Prilukov had been dropped.

  When I finished I looked round and it was like the scoreboard was spinning. I didn’t know what to do. I don’t show emotion very well, but my instant reaction was to say well done to Hackett. I jumped on him and banged him on the head like he was a dog or something. Then all of a sudden I was hugging Larsen; I was all over the place.

  Graeme Smith, who had been in lane one, came over to me and I didn’t know what to say. I was hugging him and looking around thinking I might spot Mum and Dad in the crowd although I didn’t have a clue where they were.

  On the medal podium I saw Dave and Bob in the crowd and waved to them, got the accolades from the GB team, and threw them the flowers that are presented to the medal winners. I was on a total high that night. I went to the BBC studio to do an interview and afterwards didn’t get to bed.

  The next day it started to sink in. I read all the messages on my phone, eighty-four of them. I didn’t realise I knew that many people! That’s when you feel you’ve done something special – for them as well as for yourself.

  I watched the race so many times when I got home, and the more times I watched it, the more what I’d achieved sank in.

  Chapter Nine

  World Championships

  I had a very short break after the Olympics. I had pretty strong motivation to get back into the pool. Winning the medal hadn’t turned my head too much and I got back into fitness really quickly.

  I found some early form at the European Short Course Championships in Vienna, breaking the British record, clocking fourteen minutes thirty-two seconds, which was the fifth fastest time ever then.

  I thought, I’m on the right track, being ahead of where I was at the same time the previous year, and it looked like being a good year.

  In early 2005, when the World Championship trials were being held, I again suffered the problem that I’d had before, from trying too hard. When I was tapering I was forcing myself and arrived in Manchester not feeling very fresh, and consequently not swimming very well.

  By now Graeme Smith had retired and I was a good minute ahead of the rest of the field in the UK. That was now something I had to deal with. It was just me against the clock – it’s not the best drive going into a race knowing that you’re going to win comfortably. You want to be challenged and extended, although I didn’t want to be arrogant about it. But that’s how it has remained in home races for a good few years.

  Despite winning in Manchester by a big margin, in what was a very lonely race, I only managed to swim a time of fifteen minutes seven seconds, some twenty-two seconds off my best, which meant I only just scraped the qualifying time for the World Championships at Montreal, which was a pretty stiff time that year. I had to achieve a time that would have put me in the top ten in the world in 2004.

  It was a horrendous swim, and I was annoyed and upset because I wanted to perform well in front of the home crowd. I wanted to show that I wasn’t a one-off. But I did make it to the World Championships. Dave, Bob and I reviewed my race and we realised the errors that I’d made.

  I had a very good summer after that, leading up to Montreal, which was all about underlining and repeating what I’d done before.

  The same guys, minus Graeme, would be at the World Championships and I didn’t want to be the one who’d dropped off from the Olympics. I wanted to be the swimmer who had moved on.

  I was probably in as good a shape as I’d been in Athens. But I decided to swim the race a bit differently, going out a lot slower, giving Hackett, Prilukov and Jensen a good couple of body-lengths up to the halfway stage. I was clocking one minute for every one hundred metres whereas a year before I’d been recording times in the low fifty-nine second range.

  I did, however, come back a lot more quickly, in seven minutes fifty seconds, a time that was faster than my swim in the 800 metres freestyle and better than the British record.

  I’d clawed my way back into the medals after we dropped Prilukov. Hackett wasn’t going to be caught this time – he had one of his best years that year. I was a few body-lengths behind Jensen but managed to pull level with the American and then pulled away from him into the last one hundred metres.

  On the last turn it must have looked to most people as if the silver was mine for the taking, but I didn’t have a sprint finish and, even though I had Jensen beaten, I couldn’t finish him off.

  He gave a big strong leg kick at the end and managed to touch me out for second place.

  Did I swim that race the right way? I don’t know. Once again I came home with far too much energy left. I still hadn’t had my perfect race and had picked up the bronze medal again. Really I should have been a bit more disappointed and angry at myself for letting Jensen come back like that, but I was satisfied to have won bronze again and proved that the Olympics wasn’t a one-off. I was third in the world against some really good swimmers.

  Looking back on it now, I showed weakness. I didn’t have a lot of speed. I was an endurance swimmer while these guys were bigger and had the ability to do good four hundreds and eight hundreds and had fast finishes over the last fifty metres.

  For the team it could have been one of the low points in the relationship with the National Performance Director, Bill Sweetenham. We were going through a big change with a lot of retirements after Athens and the selection policy made it very hard to get on the team, so it was a very small team – only about ten of us. There were a lot of new faces, Liam Tancock, Caitlin McClatchey and Kate Heywood, the first two of them winning bronze medals. But there were huge disappointments and again some internal bickering in the camp.

  But I could laugh at it because I was never directly involved with it. Dave Haller kept me away from it all. We got on with our job and did it very well.

  As a person I was now much more mature, and a lot more independent. I felt I’d grown up really quickly. I’d got the values I wanted and the professionalism and the drive to achieve my goals.

  I felt that people had a new-found respect for me, having won the Olympic medal. In fact a lot of people were stunned by what I’d achieved. And of course I got more attention. More people wanted to talk to me, which was fine, although you have to work out who wants to talk to you for valid reasons, not just because you’re an Olympic medallist.

  Chapter Ten

  Commonwealth gold, but at a price

  Towards the end of 2005 Australian Swimming announced that Grant Hackett wouldn’t be competing at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and I was genuinely disappointed because it’s his home country, his home pool and I wanted to take him down while swimming for Wales. It would have been a fairy-tale story.

  Once he had pulled out, I was favourite to win the 1500 metres freestyle, which, in itself, brings extra pressure. Also, if I won they would say that I only won the event because Hackett wasn’t there. I was in a no-win situation.

  But that was the way it was – there was nothing I could do about it. I still approached it as an important meeting because it was the midway point towards the next Olympics.

  I did a lot more hard work, with my goal a crack at Kieren Perkins’s Commonwealth Games record which was fourteen m
inutes forty-one seconds, the second fastest time of all time. If I got that it would be another major breakthrough, moving me up among the big guns of distance swimming.

  We went out to Australia very early and spent seven weeks on the Gold Coast in Brisbane before going to Melbourne to prepare. The whole time I felt under pressure which I didn’t enjoy, but I couldn’t get away from it. Even the locals were telling me that I was the Welsh guy who was going to win and at team meetings they would be saying, “When David wins.” I would say, “Hang on – we haven’t even got to Melbourne yet!”

  I had a lot of phone interviews to do, not only with the British press but the Australian as well. There is a huge interest in distance swimming there and, with Hackett not competing, I was the favourite and they wanted to speak to me.

  For the first time I saw Dave Haller feel the pressure. We really weren’t enjoying it. We were there far too long and couldn’t escape from it and by the time it was over we felt “Thank God that’s done”. It wasn’t the joyous moment it should have been.

  At the time I expected so much of myself. I probably put more pressure on myself than anyone from the outside put on me. I wanted to prove something to someone who wasn’t even there – Grant Hackett.

  You can only beat who’s up against you, which I did, but I wanted a lot more.

  It was a good arena and a good atmosphere. It did have an international feel and it was a proud moment when I won but as I was swimming I knew my time wasn’t going to be fast. I went under fifteen minutes, which was nice and respected by the crowd, but what I really wanted was to be able to say to Grant Hackett, who was in the stands, “What do you think of that?”