WITH THE COUNTDOWN WELL AND TRULY ON FOR THE GAMES, ROBERT CRADDOCK TAKES A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE
SHE became known as our ‘‘Madam Butterfly’’ but long before that she was just a small girl with a big scrapbook.
This year is the 20th anniversary of the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where swim queen Susie O’Neill set the individual record of six gold medals at one Games.
Ian Thorpe claimed joint custody of the record four years later but it remains unbroken, as is O’Neill’s record of 10 Commonwealth Games golds, a mark she shares with Thorpe and Leisel Jones.
When O’Neill thinks of her Malaysian gold rush her mind drifts back 16 years before it to when she was a nineyear-old schoolgirl and the Games came to her home city, Brisbane.
“It was the first thing I remember watching as a kid,’’ O’Neill said. “The 1982 Commonwealth Games had a massive impact on me. I kept newspaper cuttings of that Games for years. It really inspired me. Hopefully, it will be just as much of a thrill for young kids now.’’
She swept five gold medals in the pool – three relays, the 400m freestyle and the 200m butterfly – with the record-setting sixth going on the line in the 200m freestyle.
Her coach Scott Volkers decided it was time to pull the curtains, so to speak, and let O’Neill swim in a world of her own.
“The pressure started to add up. Scott said ‘Don’t look at anyone. Just pretend there are two curtains on the side of the ropes and pull them closed when you race’. That really helped me and I used that for a couple of years.’’
She won her sixth gold, then responded to a quirky suggestion by her manager Rod Woodhouse to do swimming’s version of a lap of honour.
“Rob said ‘Try and do something a bit different’. It sounds so choreographed now.
“We decided I would swim half a lap up pool after I got the sixth gold. I am not sure whether I made 25m. Swimming is so used to rules. I felt like a massive rebel.’’
These days O’Neill has a cult following for her humorous, often self-deprecating work on Brisbane’s Nova breakfast radio show.
She admits she was a far more serious figure when she swam but nods along with cricket great Greg Chappell’s quote “I wish I could have been more lighthearted when I played but if I tried to be that way I could never have been the player I was.’’