MIAMI SWIM STARS
CELEB CLUB CELEBRATES BIRTHDAY
IT has been hailed as a swim for the ages, the greatest 1500m race in sports history.
Grant Hackett’s gold medal-winning swim at the Athens Olympics in 2004 was a drag-’em-out, knock-’emdown fight that is still talked about 12 years later.
Many wondered what was wrong with the Miami product leading into the swim. His form had not been what was expected. In fact he’d been hiding from the media the severity of an illness that had him battling constant chest infections.
Few realised afterwards how close Hackett came to retiring straight after that swim, which at 14min 43.40sec set an Olympic record but was short of the world record 14min 34.56sec he had set at the world championships in Fukuoka three years earlier.
“I knew I was really sick (but) it wasn’t until a CT scan after that showed a partially collapsed lung – that was probably the moment I thought I’d been sick way too long and I didn’t care if I didn’t swim again,’’ Hackett said this week.
The look on his face while still in the pool had said it all – agony. He’d grimaced. He was spent. But he still managed to pull himself up on a lane rope and pump his chest, then struggled from the pool on shaky legs, clambered on to a starting block and raised his arms – the champion declaring victory and acknowledging the roar of friends, family, teammates and the crowd.
Hackett, with head and body shaved for the race, had gone out hard in the first 500m, building up a lead of 3.3sec over his nearest rivals. But in the middle of the race the American, Larsen Jensen, and the Brit, David Davies, sensed blood in the water and picked up their pace, closing in. With just 100m left, Jensen trailed by just 0.016sec.
It was then the Gold Coast product boosted his kicking rate and fought like never be- fore in a sprint that had him pull out to a body-length lead for the final 50m home.
It would take him 11 weeks to recover.
Hackett credits the hard, hard metres swum day in, day out at the Miami pool, even to the point that he’d often throw up at the end of a session. He credits the mental and physical strength built up under master coach Denis Cotterell – “he’s tough, very, very tough’’.
But for reaching into the
Miami is everything. All those critical moments in my career came from that training environment depths to find every last bit of that toughness, he credits the culture and camaraderie of the Miami Swimming Club that had been his home away from home since he was six.
“Miami is everything. All those critical moments in my career came from that training environment, the likes of Denis, training partners, how tough Denis was, how tough I was on myself.’’
The Miami club celebrates its 40th anniversary tonight at the Surfers Paradise Marriott, where swimmers and the tireless band of volunteers and committee members who keep the organisation ticking will rub shoulders with the surf lifesavers, triathletes and water polo elite who have shared their lanes to train with the club.
Among them will be one of Australia’s greatest Olympic swimmers, Australia’s Madam Butterfly, Susie O’Neill, who although Brisbane-based would train at Miami when her family holidayed on the Coast.
Broadcaster and former Wallabies coach Alan Jones is guest speaker. Hackett and Cotterell will talk about club history. Rio Olympians and Miami products Tom FraserHolmes and Dan Smith will detail their Olympic experience in aQ & A session with long-time sports journalist and former Swimming Australia media director Ian Hanson.
With Cotterell taking a break since the Rio Olympics and, until he boarded a plane home this week to attend the celebrations, spending much of that time in Prague, a sizeable part of the organisation for the anniversary has been handled by Cotterell’s second-incharge, head junior coach Raelene Ryan, who took a moment this week to gaze around the clubhouse, staring at the framed photos of pool stars amid the clutter of gym equipment, pondering the people and defining moments that become the rocks great clubs are built on.
For the public, names like Hackett, Andrew Baildon, Giaan Rooney, Leigh McBean, Daniel Kowalski, Jon Sieben, Toby Haenan and Jo Fargus might be front of mind, joined this year by Australian Olympians Fraser-Holmes and Smith.
There are Olympic triathletes like Emma Snowsill, Emma Moffatt, Ashleigh Gentle and Courtney Atkinson.
Or people recall the greats of the surf – the likes of Trevor Hendy, Dwayne Thuys, Karla Gilbert, Ky Hurst, Mark Williams, Shannon Eckstein, Liz Pluimers and Courtney Hancock who with legions of others trekked to Miami pool to follow the black line.
And there have been the left-field successes. Tai McIsaac represented Australia in water polo, then turned to rugby union and became a Wallaby. For years his dad, Pauley, was a fixture at the Miami pool, watching over his son and all the swimmers, helping out in the kiosk and always ready for a yarn.
But in considering who and what those landmark people and moments have been, Ryan kept coming back to one factor.
“Denis being here those 40 years, to be honest. He’s the glue that holds us together.’’
Cotterell and his coaching team – Ryan, who notches up
GRANT HACKETT