GIRLS WENT TO WAR IN THE WATER
Former swimming greats Julie McDonald and Janelle Elford are good friends now, but when they met in the pool in Auckland it was an epic, no-holds-barred battle
JANUARY 29, 1990. It was the night two Australians went to war, locked in a duel in the pool to decide who was the best women’s distance swimmer from the Land Down Under.
The angst and passions generated at that time still move one of the swimmers to tears, almost 28 years later.
Auckland’s Commonwealth Games were well underway and in the pool, the Australians had excelled.
A new star had been born with Hayley Lewis, who ended her campaign with five gold medals and dinner with the Queen. Crowd favourite Lisa Curry was in golden form, having won her 50m freestyle and 100m butterfly events.
Glen Housman, denied a world 1500m record at the Games trials in Adelaide when the electronic timing failed, would have another shot at the record, thrashing through 32 laps and bringing swimmers and spectators from around the Commonwealth to their feet as they cheered him on.
But fate again denied him his swimming immortality, by just half a second.
In the marshalling rooms that evening, two 19-year-old Australians contemplated what had surely become their date with destiny.
With tough-as-nails coaches behind them and media hype going off the scale, Julie McDonald and Janelle Elford prepared to race 800 metres.
“I was tough,’’ McDonald says now.
“It was a win at all costs type of thing – put it all on the line.’’
The tears come as she adds: “But I still feel really guilty about it. That’s why I think I didn’t really like the person I was when I was a kid. I’m not proud of the person I was.’’
Janelle Elford – her married name is Pallister – is cautious about the old days. “The rivalry was good for distance swimming, for women’s swimming. Whether it was good for us, I don’t know,’’ she says.
On January 23 the media had reported war had broken out between the Australians, with Queensland champ McDonald supposedly furious that archrival Elford, the flame-haired national champion from Sydney, was selected for opening ceremony honours. Elford was to lead the team out with Lisa Curry.
So by the night of January 29 the battle lines had already been well and truly drawn.
The race was slow by their standards but as McDonald recalls now, it was so tough and personal she believes it was “the gutsiest’’ swim of her career, which had included an Olympic bronze medal over the same distance two years before in Seoul where she had to duel with the giant of women’s distance swimming, the American Janet Evans, and the East Germans.
Auckland was to be a settling of accounts. Elford,
dubbed “Big Red’’ in the press, always had McDonald’s measure in national titles, whereas McDonald would rise to the occasion at international meets.
McDonald won – by just two-hundredths of a second after 16 gruelling laps in which the pair eyeballed each other all the way.
“There was so much emotion, so much release, and sometimes not in a good way,’’ a tearful McDonald said this week from her home at Forest Lake.
“Janelle and I are really good friends now and we’ve talked about it, and we both said to each other we were too scared to be friends. It was like we couldn’t be friends.’’ Elford agrees.
“I don’t think we were ever given the opportunity to be friends. We were already pitted against each other as rivals.’’
THE RIVALRY
JULIE McDonald was a swimming product of highprofile, colourful coach Laurie
Lawrence, who had trained her for the Seoul Olympics where she swam third in the 800m, won by the powerful US swimmer Janet Evans. Before that, she had competed at the Edinburgh Games in 1986, grabbing silver in the 800m.
Lawrence stepped back from coaching after Seoul and a young coach he had mentored, Ian Findlay, took over training McDonald and had her prepared for Auckland. She returned to Lawrence in 1991 when he decided to resume coaching at Currumbin.
I WAS TOUGH. IT WAS WIN AT ALL COSTS. I STILL FEEL REALLY GUILTY ABOUT IT. THAT’S WHY I THINK I DIDN’T REALLY LIKE THE PERSON I WAS WHEN I WAS A KID. I’M NOT PROUD OF THE PERSON I WAS.
JULIE MCDONALD
Janelle Elford was coached by the formidable Dick Caine.
“He was tough but very caring,’’ Elford said from the Sunshine Coast, where she coaches young swimmers and lifesavers. And he was not too pleased when Elford was selected to lead the team at the opening ceremony, fearing it would distract her.
McDonald said that in 1990, the media was in overdrive.
“A lot of it was fuelled by the rivalry of the coaches and so, by the time we got to the Commonwealth Games the
papers had reported a lot of things,’’ she said.
Much was made of McDonald’s reaction when Elford was picked for opening ceremony honours, with reports the Sydney swimmer did not match McDonald’s idea of what an Australian who was leading the team should look like.
McDonald said the reporting lacked context. “I said I thought a typical Aussie was someone like (butterfly champion) Susie O’Neill, you know, blonde hair, blue eyes. That for me is what an Aussie is, not
(someone like) me!’’
Reports the next day made her look like a bitter rival.
“I just thought ‘oh, whatever’. I can laugh about it now.’’
Elford said she told her coach when he baulked at the idea: “If someone has a problem, that’s their problem to own. I got selected.’’
A journalist asked her about McDonald’s reaction.
“I said I thought red hair and freckles were in that year,’’ she said. Elford was proud of her lighthearted response. “I didn’t want to cause controver-
sy and Julie and I are very good friends now,’’ she said.
THE PLAN
McDONALD’S race plan revolved around negative splitting – a solid swim in the first half of the race and a hard, faster swim home.
“Finny (Ian Findlay) said just get in and race her, give her a good race and do the best you can,’’ she said.
“For months before, I did a lot of visualisation. I visualised myself winning that race over and over again. It’s something I teach young athletes now.’’ Elford had the same plan. “It was always a negative split,’’ she said.
“My plan was to sit until the 400, then really attack the race, attack the negative split and attack the competitor.’’
The pair had gone out in the first 400m around 4 minutes 18 seconds and came home in 4:12 – a negative split “by quite a distance’’, Elford said.
THE RACE
JULIE McDonald was a bunch of nerves as she walked on to the pool deck. She had not felt her best in the warmup and was thinking she had not tapered enough.
But she had a good start. “We used to focus a lot (on starts). I used to get a lot out of my turns too.’’
But she did not feel right. “I remember with every stroke, we were eyeballing each other the whole time.
“With every stroke I thought ‘If she makes a move, I’m done’, because I didn’t feel like I had it on the day.
“We swam seven seconds slower than my best time. It wasn’t a fast race. It was one of those races where we just eyeballed each other. It wasn’t a race against the clock, it was person versus person.
“I had to draw from everything I’ve ever learnt; from every lap I’d done up until that point. I really egged myself on in the final 50. And of course with 15m to go it dawned on me, ‘is this the last lap?’
“I’d not heard the whistle at the 700m mark. I was just so focused on the racing. So I lifted my head up and breathed in front to see if the timekeepers were at the end of the pool, because if I touched the wall and she turned, there was no way I could catch her in another 100.
“I’d lost count so I looked and saw the timekeepers so I put my head down with 10 metres to go and didn’t breathe until I slammed my hand on that wall. I knew I’d won.’’
McDonald clocked 8:30.27. Elford’s time was 8:30.47.
“I think that was probably the gutsiest swim I’ve ever raced; the hardest to win and the hardest because of the mental challenge, constantly looking at Janelle eyeballing me,’’ McDonald said.
Elford’s thoughts on the race focus on the what-ifs, but she has no regrets.
As the pair went stroke for stroke, she kept thinking: “This is going to come down to a sprint.’’
Then there was a moment of doubt she believes cost her the race. “I remember thinking, with about 30m to go, ‘Oh god do I really want this?’ Then I thought yes. But I questioned myself…’’
And that, she said, was fatal. The swimmers were fairly level at the final turn. In that final lap Elford dropped back slightly – the moment of doubt, she said – before making a charge.
“With each stroke I was pulling back, pulling back,’’ she said. “I look at it now and think if I’d only had two more strokes, because I was coming over the top of her.’’
When the women emerged from the pool the media were all over them.
“I remember getting out and saying the better swimmer won on the day (but) tomorrow might have been a different result,’’ Elford said.
“Tomorrow I might not have questioned myself. I don’t think I regret anything. In life you learn a lot of lessons.’’
THE FRIENDSHIP
YEARS later Elford moved to the Sunshine Coast with her husband and family. McDonald went to stay and the pair talked about races and rivalry. Issues were resolved and they were able to become mates.
“Janelle and I have a beautiful friendship now. We talk a lot,’’ McDonald said.
Elford said nothing either of them ever did caused them to dislike each other. “It was just the racing and rivalry,’’ she said.