Boyle looks to the future
It hasn’t always been easy with coaching controversies but New Zealand’s star swimmer leaves with her love of the sport still intact, reports
Lauren Boyle says she loved swimming – but not always. The 29-year-old announced her retirement this week following a career which saw her win more world championship medals than any other Kiwi swimmer.
Boyle was told as a kid she could be an Olympian – three times she represented New Zealand at the Games, with a best finish of fourth in the 800m freestyle in London in 2012.
But her passion for the sport was hugely tested soon after, via a coaching upheaval at Swimming NZ.
‘‘There were definitely times when I did not like it,’’ Boyle said.
‘‘Periods when I felt trapped and let down, and that can build into something that’s pretty negative.
‘‘My demons where when my coaching was kind of compromised for reasons outside of my control and my coach had to leave through no fault of his own really. Me finding my own coaching solution was the way to resolve that in the end.
‘‘You really have to rack your brains as why you’re still doing it. It really can be pretty terrible.
‘‘We had a really turbulent time through 2013 and then after the [2014] Commonwealth Games in Glasgow I had to make a tough decision because something inside of me – gut feeling, call it what you want – I knew I had to continue to see what more I could do.
‘‘The Swimming NZ coach wasn’t delivering, the team fell apart – there was no team. Swimming without the team element is really difficult.’’
Her passion was initially stirred by her first coach, Tom Johnson, at the West Wave pool in Henderson.
‘‘I was taken to a local swim school while I was young and the teacher was a great man, fantastic with kids, and I had a natural swimming stroke.
‘‘He recognised that. I actually remember the day when I swum one lap and he held up his hand with the OK sign and told my mum I could go to the Olympics one day if I wanted to.
‘‘I think I was seven or eightyears-old.
‘‘I was never ‘that’ good, but by the time I was 14 I’d won at NZ age-groups and it was an outlet for me to try really hard and get some gratification. I developed a passion for it. I went to the Melbourne Commonwealth Games as a teenager and did pretty well – I guess I realised the opportunity I had and was just so excited about the improvements.
‘‘I would say I loved the sport. I loved the technical element of it and if I continue to swim for fitness I will still continue to enjoy working on what I do when I go through the water.’’
So what has occupied her mind
You really have to rack your brains as why you’re still doing it. It really can be pretty terrible. Lauren Boyle
all those years during training?
‘‘When you’re young, there’s so much going on – nothing’s really boring, the concept of boring doesn’t really occur,’’ Boyle said.
‘‘Then when you get to the elite level, it’s more like the intensity of training pushes out the boredom or the sense of repetition.
‘‘When you’re at the top of the game in swimming, the margins of success and failure are pretty small – so every session has to be working towards something, it has to be intense. You have to be constantly monitoring how you’re moving through the water, how your rotation is . . . if your brain is turned on, it’s definitely not boring.
‘‘You learn if you’re not in that mindset, you’re just not going to improve.’’
Boyle, who has a business degree from the University of California, Berkeley in the US, is now working full-time in institutional banking and also ‘‘really looking forward to being a more regular person’’.
‘‘When there are long weekends I can actually relax on the Monday instead of going to training as per usual. Or I can go away with my friends to the beach one weekend and not feel like I need to go to a pool and do a session because I might miss one.
‘‘I think I’m going to enjoy moving away from the physical highperformance mindset, because I drove myself so hard and I think I was so rigorous in that sense, that it’ll be really interesting to be more relaxed with what I feel I have to do all the time.
‘‘Now I’m not going to sit at home on my own on a Saturday night – well I might sometimes, but it’ll be out of choice,’’ she laughed.