Swim star Boyle: ‘Not too bad for a girl from Auckland’

Lauren Boyle’s place at New Zealand swimming’s top table is secure.

Indeed, should the seating arrangements be needed, Boyle would be alongside the greatest, double Olympic gold medallist Danyon Loader, in terms of achievement.

Sure, there was no Olympic medal — of the seven won, Jean Stewart remains the only New Zealand woman on that list, with her backstroke bronze in Helsinki in 1952 — but numbers talk when assessing the Auckland freestyler’s time at the top.

Fourteen medals at the major meets; five world championship long course medals — the most by a New Zealander — a Commonwealth Games gold in Glasgow three years ago, a world short course gold and a world record; all speak of an athlete fit to sit among the best of her time around the globe.

An abiding personal memory of Boyle, though, comes not from the pool but beside it, at the London Olympics in 2012. Boyle had already finished eighth in the 400m freestyle final. Four days later she lined up in the 800m final and flew through for fourth, in an Oceania record time 8min 22.72s. She was just 2.4s off bronze.

Coming through the mixed zone afterwards, she was alone. New Zea- land’s Olympic media team should have given themselves an upper cut. At a time of high emotion, they hadn’t bothered to send one of their staff to shepherd her through the throng and back to the changing rooms. The crush of media were gathered in front of the three medallists. Translation: they hadn’t expected her to shake the medal territory.

Boyle found two New Zealand journalists further down the concourse. The standard “how did that feel?” opening question produce a mumbled few words before Boyle dissolved in tears. She talked about the struggles to get that far, silencing the doubters and the emotions took over.

Imagine if she had gone just a tick or two faster. How would she have coped before a jostling throng of international journalists?

The Rio Olympics last year were shaping as Boyle’s time. American teenager Katie Ledecky remains the undisputed champion of the pool, but Boyle would have been a big chance to win a medal. A lingering hip injury left her well below her best.

And so at 29, this highly intelligent woman, with a degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, recognised the time is right to move on with the rest of her life.

At Berkeley, Boyle came under the guidance of noted American coach Terri McKeever. From her, she learned plenty about personal growth, became “a more confident person, in a way where you don’t have to be good at only one thing”.

She described her biggest buzz as the simple business of making improvements.

“That’s what I strive for and the best feeling I can get from the sport, that I’ve changed something or grown in some way to improve my performance to a level it’s never been before.”

Boyle’s has undoubtedly been a career of outstanding achievement.

Great? No. That requires victory on the toughest stages. But as she put it, her record is “not too bad for a girl from Auckland”. Amen to that.