Crous wins personal battle against odds

OLYMPIC Games-bound Jarred Crous started swimming as a child to control his Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) 11 years ago.

“My mom was trying everything and she was like ‘I’m going to put you on Ritalin’,” said Crous, who spent three years at a remedial school in East London.

But a teacher persuaded her to try sport. “He’s like, ‘don’t put him on Ritalin because it’s the worst thing you can ever do for your child, just give him a few sessions with me’.

“I started skipping and swimming. I skipped for three weeks straight and then he worked on my swimming and then he got my breaststroke technique and I’ve been a breaststroker ever since then.

“He’s the one who taught me how to actually glide.”

Crous became smitten with the sport when he won his first gold medal later that year.

“My dad asked me after the race, ‘so where to from here?’ And I was like, ‘I want to swim at the Olympics.”

Crous, 19, achieved the 200m breaststroke standard for the Rio Games in August by one-hundredth of a second at the SA championships in Durban last week.

He had earlier missed the qualifying time in his main event, the 100m breaststroke.

Crous, whose family relocated to Pretoria several years ago, said his parents had made sacrifices for him.

The significance of his achievement was evident in the emotional celebration by his dad Juan, who hugged Jarred after the race, weeping as he did so.

To take his mind off swimming, Crous likes to make knives, manipulating flat steel into blades and crafting bone and wooden handles.

“I make custom knives for hunting and all that kind of stuff. I just make them for myself and family members. It’s just to get away from everything.”

He’s even made a sword, about a metreand-a-half long.

Asked what type of sword, he replied: “It just destroys things – watermelons, crates, trees … I based it on an ancient Persian sword.”

Crous, who plans to enrol at Tuks next year after his Olympic gap year, said he learned to use his hands from a young age at his grandfather’s farm outside Bhisho, where he enjoyed free reign.

“It’s my zen garden, the entire farm. So he [his grandfather] pretty much got me into making stuff and my mom’s also been quite lenient.

“My dad was more like ‘don’t hurt yourself’ but my mom’s like ‘just let him learn’.

“They stood with me the first time I used an angle grinder – I was about nine years old. I enjoy being on my own, in my own sort of bubble.”