WEEKEND WARRIOR
Brunty tips his well-worn, chlorine-infused swim cap to the coach who broke and rebuilt Coventry’s finest …
There’s a cast of regular characters who routinely pop up in my writings including the anonymous tormentor known only as my ‘evil swimming coach’, whose identity has been masked in secrecy thanks to my terror of what he’ll put me through if I reveal his name.
Well, the evil one’s announced his retirement from coaching us, so with fear of watery retribution now a thing of the past, the time has come to name and shame him. First, though, let me take you through a resumé of things he’s made us do in training…
The Mile Fly Club – 1,750m of y continuous butterfly with no one to help you lift heavy items like your towel afterwards.
Hell Week – 50,000m of swimming y in six days.
20 x 50m off 40secs. Sounds easy? y Try it. It’s the closest I’ve come to vomiting during a tumble turn.
The infamous 100 x 100 x 100 y challenge – 100m in 100secs, 100 times.
And, of course, the y Million Metres challenge, which involved swimming a million metres in a year. For the maths fiends among you, that’s 20,000m a week.
And I did them all. The b*****d.
TOUGH LOVE
Despite this, in what can only be described as a shocking case of Stockholm Syndrome, I’m going to miss him and his unique approach to poolside motivation, which mostly involved telling you that his grandmother could swim faster than the time you’ve just managed. And the reason I’ll miss him is it worked.
Yes, I’ve cause to be grateful to the evil one because thanks to his reign of terror, my IM swim time dipped under 54mins and my 1,500m time to 20mins. Thanks to him, I also won 10 national masters medals at both pool and open-water championships; finished in the top10 at the 14km Thames Marathon swim; and had the unforgettable experience of swimming in the World Masters Championships in Hungary where I got to swim in the 800m finals in the famous Alfred Hajos open-air pool in Budapest.
Perhaps best of all, I got to race in the London Olympic pool in the European Masters Championships where I was televised – TELEVISED – winning my 200m freestyle race, a moment of fame marred only by the final few seconds showing me in the water squinting trying to read the scoreboard at the far end, making me look like I was constipated.
PRACTISE WHAT HE PREACHES
Anyway, all this pales into insignificance compared to ye evil swimming coach’s achievements who, annoyingly, could fend off the “let’s see you do it then” retorts to his barracking by being a multiple world-record holder and Paralympic championship swimmer. He swam at the Seoul Paralympics, winning seven medals including two gold, and gained another three medals in the Barcelona Paralympics in 1992.
In the end, he won 18 international medals and was the first person with a physical disability to break the minute barrier for 100m front craw.
But should you ever meet him, please remember he did NOT lose his lower leg in a shark attack while performing an heroic rescue, as he’s been known to claim to women in bars.
I know all this, of course, because he is, as you may have guessed, one of my oldest friends as well as being our club coach. I’ve known him since I was eight years old, which is so long ago the photos of us swimming together as kids are in sepia. So thanks for all the torture, Dave… and that’s as much of his identity as I’m prepared to reveal, just in case he decides to make a comeback.
“Try it. It’s the closest I’ve cone to vomiting during a tumble turn...”