Who d’you think you are – David Wilkie?
Olympic champ quits health club after being ticked off by lifeguard... for swimming too fast
he is an olympic champion and in his heyday was brit-ain’s finest swimmer.
but that didn’t help David Wilkie when he fell foul of a lifeguard at his local pool.
The 62-year-old, who won gold in the 200m breaststroke at the 1976 Montreal games, was accused of swimming too fast and without care for other pool users.
The lifeguard told Wilkie that another swimmer had complained about being bumped into as they swam in adjoining lanes.
Wilkie had been using the ‘fast’ middle lane of five in the 25m pool at the royal berkshire Virgin Active club in bracknell.
The complaint has echoes of the incident when the racing driver sir stirling Moss, one of the coun-try’s most recognisable sporting
‘I was swimming as normal’
heroes of the 1950s and 1960s, was stopped for speeding by a traffic policeman who admonished him: ‘Who do you think you are, stir-ling Moss?’
speaking at his surrey mansion, Wilkie, who achieved his triumphs in olympic- size 50m pools, told the Daily Mail: ‘i was just swim-ming as normal in the pool, doing front crawl, and the lifeguard came up to me and said, “i think you banged into somebody”.
‘i said, “it’s the fast lane you know, this is rubbish”. i think it’s just an over-zealous lifeguard.’
Asked whether the pool attendant knew he was an olympic champion, Wilkie said: ‘Probably not.’
After the exchange of words with the lifeguard, Wilkie asked to speak to a senior member of staff and resigned his membership of the £190-a-month club. ‘i said to the manager, “i’m leaving – give me my money back”,’ he said.
Wilkie, who swims around 60 lengths every day, added: ‘you go to a swimming pool to swim – not to have lifeguards coming and telling you how to swim. it’s ridic-ulous.’ Wilkie, who has two adult children with his long-term swed-ish partner helen isacson, now swims at the 18m Macdonald Berystede Hotel & Spa in Sun-ninghill, close to his home.
A Virgin Active spokesman said of the incident: ‘We take all cus-tomer complaints seriously. We are sorry to hear that an ex- member feels something is unre-solved, and will be in touch to find out more.’
Wilkie, who was born in sri Lanka to scottish parents and was educated in scotland, won the silver medal in the 200m breaststroke at the 1972 olympics in Munich before claiming gold four years later in a world record time that stood for eight years.
he also won silver in the 100m breaststroke in Montreal.
At one stage he held the british, us, Commonwealth, european, World and olympic 200m breast-stroke titles simultaneously, the only person to have done so.
Wilkie was famed for his long hair and moustache and is known for popularising the use of gog-gles and a swimming cap – although he claimed they were more for keeping his hair out of his eyes than for streamlining his body in the water.
At the time, swimming was still strictly amateur and he retired from the sport after the Montreal games, aged only 22, in order to make a living.
he worked in television and then went on to make millions from a health and nutrition busi-ness. he now runs Pets’ Kitchen, which provides specialist natural foods and supplements for pets.