Beneath the Surface

by Libby Trickett

  And actually, yeah, I think I’m ready for a job. I have my weekly five-minute guest spot as a commentator on the Today show, but it doesn’t feel quite right. I know sportspeople often transition to media careers, but I feel like an imposter and I’m tired of the spotlight. It’s been intense, these last few years. I want to get out of the public eye and live a normal life, connect with normal people and do normal things, like working in an office. At least, I think that’s what I want. I’m still trying to figure it out. Anyway, under the circumstances, Bevan’s job offer seems like a great idea.

  Around the same time my nascent morning TV career kicks off, I join Megaport, Bevan’s latest business venture. It’s a sales role, three days a week, pitching a new and fairly niche internet technology to businesses that already use fairly complex internet technology. There are twelve people who work at Megaport, and every one of them except me has been in the tech industry their entire adult lives. They understand the product. I can switch my computer on and post pictures on Instagram—that’s about the extent of my technical expertise.

  This is a start-up, so there’s no formal training. We’re clustered around trestle tables, sitting on second-hand chairs, and everyone is kind of making it up as they go along. It’s a sink-or-swim scenario. My colleagues seem to be on top of things, at least partly because they’re knowledgeable about the industry we’re operating in, but I came into the job expecting to be told what to do, and yet I’m pretty much left to my own devices. I’m expected to have ten face-to-face meetings a week with potential clients, which sounded fine to me initially, like a long series of coffee dates. I like people and I like coffee, I figured. I can go and meet people and chat to them. And surely they’ll just buy things from me because I’m charming …

  But then reality strikes. Who am I actually supposed to be having coffee with? I’m expected to make twenty sales calls a day, but I don’t even know who to call. Seriously, who do I actually call? Who am I supposed to be meeting with? And, come to think of it, what am I supposed to say? I have a list of leads that the team has cobbled together but it’s incomplete and unreliable, and leads to more dead ends than actual clients. And I’m not sure how to find more. If I was a go-getting self-starter who’s hungry for success, I could probably make do, but right now I really need someone to hold my hand, because I have no clue what I’m doing.

  It’s not just that I have no experience in this job—I have no experience in any job. I’ve never worked nine-to-five. I haven’t had to sit still for eight hours since I was in school, and back then I could at least run around on the oval at lunchtime to blow off steam. Speaking of lunchtime—I’m not entirely sure when that’s supposed to happen. Do I just get up and leave when I feel like it? Do I have to ask permission to go to the toilet? I’m almost 30 years old but this is a legitimate question I have. I genuinely don’t know.

  I discover that I don’t learn well by sitting still. At first I’m fidgety and I just want to get up and move my body, but I soon start to feel fatigued and lethargic. It’s not the satisfying exhaustion I used to feel after a training session, it’s the kind of tiredness that you get from information overload—you feel it in your eyes and your neck. And because I’m not in training, and I’m bored and frustrated, I treat myself to KFC every second day for lunch, and eat chocolate every day for that midafternoon pick-me-up, which is a disaster. The job takes a toll on me physically, and that only makes me feel worse.

  My lower back in particular really hates Megaport. Sitting in a chair all day makes it absolutely scream, and I’d kind of like to scream too: This is no way to live, people! I can’t believe people spend their entire adult lives sitting at desks all day long, day after day. How will I survive it? I have scoliosis and naturally weak glutes—they were always a problem in training—and both of those things seem to be amplifying the problem, which leaves me in a low-grade kind of misery. I’m not going to die, but I am sore and uncomfortable most of the time, and it’s only getting worse.

  If I’m not at my desk, I’m on a plane flying down to Sydney for my weekly TV spot, or sitting in a hotel room, or in a make-up chair. It occurs to me that I have to increase my incidental exercise, but how do you fit that in when it’s not your actual job? I need to do it for my mental health, as well. I’m not good when I’m not exercising. And being out of shape just compounds this feeling that I’m not in the right place and I’m not doing the right thing. Megaport isn’t spiritually nourishing, and it isn’t good for me physically. It’s just something I have to do, mostly because we need the money.

  One small blessing is that Megaport is across the road from the pool where I used to train, and there are quite a few people on the team who are keen swimmers. We get a bit of a lunchtime swim club happening and head over the road once or twice a week for a swim. In Sydney, when I fly down to shoot my Today segment, I catch up with one of my colleagues from Dancing with the Stars for a dance lesson, which is a highlight of my week. I start going to the gym at least once a week too. It’s a fairly ordinary exercise routine, but it helps.

  I think about creating a physical training program for corporate people who spend their whole day sitting at a desk—something to deal with their mental stress as well as the punishment to their bodies. Maybe I could make a program and test it out on the Megaport staff? Anything would be better than making another sales call. But I force myself to stop daydreaming and pick up the phone, because I’m not a personal trainer, I’m a sales rep.

  I feel a terrible pressure to be successful in this role, because Bevan has been so generous, but I just can’t see how it’s going to happen. And what’s worse is that everyone in the office knows I got this job because of who I am, not what I can do. They know that Bevan hired me as an Olympic champion, a gold medal winner, and I think they expect me to be a confident and effective person who wins at everything, including selling a niche technology. When they find out I’m not, I’m scared they’ll think I’m some kind of fraud.

  As bad as the job is, it turns out I have nothing to worry about with my colleagues. They’re such lovely people. Such epic nerds—but it turns out that nerds are my people: hilarious and self-deprecating, and always clowning around. They teach me the office life essentials, which is basically how to send memes and funny gifs to my workmates. And when I’m not wriggling around in my seat and watching the clock, that’s what I spend much of my time doing.

  After just three months at Megaport I know I need to quit. In that time, I do manage to set up a few meetings, but they don’t go well. I’m self-conscious anyway, but when the clients recognise me things are that much worse. I know that I’m in over my head, having meetings with people who are experts in their field, and they have an expectation that I am a competent person. They’re smiling at me, waiting to be dazzled by my Olympic-level abilities, and I am cripplingly aware that I am about to let them down. Then I do let them down, and it’s horribly awkward. They’re very, very nice about it—because I’m Libby Trickett—but that only makes it worse.

  I spend a lot of time at work crying in the toilet, feeling totally overwhelmed. I have never failed like this before. I had my moments when I was swimming, but that didn’t feel so pathetic. At that level of sport, even when you’re failing you’re still one of the best in the world. Now I was failing at normal life! So many people go to work in an office every single day and they’re good at it, and yet I am terrible. Why is this so hard for me?

  I have a fierce sense of loyalty, which adds to the problem. Bevan has gone out on a limb for me and I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame that I have disappointed him. I have never stuffed up so spectacularly, and the fact that I’ve wasted someone else’s time and money is cripplingly embarrassing. Perhaps with some training I could have become a capable sales person, but I clearly don’t have what it takes to work at a tech start-up. I’m not a self-starter. I don’t have the independence, or the experience. Bevan threw me in the deep end and I sank like a boulder.


  I don’t even want to look Bevan in the eyes, but I have to if I’m going to quit the job. And I really do have to quit the job. I need to step out of the way so that Megaport can use my salary to employ someone who actually knows what they’re doing—who can help the company succeed.

  Bevan and I sit down on the leather couches in the foyer of the Megaport offices, and I apologise and resign. And he is so lovely about it that he inadvertently makes me feel worse. He apologises too, and acknowledges that the circumstances haven’t been ideal: he says I wasn’t set up to succeed. Bevan is a mentor and a friend, and I don’t think he ever had me up on a pedestal, but I wonder if he is a bit disappointed that his Olympic champion came up short. We agree that I’m not good for the job and the job isn’t good for me. ‘Part of learning what you do want to do is learning what you don’t want to do,’ Bevan tells me, wisely. ‘It’s got to be the right fit.’

  But maybe I’m just not right, period, and I never will succeed again. I’m persevering with the television opportunities, but it feels like an awkward fit. I don’t fit in an office either—that much is clear. Life has been really tricky since my swimming career ended … I don’t seem to fit anywhere anymore.

  2005

  ‘You must do the thing you think you cannot do.’

  —Eleanor Roosevelt

  Whatever plagued my performance in Athens, it fell away at the 2004 World Short Course Swimming Championships in Indianapolis the following October. I had an absolutely monstrous run, winning gold in the 100-metre freestyle, my first individual gold on the world stage. I swam the fastest freestyle split in history in the 4x100-metre medley, helping the team to a world record and another gold medal. I also won a silver in the 50-metre freestyle, a bronze in the 50-metre butterfly, a bronze in the 4x100-metre freestyle, and a silver in the 4x200-metre freestyle. I was on fire.

  My personal life was cooking too. At the end of 2004, after nearly two years of long-distance dating, Luke moved from Sydney to Brisbane, and into my mum’s house. Our relationship had been pretty intense from the start; you have to be fairly serious about a person to even think about doing the long-distance thing. When we saw each other over those first two years, it was in intensive blocks. We’d spend a whole weekend together, or a whole week, living in each other’s pockets, and we spoke to each other almost every night when we were apart. I was only nineteen when we decided to live together, but we had a very strong connection. He made me feel loved and he made me laugh, which I valued more than anything. I knew intuitively that I wanted to spend my life with someone who made my life fun.

  On Valentine’s Day in 2005, Luke and I went out in Sydney to celebrate our second anniversary. We had dinner at our favourite Thai place, then went home to his parents’ place, donned our scummiest pyjamas and climbed into his king single bed together. This is where he decided to propose. He pulled out a ring from under his pillow, which he’d had on lay-by for more than a year, and said, ‘Hey, do you want to marry me?’ He was 22 years old at the time, and I was 20. I was incredibly happy.

  In some ways my swimming career infantilised me because I didn’t have to deal with a lot of day-to-day responsibilities. In other ways it forced me to grow up quickly. There were so many pressures and expectations attached to my career, and levels of commitment and focus that were far above what most 20-year-olds were expected to have. My life was incredibly structured and incredibly demanding, and Luke understood it. I could never have been with anyone from outside the swimming community. He had always supported and encouraged me, and that was precious to me. We fitted together. And because I was used to making big commitments, I wasn’t afraid of committing to Luke.

  Having said that, it was difficult living with Luke at Mum’s place, which was just as tumultuous when I was in my early twenties as it had been when I was a teenager. My brother Stew was battling a lot of demons, and it was hard to balance his needs with what was now a super-elite training cycle, not to mention a live-in boyfriend.

  Luke and I lasted about two months at home before we started house hunting. Fortunately, I had enough money to look at buying an apartment, because I was raking it in with sponsorship deals and occasional public appearances. I had signed on as an ambassador for Speedo just before Athens, which meant I had a steady income, and my status as the world record holder meant a lot of other sponsors came on board after that. I would go on to work with Fuji-Xerox, Telstra, Rebel Sport, BHP and Rio Tinto, Lenovo, Uncle Toby’s and even KFC (not my finest hour), which gave us an unusual level of financial freedom for our age. My training regime was intense, but Stephan knew how tough things were for me at home so he supported our move. All he said was, ‘You should have done it yesterday.’

  As keen as we were to set up house, I quickly realised I wasn’t very well prepared for the task because Mum had always taken care of me. I couldn’t cook a thing, at first. I had to buy recipe magazines and teach myself, one painful meal at a time. But I soon learned not to burn tea towels, and how to cook a mean Cornish pasty. Luke couldn’t cook either when we moved in together, but he wasn’t too fussed about it. I tried to force him to make dinner once a week, but he’d ask me for instructions every thirty seconds. I gave up on it pretty early on—it was just faster if I did it myself, and Luke was very happy with that.

  It had been such an incredible privilege living at home with Mum, and having her do everything for me so that I could just focus on training, but there was something really satisfying about doing my own laundry too. The first few times I put a load in the washing machine, I sat and watched while the clothes tumbled about. I did that, I thought to myself. Aren’t I a clever girl? The novelty wore off fairly quickly, of course.

  The next major international swimming meet in 2005 was the World Championships, which happen every two years. Going into that competition, I felt I had learned to deal with pressure and expectation. I had been under the microscope in Athens, and even though I didn’t have the most glorious outcomes, going through it had made me tougher and therefore a better competitor. I also thought I had a point to prove. I knew the world hadn’t seen the best of me yet.

  I felt like Stephan expected more of me than the other athletes that he trained. He knew what I was capable of and he had huge expectations. I was under constant pressure. He was not an easy man—not by any stretch of the imagination. There was no cuddling or mollycoddling, and he had an uncanny ability to make you feel guilty as hell. In training, he would only have to tell me that I didn’t push hard enough on my last 50 metres and I would immediately feel ashamed. He never yelled, but the guilt I felt made me want to push harder and go faster. It made me want to please him.

  He was so driven, as a coach. He wanted to be a better coach than he was a swimmer, I think. Sometimes being the athlete isn’t the thing. Having experience as an athlete teaches you critical lessons that you bring to coaching, but you work so much harder as a coach. That was my impression of Stephan—he excelled as a coach, and bore no frustration or regret about what had come before. He had a burning desire to be brilliant at his own job, which was to make us as swimmers as good as we could be. It was otherworldly to meet someone who was such a perfect match for me at the exact time that we met. It’s like that saying: ‘When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.’ That’s what it felt like with Steph.

  We had different strengths. I had the talent and the focus, but it could be a very volatile energy and I needed to be pointed in the right direction. Stephan was clinical, a perfectionist. He was a bit like a robot at times. The lack of emotion, that propensity to solve problems rather than express empathy, were traits which he shared with Luke, but are traits that are better suited for me to have in a coach. Stephan was clinical and clear. He learned very early on with me that I had intense, sometimes extreme emotions, which no doubt was frustrating for him, but he always kept a poker face when I was having a meltdown. ‘I just wish you would take the emotion out of it, do the work and then perform on the day,’ he once said.
I don’t blame him—I know I could behave like a big toddler sometimes. But I think my emotions and my passions are part of what made me a great swimmer. I think Stephan knew that too.

  Going into the World Championships trials in Sydney, I knew I had to blow the competition away. Only the top two qualifiers in each race would join the Australian team in Montreal. The 100-metre freestyle was my strongest race, but Jodie Henry had eclipsed my world record in Athens and there was no telling what would happen. All the medals I had won at the World Short Course were irrelevant when we were swimming in a 50-metre pool—at least, that’s how it felt. I had become absorbed into goal-oriented thinking where you’re only as good as your next achievement, without savouring what you have just achieved.

  I started strongly at the trials, qualifying for the 100-metre butterfly and the 50-metre freestyle. I also qualified for the 4x200-metre freestyle team, which I’d started dabbling in purely to improve the back end of my 100-metre race. Unfortunately, the 100-metre freestyle was where I let myself down. I finished third, which meant I’d missed my chance—I wouldn’t be competing at the World Championships in the race in which I had recently held the world record.

  The result was bitterly disappointing, made worse by the fact that I had actually swum a good race. It just happened that Alice Mills and Jodie Henry were faster than me on the day, with Alice taking the national title that year. I was so happy for Alice, who probably felt like she was forever running just behind Jodie and me.