by Leisel Jones
Yet, despite the controversy, I’m not tempted to adapt. Like salmon heading upstream, these girls are really flogging themselves. I like hard work but I’m not stupid. Even if it’s ‘wrong’, I’d choose to be the ‘flowy’ zen master, rather than a tired old salmon, any day. Think of the energy I’m saving. Think of the oxygen. I’m doing six to eight strokes fewer than everyone else in every race. At this rate, I should be able to stop for a snooze at the 100-metre mark and still come out ahead, I tell myself.
At least, that’s the idea. And it’s not long before I get to test it out. Less than twelve months after I start at Redcliffe, in April 2000, I’m off to the Australian Age Swimming Championships in Perth. This is the first time I’ve been to Age Nationals, the national swimming competition for schoolkids under sixteen. Until now, the highest level I’ve ever swum at is Queensland State Titles and, to be honest, I have not really set the world on fire. I still hold the School Sport national record from back in Adelaide in 1997 but that was for the 50-metre event. It doesn’t mean much for the Olympics, which only has 100-metre or 200-metre breaststroke. My times at Redcliffe are good – good enough to scrape into Age Nationals – but they’re not great. They’re not fast enough to give anyone at Nationals a real scare. And they’re certainly not fast enough for me to start clearing my diary for Olympic trials in Sydney next month.
I am very aware that, less than a year ago, I was still puddling around in the 25-metre pool back at Burpengary, having towel-flicking and sausage-sandwich-eating competitions on Friday nights. Since I’ve moved to Redcliffe and started training with Ken, I’ve stepped things up fast. But Age Nationals fast? I’m not so sure.
Still, I’ve qualified to go, and Ken thinks it will be good practice for me. Personally, I’m hoping to swim fast enough to be selected for the Pan Pacific School Games next month, which are sure to be teeming with cute boys from across the whole Asia–Pacific region. But I don’t say anything about my plans to anyone else. It would be too embarrassing if I failed to make the team.
So I head to Perth for Age Nationals.
But there’s a spanner in the works: my period.
That’s right. I’m fourteen and about to swim at Age Nationals for the first time, I’m representing my new club (a club I’m busting to impress), and on the very day I’m due to jump in the pool, I get my period.
‘I have to go out there, in my tiny little togs, in front of everyone, when I have my period?’ I squeak.
I am still a kid. Just a fourteen-year-old girl, and emotionally a young one at that. Mum’s not with me – it’s my first interstate trip without her – and getting my period is still a new (and very big) deal for me. I am so embarrassed I think I might die. Can I really go out there and swim like this?
I stand on the pool deck, biting my nails to the quick and wishing I was at home with Mum.
Our assistant coach from Redcliffe, Rhonda Smails, pulls me aside. She knows I have my period. ‘Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,’ she says. She puts her arm around my shoulder and gives me a quick squeeze. Then she leans down and whispers so that only I can hear, ‘You know it makes you swim faster, don’t you?’ She winks and walks off, probably not giving it another thought.
But I take her words to heart. I swallow what Rhonda says and I honestly believe I will swim faster because I have my period. Great, I think. Awesome. I can do this. I’ll go with that.
And I do: I swim out of my skin that day. I win the 100-metre breaststroke in 1:08.30, which is a huge personal best (PB). It’s more than two seconds faster than anything I’ve ever swum before.
Here I am, fourteen and swimming in a national competition for kids who are up to three years older than me, and I’m swimming faster than any of them. I’m faster than anyone else in the country. My time, 1:08.30, is by far the fastest time in Australia this year.
And this year happens to be the year of the Sydney Olympics.
Of course, it’s not long before people start saying I’m the next big thing.
‘How do you feel to be heading for Olympic trials next month?’ the press keep asking me.
‘Oh yeah, I’m excited,’ I say happily. ‘I’ve done a PB and I made qualifying time, so I may as well go along.’
‘Made qualifying time?’ they repeat. ‘You’ve got the best time in Australia!’
But it still doesn’t sink in. It just doesn’t register that I might make the Olympic team. Not little Leisel from Burpengary. Skinny, gawky Leisel who has no money and no dad. Not me.
When I get back to Redcliffe I get back to work. Perth has been a massive high for me and somehow I am oblivious that there might be more to come, so I settle back into my everyday routine. Train, eat, sleep; train, eat, sleep. I am still riddled with self-doubt, so I always find time to be intimidated and overawed whenever I see Tarnee White or Sarah Bowd on the pool deck. I am still convinced deep down that Tarnee is faster than me, and I fall back into trying to be her friend. It never enters my head that now she might be intimidated by me!
Things are being run a little differently in 2000, the Olympic year. Usually Age Nationals (for schoolkids) are held after Open Nationals (for over sixteens), but in 2000 Opens are held second. Then, shortly after Opens there are the Olympic trials. In terms of preparation it’s not great. Coming off Perth, I have to taper and recover and then immediately start heavy training again in time for trials. As I’d been secretly hoping, I’ve made the team for the Pan Pacific Games, but these are off the agenda now that I’ve qualified for Olympic trials.
‘I don’t want to go to trials, Ken,’ I tell my coach. It’s all too hard, too scary. I’d much rather be poolside at the Pan Pacs, checking out boys, than competing for a spot at the Sydney Olympics.
‘No way,’ says Ken. ‘Pan Pacs are off. You’re going to trials. That’s our job now.’
I say okay, because Ken is the boss. And because honestly you could ask me to fly to the moon and I’d try it. I’m very suggestible: just look at how I reacted to that comment from Rhonda about swimming fast with my period. It was only a throwaway line, but I really believed it. I am so very young and innocent. Such a little kid. I’ve got no idea how the world really works.
I have always been a fish out of water. But it’s more than that now. I’m a fish out of water and I’m swimming to qualify for the Olympics. I find it hard to breathe at the best of times and this is some seriously rarefied air.
Every man and his dog wants to make this Olympic team, our home Olympics in the millennial year. The queue for a place on the Australian swimming team stretches further than my chlorine-red eyes can see. These are the largest Olympic trials this country has ever seen.
To make the team you have to finish in first or second place in the final, and you have to swim under a specified time (known as ‘A-qualifying’ time). It’s really strict. Only two people from Australia will be allowed to compete in each event. No arguments. It doesn’t matter what you did at Age Nationals a month ago. It doesn’t matter who your coach is or how long you’ve been training. All that counts is how fast you swim in the final. The Olympic Games really is the great equaliser: terribly fair, but also terribly brutal.
In Perth I swam 1:08.30 in the 100-metre breaststroke, and qualifying time for the Sydney Olympics is 1:10.21. So it’s going to be tight. Really tight.
The trials are being held at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre in Homebush, Australia’s biggest swimming arena. The complex has only recently been completed and it can hold 17,000 spectators. And for those who can’t make it to Sydney to watch, the event is being televised on prime-time TV each night. This is the real deal.
But I can’t seem to grasp it:
14 years old
1:10.21 minutes
17,000 fans
and just two 100-metre breaststrokers.
I can’t make sense of these numbers. They don’t mean anything to me. I am oblivious to the significance of these trials, to the magnitude of the opportunity I have here.<
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‘Cool. This will be fun,’ I say to Mum. ‘I’ll get to meet people from all over Australia. Maybe some of my friends from Age Nationals will be there!’
The way I feel, this could be any old swimming trip. I’ve been taking them since I was ten. I’m hoping I’ll have the chance to stay up late watching movies and maybe sneak in a Domino’s meatlovers pizza or two. The usual stuff.
And if Mum is nervous or seriously thinks I might make the Olympic team, well, she never verbalises it to me. Mum’s coming with me to Sydney and the only comment she makes is how great it is that she’ll get to see her family while we’re there. She’s supportive, obviously. But if Mum’s anxious, I don’t know about it.
When we arrive in Sydney, I am ferried over to our team hotel in Bankstown, in Sydney’s west, about 10 kilometres from the Aquatic Centre in Homebush. My roommate is my Redcliffe teammate Tanya McDonald, who is here to compete in the 200-metre and 400-metre freestyle events.
Somehow I make it through my heat of the 100-metre breaststroke, and then the semis. Before I know it, I have qualified for the final. But rather than let the pressure of swimming in an Olympic qualifier go to my head, on the day of my race I am hanging out with Tanya and we are bored. Bored, bored, bored.
Me: ‘Do you want to paint our nails?’
Tanya: ‘Yeah, let’s paint nails.’
Me: ‘I’m going to do mine red, because red Ferraris go faster and stuff.’
Tanya: ‘Hey, smart! Can I use the red after you?’
Against all the best advice, Tanya and I have been to the shops. On race day, you’re advised to stay in bed or at least keep your legs elevated, so they’re fresh for your race in the evening. Racing starts at about seven and we all leave for the pool together at around four. So you’ve got five or six hours to kill from the time you get up until the time you’re expected on the bus to the pool. That’s five or six hours too long to expect a couple of over-hyped, under-supervised fourteen-year-old girls – on tour from another state – to sit quietly in a hotel room and do nothing. Never. Gonna. Happen.
Instead, Tanya and I take ourselves off to the oh-so-glamorous Bankstown Central Shopping Centre, in the middle of suburban Bankstown, for a spot of retail therapy. We walk several kilometres, through shops and food courts, ahead of my big race. And we buy red nail polish.
Tanya says, ‘Hey, if you win tonight, you’ll have to show your red nails on TV.’
‘No way, I’m not doing that! How embarrassing,’ I reply.
‘Yeah, show them on TV. When they announce your name, while you’re in the marshalling area. Just hold up your hands so I can see your nails on TV.’
‘Uh, I think I’ll have more to worry about tonight than my nails!’
That evening, I line up in the marshalling area with seven of the eight fastest female Australian breaststrokers of all time. In lane one is the queen of Australian breaststroke – and my personal hero – fellow Queenslander Samantha Riley. Sam is the current world record-holder (with a time of 1:07.69). She’s also a former World Champion and is here to qualify for her third Olympics. In lane two is Rebecca Brown, former world-record holder in the 200-metre breaststroke and ranked fifteenth all-time best in the world in this event. Rebecca is back on track after a short slump in form and she has something to prove in this race tonight. In lane three is Brooke Hanson, who swam a PB in the heats earlier in the week.
And then there is me.
As the television cameras pan to me, standing sheepishly behind lane four, I raise my left hand in a reverse high-five, showing my red fingernails for the world to see. I am about to swim the biggest race of my life so far – an Olympic qualifying event – and here I am making good on a bet with my friend. It’s almost inconceivable. And so the first time the world sees Leisel Jones, fastest qualifier in lane four, I am doing something dumb.
‘Nice touch,’ says commentator Ray ‘Rabbits’ Warren on the Nine Network. ‘Hey, look, Mum! I painted my fingernails just for you.’
Next to me, in lane five is Caroline Hildreth. Caroline looks about five years older and ten years wiser than me. She swam a PB in the first semi yesterday and now, standing here looking ominous in her black ‘Fastskin’, she looks like she might do it again.
These new Speedo Fastskins have just been invented and are the bee’s knees of swimsuit technology. The suits are made from spandex and nylon and increase glide through the water, just like the skins of dolphins or seals. They are supposed to reduce drag by up to four per cent. But I opt for my skimpy little Aquablade togs, straight from the 1980s, with their high-cut legs and their low-tech fabric. I will not be seen dead in togs that reach down to my knees.
On the other side of Caroline is Tarnee White, sporting her red and white Redcliffe swimming cap, just like me. Tarnee was just off her best time in the semis yesterday and yet, as the TV commentator points out, ‘She’s capable of anything, Tarnee White.’
Next to Tarnee is veteran Helen Denman, who won silver at the ‘98 World Swimming Titles. And in the final lane is Nadine Neumann, Olympic finalist in the 200-metre event in 1996.
All in all, it’s quite a field. These girls have years of experience between them. Olympic experience. World Championship experience. They’re all capable of swimming sub-1: 09s and they’ve all trained for the past four years for this moment. There will be nothing in it. Microseconds. Nanoseconds.
But I don’t really appreciate any of this. I’m too busy thinking about Josh Krough.
Josh is from my squad back home. He’s the older brother of my good friend and teammate Jayne. He’s also unimaginably cute.
Before my race, Josh and I had been mucking around in the marshalling area together, when he’d said to me, ‘I dare you to make a peace sign for the camera if you win.’
Now, if you’re a fourteen-year-old girl and a cute boy dares you to make a peace sign if you win, then I bet my last buck that’s what you’ll do. Especially if you’re the kind of kid who can’t pass up a dare.
‘A peace sign?’ I say to Josh. ‘Sure, whatever.’ And so while the rest of the field is focused on Olympic glory, I am distracted by Josh and the thought of making peace for him.
But forget where my mind is: my body is here. My shoulders, my biceps, my wrong-way-round hands. My legs, my feet, my abnormal hips. Everything is pumping, working in synch.
When the starter’s gun fires I am a bit slow to start. I finish the first twenty behind, but this is my style; I am comfortable here. Tarnee takes it out hard, but when I touch the wall at the 50-metre mark I’ve made up some ground. I’m right behind Tarnee, outside the world-record split by 1.39 seconds. Tarnee leads into the second 50 metres, with me in second place.
Finally, with only 30 metres to go, I pull out in front. At last I’m hitting my pace. With 10 metres to go, I take a comfortable lead and bring it home fast.
I hit the wall first.
‘Leisel Jones wins!’ shouts Rabbits Warren to everyone watching at home. ‘At fourteen years of age! In 1:08.71!’
I stare at the scoreboard in disbelief. I’ve swum a personal best and qualified for my first Olympic Games. Tarnee’s come second in 1:09.05. Caroline Hildreth also swam a 1:09 (1:09.22) but she’s missed out on Olympic selection.
‘What a moment!’ Rabbits says. ‘Leisel Jones – this baby – is going to the Olympics!’
I give a goofy grin, my tongue wedged between my front teeth. And what’s the first thing I do when I win – on prime-time television, for the entire world to see? You guessed it: I raise my hand in the internationally recognised symbol for peace.
Well, at least that’s what I thought I was doing. But it was probably naive of me to think my two raised fingers would be interpreted as peace. Who makes peace in elite-level sport?
Instead, my gesture is branded as the ‘V’ for victory. I am the victor, the winner. What else could I possibly have meant? After all, I was the young underdog and I won, so wouldn’t I want to lord it over everyone else?
When my photo appears on the front page of the paper the next day, with the caption ‘“V” for Victory’, I am mortified.
‘I sound so stuck up!’ I say to Mum on the phone. ‘It makes it look like I was rubbing it in my competitors’ faces, and it wasn’t that at all!’ How ironic that my symbol of harmony was mistaken for a sign of aggression. At the very least it should have just been read as a symbol of my crush on Josh.
My peace sign, the red-fingernail dare: these are just silly jokes with my friends. They’re signs, if nothing else, of what a little kid I am still. I’m not ready for this. I’m only fourteen – a very young, very sheltered fourteen at that.
But the media wants a victor, not a dumb kid, and from the instant my palm touches the wall at 1:08.71, my life changes.
When I entered the water, I was a schoolkid in Year 9 at Southern Cross College; when I leave the pool, I am an Olympic qualifier. I am an Australian representative. Swimming is no longer what I do; it’s who I am. With one single swim, I have forged my identity. I am Leisel Jones, the swimmer.
This one minute and eight seconds when I’m fourteen years old will define my identity for the next fifteen years. Perhaps the rest of my life.
Of course, I have no time to let this all sink in. I float at the end of my lane in a daze. This baby is going to the Olympics.
5
Rookie
When I spring out of the pool after my race, I am overwhelmed. Where do I go? What do I do now? This is a new club I’ve entered – an Olympic club – and I don’t know the rules, don’t have a clue. I stand dripping awkwardly on the pool deck until Ken motions to me from over near the marshalling area. I head over to him, relieved. It’s as if I’m five years old again, lost in the supermarket and I’ve just spotted my mum.