In at the Deep End

by David Davies

  But I kept going and when I was fifteen I made my first finals at National Age Groups and got two silver and two bronze medals. I thought this was brilliant. I framed the medals and thought that this would be as good as it got.

  That was in 2000 and later that year I stayed up late to watch all the swimming at the Sydney Olympics and saw the Australian superstar Ian Thorpe, who was only a couple of years older than me. He swam a time of three minutes forty seconds for the 400 metres freestyle and I thought: that’s ridiculously fast. It was so disheartening. It really hurt me. You’re doing all those hours of swimming and then you see someone do something completely out of your league and you think, how does he do it, and how am I going to do it?

  However, in the end it must have spurred me on, because I matured very quickly and knew I had to push on with my swimming career.

  At sixteen I won my first National Age Group titles, in the 100, 200 and 400 metres freestyle and also the 400 metres individual medley. In addition I picked up two silver medals at the European Youth Olympics.

  It was after having my first taste of international competition that I really knew that this was for me. I became much more dedicated in terms of the amount of training I was doing.

  So, finally, everything clicked into place in 2002, when I was seventeen. I knew where I was going and I saw the path ahead of me.

  Chapter Four

  My first major Games

  For the first time I was training ten times a week for two hours a session, and felt exhausted when I got home. But I had the satisfaction of having had a good work-out. And I was going into my races feeling very confident and I was knocking chunks and chunks of time off my personal bests that year. At the Commonwealth Games Trials in Manchester in April 2002, my personal best for the 400 metres freestyle was four minutes four seconds. In the heats I went three minutes fifty-five and was up against the big guns, Jamie Salter and Adam Faulkner. I was just behind them and finished fifth in the final.

  That was one hell of a swim for me. I felt great because I’d qualified for the Commonwealth Games and also for the European Junior Championships in Linz, Austria, which were really important.

  I won silver in the 400 metres freestyle and a bronze in the 4 × 200 metres freestyle relay in Austria, again improving my times in both events.

  Winning medals brings enormous confidence; if you’re doing it at that level you feel you can go on to do it internationally.

  Then I went to the Commonwealth Games in Manchester. They were all about enjoyment for me, getting experience and soaking up the fantastic home support we had. Although we were Welsh competitors coming into England, the home nations were all supportive of each other.

  I did the 400 metres freestyle and I really wanted to make the final to experience the atmosphere. I finished tenth and swam slightly slower than I had at the European Juniors. I was a bit disappointed. I don’t know whether nerves got to me or if I didn’t warm up properly, but this was the first major event I’d been to, so perhaps I was expecting too much.

  I had the 200 metre freestyle heats the next day, finishing ninth overall, but I swam much better. I felt I was improving as the Games went along, but, for me, with my races swum, it was now suddenly all over.

  Then my coach Dave Haller said, “How do you fancy doing the 1500?” I saw the start list and there were only nine swimmers, one of whom was from Nigeria with a personal best of seventeen and a half minutes. I knew I could swim much faster and was almost guaranteed a place in the final. What else was I going to do for four days? I had an entry time for the event because I’d done a training swim earlier in the year. My personal best was fifteen minutes fifty-five seconds from that training swim and my plan was to cruise the heat, maybe come fourth or fifth, so that I could get a decent lane for the final. I went fifteen minutes thirty-three seconds, and it felt really, really easy. That time would have won a medal at the European Juniors a couple of weeks before, which made me think! I told Dave I felt really, really good and he said I’d swum very well, I’d looked great, looked natural in that event and we’d have a good laugh in the final the next day.

  So I swam down, had a massage and got back to the Games village feeling really excited about what I’d done.

  When it came to the final, I didn’t feel out of place standing next to the top Australian Grant Hackett or Britain’s 1996 Olympic silver medallist, Graeme Smith. I loved walking out to the noise of the crowd, with my name being announced. That gave me goose bumps.

  It’s the race I’ll remember for the rest of my life as my first big one. I swam fifteen minutes seventeen seconds, another eighteen seconds off my best – which meant I’d taken nearly forty seconds off in two days! I came sixth, breaking the Welsh record, and it made me believe that, although I wasn’t close to Hackett then, in time, I could be.

  All the applause was going to Hackett for winning the Commonwealth title, but I felt like some of it was for me for doing so well. I couldn’t see any Welsh flags in the crowd but as I got out of the pool I saw the Wales team in the far corner going absolutely mad. All the Australian coaches went up to Dave and said it was a great swim and the National Performance Director, Bill Sweetenham, whom I’d never really spoken to before, said the same and I was flattered.

  Things kept getting better after that. I went to the British Short Course Championships in Cambridge just a couple of weeks later and in the 1500 metres beat a man I’d admired and who was my role model, Graeme Smith.

  I was in the lane next to him and managed under fifteen minutes. The crowd stood up, I got interviewed on poolside – it was all new to me, the whole media thing. That’s when I had to make the transition from being a talented junior to being part of the senior team.

  I made the European Short Course team for Riesa, Germany, in December 2002. I didn’t want to go there just to make up the numbers and loved the atmosphere, the spotlight, the crowd and the noise, and being part of a big event. I took another twelve seconds off my personal best in the 1500 metres freestyle, clocking fourteen minutes forty-two seconds and coming second to the Russian, Yuri Prilukov, a big rival of mine.

  The best thing about that meeting was that I was voted ‘Best Newcomer’ by the European swimming media, and received an award.

  I was on cloud nine and when I returned home I was buzzing from the whole experience. Now I wanted more and more.

  Chapter Five

  International success

  After Riesa, the target was the British Championships again, which also doubled up as trials for the World Championships. The qualifying standards were pretty stiff and it was going to be the first meeting where I actually had a proper senior swimmers’ ‘taper’. (A ‘taper’ is a slow-down in training. I’ll explain properly what it is later in the book.)

  I knew I would be racing Graeme Smith again. We’d become big rivals very quickly because of my rapid ascent. We had three absolutely epic races in the 400 metres freestyle along with Adam Faulkner. We all swam very close to each other in the 400 metres and I took three seconds off my best there, finishing in three minutes fifty-one seconds. Graeme won it in three minutes forty-nine and Adam was second in three minutes fifty.

  In the 1500 metres I dropped twelve seconds to clock fifteen minutes five seconds and Graeme just beat me by a few tenths of a second. It was a really close race; we were neck and neck the whole way. Sometimes he would edge ahead and then I would edge ahead. He tried to break me and I would try and do the same to him but his experience and that bit more strength at the end meant that he just beat me to the touch.

  I didn’t really know him that well at that time, but he came across and gave me a big hug at the end. Graeme knew that it was a very special swim for me and he was happy because he had shown some form, which he hadn’t done at the end of 2002. We were good for each other. He was at the back end of his career and I was starting mine, so it was perfect timing.

  And, most importantly, I’d qualified for the World Championships. I had al
ways expected to, but the job was done and now I could get on with it.

  We also raced the 800 metres freestyle that year, which was live on BBC Television. Graeme just beat me again and the race was very similar to the 1500. I remember Sharron Davies, a silver medallist from the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, who was doing the interviews, saying: “Well, there’s the old Scottish braveheart just touching out the Welsh pretender, but I don’t think he’ll be pretending for much longer – he’s a real star to look out for.”

  That remark made all the people who watched it back home, and my friends who don’t normally watch swimming say things like, “Actually, Dave, you’re not bad at swimming, are you?” They had been winding me up for years, saying things like, “You just put a pair of trunks on and run around poolside playing games”. But I’d proved that I worked hard, and they started to understand and respect what I did.

  However, I was still only eighteen and also had A levels to do at school. I came away with an ‘A’ and two ‘B’s in History, Welsh as a second language, and Physical Education. I also managed to achieve a sixty per cent attendance record even though I was away a lot swimming and trained so much. Credit must go to my parents for helping me fit it all in and to Dave Haller, who was steering me and directing me and keeping my feet on the floor. He encouraged me to take each day as it came, not allowing me to get too stressed.

  In July 2003 Barcelona staged the World Swimming Championships.

  This was a step up from the Commonwealth Games because now the whole world was competing, including a really big team from the United States of America, along with established names from Europe. The event took place over eight days, also something I’d never experienced before. I had to learn to keep my focus till the last day, while going through the shared emotions of the team, supporting them, and sitting through the long sessions.

  I had been a pretty popular guy on the junior team, but now I was with people much older than me in a seasoned international team. I was the youngest of the boys there by a fair bit, so it was hard to fit in. You see people like the experienced butterfly swimmer Steve Parry and you know he’s funny because you’ve seen him on the television and you feel you know him, but of course you don’t. But he was great at bringing me into the conversation and I built up a great bond with him.

  I roomed with the Scottish swimmer Gregor Tait, who was six years older than me. That was a test as he was in a swim-off for a place in the final of the 200 metres backstroke and he lost the race. He came back, couldn’t sleep, and was up all night. I was thinking, what do I do, I’m swimming tomorrow, shall I speak to him? But, in the end, we were fine. We often talk about that now as we are quite good friends and even lived together for a while when he moved to Cardiff.

  I made the final of the 1500 metres freestyle, though I didn’t think I was going to. I went a bit slower in the heat – I thought I could ease up, which I shouldn’t have done, and got touched out in my heat. In the final I swam slightly better than my personal best, but, because of the way I’d been swimming, with big decreases in my times, I’d expected another big drop. I came fourth, which was good going for a first World Championships, but I felt I had too much energy left at the end. I’m not sure if that was down to the way I swam the race, but I had definitely expected more.

  However, I didn’t dwell on it as I had the European Junior Championships straight afterwards in Glasgow, and flew there from Barcelona.

  I was made the Great Britain team captain. It was a nice honour to be chosen by my peers. You have to be seen as a decent guy, approachable and likeable, and I did all I could to get good team chemistry. It’s all about enjoyment. You won’t swim fast unless you’re happy.

  I was going for the same record that 1996 Olympic bronze medallist Paul Palmer achieved when he was my age. He won the 200, 400 and 1500 metres freestyle and they were the events I was doing.

  I came second in the 200 and swam very well, achieving a personal best time. I was third in the 400 even though I swam an absolute shocker of a race, three seconds off my best time. I don’t know what happened to me; the winner came from lane eight and second place was in lane one, whereas I was in the lane for the fastest swimmer, lane four.

  Then came the main event, the 1500. I led out from the front and went on to win the race. I’d won the European Juniors! It was a massive relief, because for the first time I felt I was the favourite for a race, which hadn’t happened before.

  I’d done it in front of a home crowd; my mum and dad were there and some family from Scotland had come along as well. It was brilliant. I loved the national anthem being played, the standing ovation and the lap of honour afterwards.

  I remember we had a team meeting and somebody said that European Junior champions generally go on to great things. They had a list of the names that had been successful: Paul Palmer, Graeme Smith and Steve Parry from Britain, all of them top internationals. It made me think that I was on the right track.

  Chapter Six

  Disappointments

  There is a big difference between being part of a junior team and being in the seniors.

  As a junior you’re almost spoon-fed in terms of your pool training – you’re taken through every step.

  When you’re a senior you have to be a lot more independent, and you have to manage yourself a lot more. You can’t afford to stop and stare because it’s so fast and furious. You have to be at breakfast on time, make sure everything is packed in your bag because you might not come straight back from the pool. There are media commitments, doping tests, everything to do. You can do all the preparation you like, but until you experience it you can’t really know what to expect.

  Having made big improvements in times to get to this kind of level, some athletes now reach their plateau period. Also your body is going through big changes in your late teens.

  One day you can do your training and feel fine, and another day you can be tired and sore and feel unable to do the work.

  It was frustrating as I didn’t understand why I couldn’t swim well every session. One day I could do fifty-eight seconds for one hundred metres and be flying, and the next week it would be sixty, or sixty-one, seconds.

  I’m not the type to totally lose my cool, but I was very frustrated, especially coming up to the World Championships. I wanted to be swimming fast and kept wondering what I was doing wrong.

  I probably sulked, to be honest. Swimming dictates my mood so much. I wish it didn’t, but I can’t help it, it just does. If I swim a fantastic session, on the drive home I’ll sing along to every song on the radio, whereas if I have had a nightmare of a set I’ll be hunching my shoulders and acting like Kevin the teenager from the Harry Enfield show!

  I try to keep it to myself, just muttering stuff under my breath. I don’t take it out on anyone else. If I’d swum well I would come in and tell my mum, but if I hadn’t I’d just be quiet and in a mood. She soon worked out what it was all about.

  After the break following the World Championships, we had a training camp in Australia and I swam absolutely terribly. I was training with Graeme Smith and he was beating me in every session.

  I got ill from trying too hard.

  It was meant to be an early-season camp for me to get fit, but I was thinking about the Olympics the following year and that I had to train hard, and I was getting really wrapped up in it.

  I had a bad period leading up to December. In the 1500 metres at the European Short Course Championships in Dublin, an event where I’d come second a year earlier, I swam twenty seconds slower, got lapped by the winner, got beaten by Graeme Smith, came eleventh overall and felt absolutely terrible in the water.

  I saw my mum and dad and cried, which I don’t normally do. I thought, I’ve had my run, it’s all over; I didn’t know what was happening.

  Dave Haller gave me a few days off to let things sink in and have a rest. We came to the conclusion that I’d over-trained, tried too hard, too early and needed to chill out and start enjoying my
self. I needed to remember what I’d done the previous year, and just let it happen.

  I had a very low-key Christmas, just plodding along and enjoying my time with the family. When I went back to the pool in January a sports scientist, Bob Treffene, came over for three weeks from Australia to work with me. I’d met Bob previously but never worked with him.

  He must be up there in terms of influence on my career, along with Dave, but for very different reasons. His experience working with Olympic champions from Australia, Kieren Perkins and Grant Hackett, made me instantly respect him, and when he talked he made sense. We had a bond straight away. Doing the training sessions he was giving me I could see the improvement immediately. And after he left I was swimming the kind of sets I expected to be swimming, very fast, and getting better each week.

  In February 2004 I went to the American National Championships and raced a swimmer called Larsen Jensen whom I’d beaten in the 1500 metres freestyle the previous year, though he had swum a personal best in the 800. He was a good young swimmer, like I was, and taking him on in his home country was a big thing for me.

  In the race he was miles ahead of me but he ‘died’ and I came back to finish first in fifteen minutes two seconds. So I’d gone from a massive disappointment at the European Short Course, three months earlier, to swimming really well.

  Then we went down to Fort Lauderdale to have a training camp and I swam wonderfully for two weeks. I came back buzzing from both the earlier race, and from the training.

  We were constantly in touch with Bob Treffene and the model of training that we’d set up was working, and working very well.

  I got to the Olympic Trials in Sheffield in April expecting to qualify. It would have been a huge shock to me and, I’m sure, to others if I hadn’t made it. But the question was, having swum so fast unrested, could I dip under fifteen minutes? Could I break Graeme Smith’s British record of fourteen minutes fifty-eight seconds, or could I do something really special and go down to a time in the low fourteen fifties?