The Humble Glutton

By David

Have you noticed the mysteries of language? Take a simple thing. Each evening when I get home I click onto the Timed Finals website and catch up on the top swim stories of the day.

Work with me here, people. The sandwich becomes relevant...

New Zealanders and Australians would describe this as, "Have a gander at Timed Finals. It's a cracker."

Americans would say, "Go check out Timed Finals. It's great."

And in the UK, "Take a peek at "Timed Finals". It's absolutely terrific, super, whiz bang."

Timed Finals is a good site. Much of it is written by a guy who's served his apprenticeship in the swimming trade; Scott Goldblatt swam for the United States in the Sydney and Athens Olympic Games.

This week I saw the news on Timed Finals that Kevin Berry, the Australian 200m butterfly champion at the Tokyo Olympic Games, had died. His coach, Don Talbot, was reported as describing Berry as a "tough bugger" (American, good guy; British, spiffing chap). That'd be right. He was all of those things. Berry was swimming with Talbot when I went across to Australia to train in Talbot's squad. I learned a lot there; how to swim six miles, that 400 fly was not just black humor; all that sort of thing.

Berry taught me two life long lessons; one good, humility; one bad, gluttony.

Humility; to appreciate this lesson you need to be aware that when I joined Talbot’s squad I thought I was pretty good at this swimming business. I was good enough to be in one of Talbot's faster lanes, a lane that included Kevin Berry. It wouldn't take me long to sort him out, I thought. You have to imagine this, first day, first warm up, certainly first 400 fly. Berry led and I followed somewhere near the back of the lane. About half way down length five two hands rested on my shoulders and I was rocketed backward underneath the speeding Kevin Berry. In that instant a very naive New Zealander was taught a lot about the power of an Olympic Champion. It never happened again. I kept a close eye on where Mr. Berry was and stayed well out of his way.

Gluttony; before afternoon practice Kevin Berry and one of his mates used to sit beside the pool and have a snack. When I got to know them better I discovered their sandwiches were peanut butter and jelly. Not just ordinary peanut butter and jelly. These sandwiches added a slice of cheese between the peanut butter and the jelly. Kevin said it made all the difference. He even offered me one. There’s something pretty special about sharing a sandwich with an Olympic Champion. This was before the days of steroids and human growth hormones, perhaps, I wondered, peanut butter, cheese and jelly sandwiches would do the same thing. I’d make sure my mother back in New Zealand added this vital item to my diet. And I did.

They were great days. Days when sport was littered with the sort of good keen men Barry Crump would have shot deer with. Just look at some of the other names around at that time, Scholander, Frazer, Devitt and Conrads. Their times weren’t all that special by today’s standards – 2.06.6 for 200m fly – but they were swum in a time when sport was a little more honest.

And, just so this story doesn't read like an essay where the writer lost all sense of direction, I'll bring you back to Timed Finals one more time: those guys have a good site and we're pleased that they appear to like ours, too. Along with SwimWatch, you're not going to be fed any national-federation-filtered rubbish over there. Check it out; give it a gander.