Rebecca Adlington might have been forgiven for declaring: “It doesn’t get any
better than this - I quit.” She had just become the greatest Olympic swimmer
Britain has produced since 1908, with two gold medals and a world-record
performance that will go down in history as one of the most monumental. The
19-year-old from Mansfield had bigger things in mind: “London 2012, here I
come - it’s going to be fantastic. I wouldn’t miss it for the whole world.”
On Monday she became the first British woman to lift an Olympic crown in the
pool since 1960 and the first of either sex for 20 years when she won the
400m freestyle. But yesterday she announced herself as a great of distance
freestyle swimming with a world record of 8min 14.10min in the 800m. The
standard, which had been set at 8:16.22 by American Janet Evans on August
20, 1989, was the final mark to be broken from the last millennium.
he impact of the British teenager’s tactics was devastating: by the end of 16
lengths at a pace few have dreamt of, the result sheet showed that six of
the eight finalists had swum slower than their heats time. Adlington, who
before the race had to lie down on the floor to avoid “standing up and being
sick because I was more nervous than I’ve ever been in my life”, dealt a
psychological blow by racing through a timewarp: the first turn was the last
at which she was behind; by 100m she was travelling as fast, at 59.37sec, as
the speed in w h i c h J o h n n y ‘ T a r z a n ’ Weissmuller won his first
Olympic 100m freestyle title in 1924; at 400m, on 4min 5.72sec, her time
would have won the silver medal in the 400m at the 2004 Games in Athens; and
by the end she was 2.12sec inside a record set when she was six months old.
Bill Furniss, her coach at the Nova Centurion club in Notting-ham since she
was 12, summed up the enormity of what had just unfolded: “It’s an awesome
achievement. It’s frighteningly fast and Rebecca’s performance is right up
there with all the best swims. That’s got to be one of the all-time great
swims.
“It’s such a magnificent record and to take it down by so much . . . the other
girls couldn’t repeat, couldn’t back up on their heats swims. She just
destroyed the record and destroyed the field.”
Following double gold on the track in 2004, honours came quickly for Kelly
Holmes. Will it be Dame Becky by the year’s end? “No! I’m only 19,” said
Adlington. “It would be an honour, of course, but that’s not why I came
here. I came here to do a job, to race for what I’ve worked for. It wasn’t
about anything that might go with it.”
The odds on Adlington lifting the BBC Sports Personality Award shortened as
soon as she broke away from main rivals Camelia Potec, of Romania, and
Alessia Filippi, of Italy, at the 150m mark. Her rhythmic excellence was
never in question from that point. Adlington opened up clear water that left
no room for her competitors to even hope of striking back - the winning
margin has only been greater on one occasion in history, the 1968 title at
altitude in Mexico going to American Debbie Meyer by 11.7sec. Filippi ended
with the silver and was the only other swimmer to improve on her heats time.
The bronze went to Lotte Friis of Denmark.
Anita Lonsbrough, the last British woman to win a swimming gold, in 1960,
watched from the stands. “I’m delighted that the records I held for being
‘the last British woman to . . . ’ are finally gone - and they could not
have gone to a more lovely or deserving athlete,” she said. Adlington was
the fifth woman to win the 400m and 800m double after four Americans: Meyer
(1968), Tiffany Cohen (1984), Evans (1988) and Brooke Bennett (2000).
“I can’t believe it, I went out so quick. It’s fantastic that all the hard
work over the years has paid off,” Adlington said. “At 400m, I thought
‘that’s only halfway’.” The pain set in sometime between 500 and 600. It
just hit me how fast I’d gone out. I just stuck with it, just tried to go
with it. Just kept thinking about what I had to do. When I realised I was on
my own I just went for it.”
Adlington punched the air, waved to teammates, slapped the water and sought
out the place in the crowd where mum Kay, who gave up her career as a PA
when her 12-year-old daughter’s talent shone through, and dad Steve,
co-own-er of a steel manufacturing company, had been standing for the last
200m of the race, Union flags flying.
“We are the proudest parents in Beijing,” said Kay through floods of tears.
“Mrs Phelps must be pretty proud too but we are just overjoyed. It’s just
unbelievable.”
Her parents have helped fund her career as a swimmer but following her
incredible success in her first Olympics, the offers, along with the
Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo kitten heels, are flooding in.
“To be honest, anything that has come in is going to have to come second to
swimming, no matter what it is. My swimming comes first. I’m still going to
have to go training, between six and eight in the morning and five and seven
at night. I couldn’t have done it without my mum and dad. And Bill’s been
like a second dad. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t be here today,”
said Adlington, a tear in her eye as she recalled the rollercoaster ride
from being European junior 800m champion in 2004 to failing to make the
England Commonwealth Games team in 2006 after a bout of glandular fever. The
recovery was long and slow but by summer 2006, she had won her first senior
international medal - a silver in the European Championships in the 800m.
“Others would have walked away - but Bill stuck by me,” said Adlington.
Furniss said of his charge: “Talent comes in different ways. She had physical
talent and I’ve coached swimmers who’ve had great physical talent but she’s
got a psychological talent as well. She’s got an inner strength. She just
hates to lose, and she’s driven. She’s been under such pressure. She was
nervous today, really nervous. But I told her that’s just human and it’s
your body just getting you ready for what you have to do. If you can embrace
that and it doesn’t throw you . . . and she did just that. There’s a lot of
swimmers who can stand on the block and under the most intense pressure they
just crack. And there’s a few swimmers who stand on the block and they get
better. She’s one of those. ” Furniss’s first words to her after the 400m
were “Rebecca Adlington - Olympic champion” because he wanted to be the
first to speak the honour. Yesterday he said: “What have you gone and done?”
Taken an axe to expectation, that’s what.
“When she turned in two mins zero-one at the 200m, I was standing with the
other coaches and they said ‘that’s a bit fast’. I said ‘it’s not, because
she just looks so easy’. She has an awesome technique. Everyone talks about
the work that swimmers do. And we do have a punishing regime. But we do as
much work on technique. The thing that makes the difference is technique.
The thing that wins it is technique.”
Consistently training near to world-record pace helps, too. “When you work
with someone day in and day out you see some amazing things and sometimes
it’s difficult to keep your mouth shut because it’s just amazing,” said
Furniss. “She swims four of five sessions a week at world-class pace. People
have been asking me if I’m surprised. Yes, I’m surprised but part of me is
not.
Adlington in words
WHAT SHE SAID
‘I’m scared of the sea. I’m absolutely petrified. It’s the unknown. I can’t
stand fish. I don’t eat any fish at all. I can’t. Yuck, can’t stand it. I
can’t do fish and I’m petrified of what’s underneath me in the sea’
- ‘I had to stay focused after the 400m, but there’s much more relief today
because the swimming’s over, the pressure’s gone and I can enjoy the Games
and be the one in the stands losing my voice’
- ‘He [Michael Phelps] is so amazing. I’m just glad that I’ve done what I’ve
done at a Games with him, so I get to tell my grandchildren that I was there
when Michael Phelps got his eight gold medals’
- ‘Any girl who comes and sits here with you and says, “Yeah, I listen to
music and watch TV” and all that . . . no! It’s not true. Every girl loves
shopping. It’s the insecurity and the thrill of feeling good. Every man
knows it. Men are like: “No, your bum doesn’t look big in this”, but they
don’t believe you. Every woman wants to put her new clothes on and new shoes
and say, “Look at me, doesn’t this look great?” It’s about feeling good and
looking great’
WHAT SHE DID
First 100m, 59.37sec Adlington would have been a fingernail from the
speed in which Johnny ‘Tarzan’ Weissmuller won his first Olympic 100m
freestyle title in 1924. The average pace of each subsequent 100m is faster
than the time in which Australian sprint legend Dawn Fraser won the first of
her three 100m crowns in 1956
First 200m, 2:01.32 Adlington would have made the final of the
straight 200m at every Games up to and including Atlanta in 1996
First 400m, 4:05.72 Adlington would have won the silver medal in the
straight 400m at the 2004 Games in Athens in a time that is two seconds
faster than the speed at which Mark Spitz held the men’s 400m world record
in 1968
800m, 8:14.10Adlington is the first British woman to hold a world
record in an Olympic event since 1960. Her time breaks the oldest record on
the books, the 8:16.22 set by American Janet Evans in 1989 when Adlington
was just six months old
