REVIEWS

In each issue of Watermarks we publish at least one book review. Here are the book reviews that we published in Volume 1 Number 3, April 2000.

Tumble Turns
Shane Gould

Harper Collins, available from Sportspages, Charing Cross Road, or on line at http://www.harpercollins.com.au/online_retailers.htm

I hope to see Shane Gould swim again in the Olympic pool in Munich where, in 1972, she flashed across the sky like an aquatic comet as a 16-year old and collected three gold, one silver, and one bronze medals in five individual events. Some of us had also seen her at Crystal Palace where she equalled Dawn Fraser's 100 metres world record of 58.9 and set a new 200 metres record of 2-06.5 at the Coca-Cola international meet in spring of 1971. In all she set 11 world records in the 200 IM and all the freestyle distances, and for a short while she held them all at once, something not done since Helene Madison's clean-up in the 1931-32 period. Then, suddenly it seemed, she disappeared into the bush, lived a subsistence life, and reappeared only in the 1990's, first as a personality at the 1990 world championships in Perth and later as a middle-aged masters swimmer. It is in this role that I hope to see her in Munich.

That brave confident morning of a meet at Crystal Palace, and her other record breaking outings apart, Shane Gould's life seemed to be going downhill, as she imprisoned herself with her husband and family. It is hard to discern exactly what drove her out of society to live in the bush. Just what was it that used to drive 19-year olds to "retire"? Some people of course can treat life as a series of episodes, and an event that for some is a great life-defining moment is for others just a tread on a staircase or a stepping stone. Until recently, in swimming you had your defining moments young, and that was that. The end was often quite sudden, and very few swimmers maintained their ambitions or fitness long after the age of 20. (The world of other sports is also littered with the tales of athletes who could not come to terms with life without sporting excellence, so swimming was not unique.)

The means by which Shane came to terms with her life arrived in a letter from Dr Bob Grove, a psychologist who introduced her to the concept of "sports retirement stress", which manifests itself in various ways, including having a feeling of goal-less-ness, lack of confidence in other areas coupled with unrealistic expectations, the emptiness felt at withdrawal from training, the generally unfinished business of breaking away, and a feeling of responsibility for the financial burden adopted by the athlete's parents. Discussing this concept with other swimmers, she found mixed reactions, some surprisingly unsympathetic, and oddly enough sympathy from one swimmer whose retirement had been relatively gradual. Athletic career transition was then hardly a gleam in an eye, but is now an important aspect of an athlete's education in Australia.

All this is by way of introducing a short discussion on the participation of elite swimmers in vet or masters sport. Some swimmers who were world beaters in their youth continue to participate quite happily as intensely as they wish, and if they lose, well they lose some and win some. Others keep relatively fit but find that competition is not for them. Some admit that they are pressurised still by former rivals who are anxious to settle old scores. Others find that they have been caught up and passed by swimmers who did not train much in their youth or who have found a training environment that suits them. Some seem to enjoy themselves while the going is good and absent themselves when they suffer a loss of form, and no doubt there are other reasons.

Happily, Shane Gould seems to have come to terms with life. She has accepted that her physical gift was there to be used for the happiness of herself and others, and that it should not be denied or hidden. Despite early troubles, it is reassuring that the book ends optimistically. As a selfish masters swimmer I hope that Shane continues to compete occasionally, and that her example prevents some others who might be feeling vulnerable to defeat by erstwhile rivals to swallow their pride or anxiety and join in.

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First to the Wall: 100 years of Olympic Swimming
Kelly Gonsalves and Susan LaMondia

FreeStyle Publications Inc. $24.95 by mail order from Sports Publications Inc, 228 Nevada St, El Segundo, CA 90245, USA www.swiminfo.com

Somewhere in a corner of my loft is a file of notes on Olympic swimming finals up to about 1972, which is when I gave it up as a bad job. This is the book I might have written, but it is not, alas, the book that should have been written. It is full of anecdotes concerning American and honorary American swimmers, with quite a few echoes of the language of Pat Besford, but the opportunity has been missed, despite the 374 pages, to include heat times (even when the heat times were in some cases world records) or split times, even in relays, the dates the events were held (and some mention of the weather in many cases). To be fair, this information is not readily available, especially in the early Olympic reprots when such arcane information as split times was not thought relevant.

The real problem is that every event has its drama, and in today's larger programme the tendency is for some events to outweigh others in the press and in the briefer official reports that are now written. Thus while some races remain famous and are continually recounted, others seem to lapse into a collective loss of memory. This is not surprising as to compile a record of events from the British press, even a note of the finalists in some events, is quite impossible, while periodicals naturally emphasise the doings of their country folk. But despite its being American this is the only book currently available that seeks to encapsulate this one major feature of swimming within one volume. It lists every event, even the discontinued and rather zany ones from the early days, it gives us the finalists and their full names, with relay alternates too. E-mail for a copy at once.