Olympic legend Stephanie Rice keen to help Indians rise above mediocrity
MUMBAI: A gold medal sits on the table throughout the conversation; a reminder, an aspiration and a rallying point. Laid out on Chinese jade, it’s one of the three Stephanie Rice won as a 20-year-old at the 2008 Olympics. It gleams like a credential of priceless experience.
Rice knows how to win, and she is hoping to pass on that knowledge to future generations of swimmers. Hopefully, to some from India. Though she hasn’t quite zoned in on a venue, the swimmer is hoping to launch the Stephanie Rice Swimming Academy in India. It will be a high-performance centre aimed mainly at children aged 12 and above, looking to churn out talent by the 2024 Olympics.
“What I will be doing is bring my team of elite coaches here,” said Rice. “They will look after the technique, stroke-correction etc. I would like to spend three, four months here, doing one-on-one sessions with athletes on mainly the mental aspect of the sport.”
Rice also recalled the moment when her emotional strength faced its toughest test. “Before the 200m (individual) medley (in Beijing), I was really, really sick; considering not competing in the race at all. I was the current world record holder. So everybody was expecting that I’d win. “I had this huge mentoring session with my coach, two hours before the race. I was crying. He said, ‘at the end of the day, your options are to swim or to not swim. Which one are you going to choose?’. I knew I would regret not swimming. So I almost lost all expectations from myself. Even if I came last, I would have been happy to have just given it a go. To have won that race, and broken the world record that I did when I was 100 per cent healthy and focussed, really made me understand how big a component mental strength plays.”
But Rice, who retired in 2012 at the age of 24 due to a recurring shoulder injury, admits that India — a nation that hasn’t had any Olympics success in the pool — have a lot more basic problems to tackle. “In order to be a good Olympic swimmer, you have to go right back to the start and learn to swim.
Learning to swim isn’t compulsory in India, but it is in Australia. Every kid in Australia learns to swim, from anywhere between 6 months to 1 years old. In India, it isn’t uncommon to see a seven-year-old who has had just one swimming session. They don’t even know the basic foundations that in Australia even a one-year-old would know. It does take time to correct that.
“What I hope to achieve is obviously the top level of Olympic success, but bring it all the way back to learn to swim and really get people understanding the importance of learning to swim at a young age. It is a long-term project. It just takes one person to get in there and get it going. It’s a big challenge, but it’s possible. I believe in what we’re trying to do.”