Everyone knows that Ian Thorpe has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian. Perhaps fewer may be aware that his swimming career began by chance. When his elder sister was advised to take up swimming to strengthen a broken wrist, the five-year-old Thorpe followed her into the pool.
As a young child, Thorpe was sidelined by an allergy to chlorine. As a result, he did not swim in his first race until a school carnival at the age of seven. The allergy forced Thorpe to swim with his head out of the water but, despite this ungainly technique, he won the race, primarily because of his significant size advantage.
He gradually overcame the ailment and progressed to the captaincy of New South Wales for the Australian Primary Schools Championships in 1994. He subsequently won nine individual gold medals at the New South Wales Short Course Age Championships in September of the same year.
Thorpe was the first person to have been named Swimming World Swimmer of the Year four times. His athletic achievements made him one of Australia's most popular athletes, and he was recognised as the Young Australian of the Year in 2000.
Meanwhile … at 11 o’clock last Wednesday the lap pool in Albany was packed with school kids. Accompanied by a handful of teachers from the Albany Primary School, they were training for the interschool carnival due in the next couple of months. It was a school activity undertaken in regular school hours
At 8 o’clock last Saturday morning, under the watchful eye of several coaches, forty Denmark Primary School children at Greens Pool were training for the same carnival. Although out of hours, the Primary School Principal had given up her own time to watch over proceedings. So too had the coaches, physical education teacher and all the parents who’d driven their kids to training.
It was the sort of community turnout that makes Denmark such a wonderful place to live. But it won’t happen once summer is over. For these children to swim in Albany on a year round basis is costly to parents, and extremely hard to fit into the Albany pool’s available weekend time slots. A one-hour class there during school time burns another two hours of lost travel time.
Swimming needs to become part of the regular school curriculum right here in Denmark – and for this we need our own indoor heated swimming pool operating year-round.
Who knows - there may have been a future Ian Thorpe, Dawn Fraser or Leisel Jones (each winners of 8 Olympic medals) amongst these kids training at Greens Pool last week.
Let’s give all children an equal chance!
Year 4-7 Denmark Primary School children at swimming training at Greens Pool
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