Ian O'Brien
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
For the New Zealand cricketer, see Iain O'Brien
Ian Lovett O'Brien (born March 3, 1947 in New South Wales) was an Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1960s, who won a gold medal in the 200 m breaststroke in world record time at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He won five Commonwealth Games gold medals in his career and claimed a total of nine individual and six relay titles at the Australian Championships before retiring at the young age of 21 due to financial pressure.
After showing promise at an early age, O'Brien's father sent him from their rural home to Sydney to train under renowned coach Forbes Carlile and his breaststroke assistant Terry Gathercole. He competed in his first national championships in 1962 soon after turning 15, and won the 220 yd (200 m) breaststroke to gain selection for the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, where he won both the 110 and 220 yd (200 m) breaststroke and the 4 × 110 yd medley relay. He won both breaststroke events at the 1963 Australian Championships, and repeated the feat for the next four years. In 1964, O'Brien went to the Tokyo Olympics and came from third at the 150 m mark to win the gold medal. He then collected a bronze in the medley relay. O'Brien successfully defended both his breaststroke titles at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica, but retired afterwards to support his family. He was persuaded by swimming officials to make a comeback for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City as Australia did not have a breaststroker, and after a crash diet, came sixth in the 100 m event but failed to reach the final in the 200 m event. He then retired and went into the television industry.
Contents |
[edit] Early years
O'Brien grew up in rural Wellington, New South Wales,[1] with neither of his parents having a sporting background. His father Roy only knew one stroke, which was breaststroke, while his mother Thelma did not take her first swimming lesson until she was 55. O'Brien's sister Anne showed talent in her childhood years, but she preferred horseriding.[2] The local pool in Wellington was an old-style design which had no pump system and was only manually drained once a week, on Wednesdays, which was not the most hygienic system possible. O'Brien got his basic swimming instruction at the age of four from the local Learn to Swim program. There were not many activities for children in Wellington except play sport, and O'Brien played basketball and rugby league, did athletics and rode horses in addition to his swimming.[2] In 1954, a chlorinated pool was formed in the town, leading to the formation of Wellington Swimming Club. At the age of 10, he began competitive swimming under local coach Bert Eslick, and participated in regional country swimming carnivals at Dubbo, Bathurst and Orange.[2]
After dominating the country championships in the breaststroke discipline, O'Brien was taken in 1960 by his father to the Ryde pool in Sydney to be coached by Forbes Carlile and his assistant, former world-record breaking breaststroker Terry Gathercole.[3] Carlile was regarded as the leading swimming coach in Australia at the time. At the time, O'Brien was already a large teenager, weighing in at 82.6 kg at the age of 13. O'Brien trained with Gathercole only during holdiays when his father could take him to Sydney, while Jim Wilkins, a Catholic priest in Bathurst, supervised him according to Gathercole's plans while he was in the country.[2] Within a year, O'Brien improved from being country carnival champion to a national-level athlete, despite the death of his father in the same year.[4]
[edit] International debut
Aged 15, O'Brien gained international selection in 1962 when he won the 220 yard (yd) breaststroke at his first Australian Championships in the time of 2 minutes (m) 41.8 seconds (s).[1] He was also a part of the New South Wales team that won the 4 × 100 m medley relay. His performances gained him selection in the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth. At his first international competition, he won three gold medals in three events. He competed in both the 110 yd (100 m) and 220 yd (200 m) breaststroke, defeating fellow Australian William Burton in both events in respective times of 1 m 11.4s and 2 m 38.1 s.[5] He then added a gold in the 4 × 110 yd medley relay, along with Julian Carroll, Kevin Berry and David Dickson in a time of 4 m 12.4 s.[5][3][1]
In 1963, he again captured the breaststroke double at the Australian Championships and was a member of the winning New South Wales team in the medley relay to earn an overseas tour to Europe with the Australian team, competing in the Soviet Union, Germany, England before visiting Japan and Hong Kong.[4][3][1] O'Brien repeated the breaststroke double in 1964, lowering his times to 1 m 8.1 s and 2 m 32.6 s in the 100 metres (m) and 200 m breaststroke respectively as well as a third consecutive medley relay triumph for New South Wales.[5] Since O'Brien was widely regarded as Australia's best breaststroker, he was selected for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo]. O'Brien joined the rest of the team in Ayr in northern Queensland for the national camp prior to the Olympics, where he trained under head coach Don Talbot. O'Brien described Talbot as a "slavedriver" but felt that he experience was invaluable and productive.[4][3]
[edit] Olympic gold
Arriving in Tokyo, the favourites for the 200 m breaststroke were Chet Jastremski of the United States who held the world record, and Georgy Prokopenko of the Soviet Union.[3] Gathercole and O'Brien had built O'Brien's technique on that of Jastremski, attempting to refine it and make it smoother. Years after O'Brien retired, Harry Gallagher said that "Ian O'Brien has an almost faultless style and is a great example for Australian youngsters to copy".[4] O'Brien was known for the strength that he generated in his torso, but was also known for his powerful kicks; sports science experiments that were carried out showed that his vertical jump was especially strong.[4]
Talbot organized time trials for the Australian swimmers in front of opposition swimmers in an attempt to unnerve them. O'Brien did a 2 m 33 s, which Talbot felt had unsettled their opponents.[4] O'Brien swam an Olympic record in his heat, posting time of 2 m 31.4 s, reducing the previous mark by 5.8 s and showing how much the world record had fallen in the past four years. However, in the other heats, Egon Henninger of Germany, Prokopenko and Jastremski bettered O'Brien's time. O'Brien lowered the Olympic record in winning the second semifinal in a time of 2 m 28.7 s, while Jastremski won the first semifinal in a slower time. The heats, semifinal and final were all swum on the same day, and would test all the swimmers' recovery time. O'Brien planned to swim the race at an even pace and record even splits for the first and second half of the race, but he was aware of not chasing Jastremski, who was known for an aggressive opening style, too hard in the initial stages.[4][1]
In the final, as was his style, Jastremski attacked from the outset, while O'Brien raced with a characteristic even pace. After being fourth at the halfway mark behind Jastremski, Prokopenko and Henninger, O'Brien overtook Jastremski in the third 50 m, leaving the American in fourth place. He then gradually moved past Henninger before overtaking Prokopenko to win the gold medal in a new world record time of 2 m 27.8 s, a margin of 0.4 s.[1] O'Brien had reduced his personal best time by more than four seconds during his performances at the Olympics to claim an upset win.[4][3]
O'Brien was rested for the heat of the 4 × 100 m medley relay, with Peter Tonkin swimming the breaststroke. In the final, O'Brien was brought back into the team and he combined with Peter Reynolds, Berry and Dickson to collect a bronze medal behind the United States and Germany in a times of 4 m 2.3 s.[5][6][1]
[edit] Later career
In 1965, O'Brien again won the breaststroke double at the Australian Championships, but in a year with no international competition, he swam much slower times of 1 m 11.1 s and 2 38.6 s respectively. He completed a fourth consecutive medley relay win for New South Wales. At the 1966 Australian Championships, his times were again slower, ballooning out to 1 m 11.8 s and 2 m 41.6 s but it was still enough to see him retain his titles and qualify for the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. Critics had written him off as he was 16 kg overweight just six weeks before the competition.[1] However, he returned to his peak form by the time the team reached Jamaica, where he again won both breaststroke events in times of 1 m 8.2 s and 2 m 29.3 s. However, his winning run in the 4 × 100 m medley relay came to an end when the team was disqualified for an illegal changeover.[5]
In 1967 he skipped the Australian Championships since he had no sponsorship and financial pressures forced him to put his career on hold. In 1968, despite Graham Edwards winning the National 200 m breastroke title, the Australian Swimming Union team persuaded an overweight O'Brien to make a comeback, after a crash diet and fitness program. He had lost 12.7 kg in twelve weeks of intense training. O'Brien was unable to reclaim either of his individual Australian titles but New South Wales again won the medley relay.[5]
At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico, O'Brien was eliminated in the heats of the 200 m breaststroke,[7] with the eventual winner posting a time slower than that of O'Brien four years earlier. He did better in the newly introduced 100 m event, finishing sixth in a time of 1 m 8.6 s. O'Brien narrowly missed a bronze medal in the 4 × 100 m medley relay by 0.1 s to the Soviet Union, along with Michael Wenden, Robert Cusack and Karl Byrom. O'Brien admitted that his training had not been sufficient for Olympic standards, noting that "I needed to put on another thousand kilometres in training."[7] O'Brien also rued the absence of Talbot to motivate him to work and had a further accident at the Olympic Village where he was not allowed to bind his hand when his fingers were slammed by a closing window.[7][1]
[edit] Out of the pool
O'Brien retired after the Olympics at the age of 21, so that he could completely concentrate on making a living.[5] Since his father's death in 1962, O'Brien's swimming career had caused substantial financial problems to his family, with his mother having to sell the family home to support the family. O'Brien had also been forced to leave high school before he had completed to earn a living by wrapping parcels to support the family. Television and camera work had always interested O'Brien, and he secured a job as a stagehand for the Channel Nine upon his return from the Toyko Olympics, which he held for more than ten years. He then transferred to the Channel Ten for two years before working for an independent production company for another two years. In 1979, he started his own company, named Videopak,[5] which went on to become one of the largest privately owned television documentary companies in Australia, with its sound stages being used by public and private television companies.[2]
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Andrews, Malcolm (2000). Australia at the Olympic Games. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. ISBN 0-7333-0884-8.
- Gordon, Harry (1994). Australia and the Olympic Games. University of Queensland. ISBN 0-7022-2627-0.
- Howell, Max (1986). Aussie Gold. Brooks Waterloo. ISBN 0-86440-680-0.
|
|||||
