Pool Party
By Joanne Hawkins
March 11, 2007 12:00
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AT a public swimming pool in Melbourne's outer suburbs, triple Olympic champion Jodie Henry is perched precariously on a diving board, patiently waiting for the photographer to begin shooting.
Although she’s one of our top female swimmers and, therefore, at home in the water below, the lanky blonde is terrified of heights. She lets out a huge sigh of relief when the shoot is eventually wrapped up and she can gingerly climb down.
A few people have stopped swimming to watch what’s going on, but hardly anyone asks Henry for an autograph.
Perhaps they’re having difficulty differentiating her from fellow swimmers Leisel Jones and Libby Lenton, the other two so-called swimming golden girls.
There’s certainly no hint of the hysteria that a visit from Ian Thorpe or even Grant Hackett would generate, but that’s just how the shy, laid-back Henry seems to like it.
It’s just a few weeks before Henry is due to compete in the 2007 FINA World Championships in Melbourne.
She’s the defending 100m freestyle champion at the event, having won gold in Montreal in 2005, but she’s refusing to let the pressure get to her.
She’s due back in the pool for another intensive training session in a bid to improve her time but says that, win or lose in Melbourne, it’s not going to be the end of her world.
“I never take part in a race thinking I’m going to kick the other girls’ butts. I’m just going to swim the best I can and whatever happens, happens. I already have Commonwealth, Olympic and World gold (medals), so everything else is just a bonus.”
Henry admits she can’t really remember much about the night she became one of our swimming greats.
It was Thursday, August 19, 2004 – day six of the Olympic Games in Athens – and the night she won swimming’s ‘glamour sprint’: the 100m freestyle.
It was particularly special because she was the first Australian woman to win the event since Dawn Fraser bagged it for an incredible third time in 1964. And Henry, who’d already scooped gold as part of the 4 x 100m freestyle relay, was understandably ecstatic at her win.
“It’s indescribable,” shrieked the bubbly Queenslander after her win. “I never dreamt this would happen.”
Two days later, she won another gold as part of the 4 x 100m medley relay and officially became our new queen of the pool.
It wasn’t her first taste of medal success – she’d previously won three gold and silver at the 2002 Commonwealth Games – but her Olympic win was in a different league.
“The Olympics are the ultimate,” says Henry. “You can’t describe how it feels to walk out at an Olympic final or a medal ceremony.”
To celebrate her Athens achievements, Henry was given the honour of sitting in seat 1A in first class on one of the Qantas jets chartered to bring our Olympic team home.
“All the gold medallists were up in first class,” giggles Henry. “It was so nice. I hate flying in the back of the plane now; once you’ve experienced first class you want to do it all the time.”
With her good looks and effervescent personality, not to mention her talent, Henry looked like making a splash for years to come.
Here was someone who could possibly be the female equivalent of Ian Thorpe and another marketable millionaire in the making.
And what was particularly satisfying for Henry was how hard she had worked for her success, overcoming crippling panic attacks that blighted her early career, and which she says cost her a place in the team for the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
Janine Donaldson, sports marketing manager for adidas, who signed Henry as a ‘face’ of their swimwear alongside Thorpe, says the turnaround was amazing:
“She’s told us she used to get so worked up before a race that she would feel sick. But then she adopted a strategy of (trying to) enjoy her sport; to get where she wanted to go, she became this fun-loving athlete. It was refreshing to see.”
But the fun didn’t last long. Post-Athens, reality set in.
Put simply, the woman who, along with Lenton and Jones, had been credited with the return of Australian women’s swimming as a world power, lost her mojo.
Now 23, Henry says, “As a swimmer, your whole life is about winning an Olympic gold. So, to (win three gold medals) when I was only 20, it was like, ‘Oh jeez, I’ve done it. What now?’”
Unlike sports such as football, cricket and tennis, where players compete week in, week out, the life of a swimming champion can be a solitary existence.
In place of fans regularly cheering their performance are endless hours of swimming lengths in the practice pool to hone their skills for the next big competition that could be months away.
As Henry grappled to find the motivation to keep going with her swimming career, she found it harder and harder to drag herself down to the pool.
“I just didn’t want to go training,” she remembers. “I still loved training when I was there, but it was just finding the motivation to go in the first place. I still haven’t gone as fast as I did at the Olympics.”
Not surprisingly, Henry says she completely understands fellow Olympian Ian Thorpe’s decision to quit the sport, aged 24, citing a lack of motivation and a need to do something different with his life.
“I haven’t achieved anywhere near as much as Ian and, yeah, I have felt that way, too,” she says.
“He’s been in the sport for 10 years and he deserves to retire happily to do what he wants to do.”
Shannon Rollason, who’s coached Jodie since she was a 14-year-old Brisbane girl, knew that she would also probably struggle with the pressure of being a triple Olympic champion.
When Henry considered taking some time off from competitive swimming – as Thorpe also did after Athens – Rollason instead suggested relaxing her training schedule.
“I’d read this article where Kieren Perkins talked about taking a year off,” says Rollason, “and how, in hindsight, he’d wished he’d stayed in the water. I’m really glad I persuaded Jodie to keep swimming – albeit without any pressure – because I think if she’d taken a break in 2005, the fear of coming back and losing in 2006 would only have mounted.”
But you can’t keep a champion down and, even with her foot off the rudder, so to speak, Henry managed to make the final of the 100m freestyle at the World Swimming Championships in Montreal in 2005.
But she was still struggling. “She was tense,” remembers Rollason. “I said, ‘Jodie, it’s as if you’re lumping this Olympic gold medal around your neck. Just take it off and remember what this year is all about. It’s a bonus that you made the finals.’”
To everyone’s surprise – not least her own – Henry won the race. But she still struggled to find motivation and last year split with Rollason and trained with another coach for a few months.
“We’d been together for so long that we just needed a change of scenery,” explains Henry. “I thought if I took a break then I wouldn’t push Shannon’s buttons so much and vice versa.”
Under new coach John Fowlie, Henry competed at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, but came second to Lenton in both the 50m and 100m freestyle.
But she says it was a good move, despite moving back to Rollason in July (she continues to work with Fowlie as well).
“We went on as if nothing had happened,” says Rollason. “But I could see what I saw years earlier in Jodie. When Jodie is switched on, she is very switched on, and I could see that in her again.”
Henry is feeling much better about her swimming career these days.
“I’m still coming out of (the rut), but the motivation is back, especially when you have the Germans and Americans – plus our own girls – doing so well at the moment. I just had to stick with it.”
Asked how she took up competitive swimming, Henry replies that she just “fell into it”.
She first dipped a toe into the water as an 18-month-old toddler when her dad, Gary, a keen water enthusiast, insisted that Henry and her two sisters learn how to swim.
From there, she makes it sound as if it were a few short lengths through squads and competitions where she got “better and better”, finally making her debut for the Australian swimming team in 2001.
Henry takes a swig of water and stretches out her long, tanned legs. She’s slim and well-toned, with a girlish, pretty face, and you can see why adidas signed her up.
Her role has expanded, so she’s now the face of their women’s active brand, adilibria.
The partnership gives Henry those all-important sponsorship dollars and free clothes (“I wear it everywhere; adidas is pretty comfortable stuff,” she says, loyally), plus a chance to push the brand’s philosophy, which encourages women to view sport in a fun, light-hearted way.
Donaldson says adidas chose to partner Henry because “there’s just something a little bit different about her. Her approach to her sport is unique. A lot of athletes take a very regimented, disciplined approach to their sport, whereas for Jodie to have success, she seems to have to relax.”
Rollason, who also coaches fellow Aussie Alice Mills, says that working with Henry has certainly been different, adding that, at times, she’s been frustrating to coach because she goes about things in her own way.
“It’s Jodie’s way rather than the way that everyone else is going,” he laughs.
Henry says that, although the Australian girls are close, they’re very competitive in the pool.
“When we dive into the water, everyone in that race is going to try their hardest to win. You’re not going to say, ‘Oh, I like that person, I think I’ll let them win today.’ We’re sportswomen; you just have to deal with it if you beat your friend. Next weekend, they may beat you.
“It’s pretty amazing how close we are,” she adds. “It used to be really bitchy and competitive between the girls. We’re still competitive, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be a nice person. For a sport that people consider to be very individual, we do get along really well.”
Henry lent support to Lenton when she was caught up in a drug slur during last December’s world championship selection trials, after speculation about how she’d developed her muscular physique.
“It was all so ridiculous,” says Henry. “Libby has always looked like that; she’s a muscly girl. It was people trying to make a big deal over nothing. If you knew the amount of times we get drug tested; it actually gets quite annoying. You have to do it because you want your sport to be clean.”
Canberra-based Henry isn’t all that muscular (“I take after my dad; he’s very slim”) but doesn’t think that’s a disadvantage.
She tries to eat sensibly, but admits to a weakness for chocolate. “Strawberry Freddos are my favourite. You can still have some treats – we are working pretty hard.”
The ever-smiling Henry recently split from live-in builder boyfriend Raymond McDonald after five years but says they are still friends.
When she’s not training or competing, Henry, who works part-time for the Australian Sports Commission, likes to get as far from the pool as possible.
She confesses to being a shopaholic and loves taking out the speedboat she bought with McDonald, although she’ll probably sell it because it’s not getting much use in Canberra.
One thing you won’t catch her doing is swimming in open water, as she’s terrified of sharks.
“I’m fascinated by them, but I don’t want to be eaten by one,” she laughs.
Swimming, which Henry intends to continue with until at least the Beijing Olympics next year, doesn’t top her list of priorities, either.
“It comes third behind my family and friends. You need to understand that it’s just a sport, at the end of the day. It’s not like we’re coming up with a cure for cancer, we’re not saving people’s lives; we’re doing something pretty selfish, to be honest. It’s entertaining for people watching, but we’re not doing it for anybody but ourselves.”
The 12th FINA World Championships will be held in Melbourne March 17 to April 1. The adidas adilibria active range is exclusive to Rebel Sport and adidas Sport Performance Centres. Stockists: 1800 801 891.
