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| Rebecca Adlington, Olympic gold medallist at 400m and 800m |
I’ve just challenged Rebecca Adlington, winner of two Olympic gold medals and holder of the 800m freestyle world record, to a round of swim golf. This involves swimming a set distance, then adding together the number of strokes and the number of seconds to calculate your handicap.
Adlington covers the 25m in 16 seconds and 16 strokes, giving her a handicap of 32. She doesn’t even look like she’s trying. I am six seconds slower – the same time-gap as between Adlington and the silver medallist in the Olympic 800m final, I console myself. I reach the other end of the pool, breathless, in 26 strokes, producing a handicap of 48.
Swimming at the Olympics to win
Swimming is the sport with the largest number of events in the Olympics, with 16 pool-based events taking place in a 50m pool and one open-water event. Both sexes compete in the same events, with the exception of the 1,500m freestyle (men only) and the 800m freestyle (women only).
For all her speed and power, when Adlington swims she looks languid, fluid, almost effortless. It’s as if the water is parting before her. When I swim, I feel as if I’m battling against it.
When Adlington went to Beijing, she was largely unknown, despite having won the 800m at the World Short Course Championships earlier that year (setting a British and Commonwealth record). She returned as a household name and a hero, having won gold in the 400m and 800m freestyle, and smashing the 800m world record, which had stood for 19 years.
From the moment we slip into the water, it’s clear that Adlington could not be more at home. “When you turn your arms over too fast, your stroke gets shorter and you lose the glide at the front,” she says, following up the observation with a comical impression of my jerky, staccato movement. She wants to show me a drill that she thinks will help lengthen my stroke and smooth it out.
“I love drills,” she says, in the sort of tone most people reserve for talking about favourite desserts. She pushes off from the side and extends one arm, but instead of going into a normal stroke, leaves the arm out in front for six leg kicks before swapping to the other arm. It’s called the “six-rotation” drill, and it looks like swimming in slow motion. I comment on how far she glides after pushing off. “In training, we have to make it beyond the flags in six leg kicks, or we get told off,” she giggles.
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| Rebecca Adlington |
The six-rotation drill feels awkward and unnatural, but when I reach the lane-end, my coach is impressed. “Perfect! When you slow your stroke down, you look just like one of the swimmers on the squad.”
Adlington learned to swim at four, started racing at 10 and now, at the age of 20, spends as much as four hours a day in the pool. It’s heartening to see how much she loves it. “The sensation of being in water is so different to anything else,” she says, droplets glistening on her eyelashes. “I’ve just had two weeks off, following the world championships, and it’s amazing how quickly you lose your feel if you don’t swim regularly.”
For Adlington, regularly means six days out of seven – mostly twice a day, covering 65,000 to 70,000m every week. This entails getting up at dawn for the five-minute drive to the pool at Nottingham University for a two-hour session, before going home for breakfast. She’ll then be back at the pool in the late afternoon for another session.
And then there’s the land-based training: circuit training, weights sessions and running all feature in her regime. “I enjoy the running, but I find the strength work really hard,” she says. “It’s so different from swimming – you’re just focusing on one specific area, whereas swimming uses every muscle.”
Who does it best
The US has reigned supreme in Olympic swimming since its inception, having won a total of 489 medals. It has topped the medals table in the last three Olympics, with Australia coming second on each occasion. At Beijing, the US team won 31 swimming medals.
Great Britain’s Olympic team won the most medals in both the 1900 and 1908 games, but has never repeated its success since. GB currently sits seventh in the swimming medals table. Rebecca Adlington’s two golds at Beijing make her the most successful British swimmer for 100 years.
Isn’t it tempting to relax a little and bask in the glory of what she’s already achieved? “No, it’s all about the future,” she says firmly. “Brilliant as it was to win the two golds, it’s done now. Now I’m focusing on achieving my goals in what’s coming next. Of course, London is a big part of that, but three years is a long time, so you can’t reflect on that too much. I prefer to stick to shorter-term goals.” Like the Commonwealth Games.
A typical session starts with a warm-up of 2,000m (the point at which most of us would be getting out and hitting the shower) in which she mixes steady swimming with kickboard and pull-buoy work to focus on the legs and arms respectively. Now Adlington hands me a kickboard. She powers effortlessly and silently alongside me; but I’m creating a tidal wave in my wake. My feet should stay below the surface, I learn.
After the warm-up comes the “main set”. The bulk of Adlington’s training is endurance work. But even for an 800m swimmer, it isn’t all about endurance. Faster sets are fundamental to building speed. “In the lead-up to the world championships, I was tired, so instead of doing big blocks of distance work, I focused more on speed work, and succeeded in improving my 400m time, while my 800m time slightly declined,” she says. “Now I’m trying to balance both … I’m no sprinter, though – I always come last when we do sprints with the squad.”
Adlington’s sessions are devised by her coach Bill Furniss, who has worked with her since she was 13. “Bill has to keep reminding us of things,” says Adlington. “I sometimes hold too much tension in my hands, for example, so he’ll get me to do the finger-trail drill [in which the fingertips deliberately trail across the water’s surface during the recovery of the arm, keeping the elbow high] to remind me to keep them floppy.”
Between laps, she sips from a sports bottle by the edge of the pool. I ask what’s in it, expecting her to name some branded isotonic sports drink, but no, it’s squash with no added sugar. How does she fuel such an immense physical output? “I eat a lot.”
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| Rebecca Adlington with the author |
She shows me the finger paddles she likes to use – a kind of mini hand paddle that slips over two fingers. The shape of the paddle assists good technique but, unlike full-size paddles, doesn’t create extra resistance. I make a mental note to get some straight away.
Our session almost over, it’s time for another round of swim golf. Adlington, showing the consistency of the elite athlete that she is, scores exactly the same as she did the first time. I, however, drop my handicap from 48 to 43, not by swimming faster, but by completing the length in five fewer strokes. Adlington is full of praise and encouragement, and I go home feeling every inch a winner.
Rebecca Adlington is sponsored by Speedo
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The details
For Rebecca Adlington’s website, see www.rebeccaadlington.co.uk
