shaping up for sydney

Arguably, anybody that spends three hours a day submerged in water should have his head examined for leaks. At least for all the water I've swallowed, I have the incentive and potential of winning a spot on the USA Swim Team that will compete in the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. My girlfriend’s fascination with my expanding pectoral muscles has also been encouraging.

I’m swimming over 20km a week, thanks to ex-national swimmer Ang Peng Siong, my coach since the 1996 Paralympics. Toss in almost daily gym sessions, astronomically expensive designer protein supplements and no alcoholic relief and sometimes I wonder, “Why?” Most people get into shape so that they can look and feel good or attract potential mates; an elite few train to win fame and fortune. For myself, to secure a birth on the USA Paralympic Team, getting into top shape is really just an appetizer. But it’s a small price to pay for the opportunity to shave my body, strip down to a swimsuit the size of a postage stamp and race half-naked across a pool before thousands of spectators. Naturally, when I was offered the chance to train at the Olympic Park in Sydney and see how things were shaping up for the Olympics and Paralympics, I dove at the chance.

Living in Singapore over the past five years, it's been a long time since I’d been in a community where people prized athletics and toned bodies. I’d forgotten what it was like to work out in an atmosphere where people respected physical strength and fitness more than designer labels that hide spongy bodies. Arriving in Sydney, however, I soon realized the city offers a smorgasbord of training venues for a public ravenous for sports. After noticing arms and chest the size of a Honda on what appeared to be a woman stepping outside for air, I passed up City Gym, the 24-hour testosterone pumping station where Arnie reportedly once trained. Instead, I darted across the street to the Cook + Phillip Park Aquatic Centre—a brand new complex nestled between a tranquil, tree-peppered park and an old cathedral under renovation. This was a real people's facility with a first class indoor 50m pool and well-equipped gym.

At last, a public pool without screaming, urinating kids, and where people swam in organized lanes instead of in circles like sperm attacking eggs. I enjoyed not being the fastest swimmer in the pool and the competition helped me stay warm—the water in was a brisk 22 degrees Celsius, which is fine for hearty ex-convicts but not for thin-blooded Renaissance men from the Equator. But you know this place means business, though, when the toilets for the disabled were accessible and not locked up for use by staff or for storage.

I pumped some iron and swam a brisk four kilometers before the lunch crowd of urban dwellers descended. People from all walks of life utilized the facility, and all of them seemed to be truly interested in pushing their limits. Admittedly, many had only enough time for a quick workout during their lunch hour, but it was clear that these folks were focused and committed, whether they were in the gym or the pool.

Paralympics 101
For the record, the word “Paralympic” comes from the word ‘parallel’ and means the Games, which are the key international games for athletes with disabilities, are parallel to the Olympic Games. Every four years, the universe stands still and spends mountains of money to watch, applaud and market the world’s elite athletes who excel in the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Admittedly, the Olympics receive the lion’s share of the financial and media coverage (try a budget of A$2.3 billion and 15,000 press people versus just A$140 Million and 1,500 media folks for the Paralympics). But the Paralympics, which usually begins three weeks after the Olympics, has continued to increase in popularity since 1960, when the first Games were held in Rome. Back then, there were just 400 athletes from 23 countries. While the Sydney Olympics will host 10,200 athletes from 200 countries, the Sydney Paralympics will gather 4,000 athletes with disabilities from a staggering 125 countries.

“We’ve seen that there are three phases of public awareness towards the Paralympics and athletes with disabilities,” observes Margie McDonald, the media liaison for the Sydney Paralympic Organizing Committee. “In stage one we find that people are ignorant about the Games. But once they wake up and smell the coffee, people enter the ‘Isn’t that great!’ phase or the stage we call the ‘Fuzzy Wuzzies’. Eventually in stage three, we see people buying tickets and understanding that athletes with disabilities are the same as Olympic athletes. To win medals, Paralympians will kill their pets and grandmothers too.”

I couldn't agree with her more. As an athlete with a physical disability, as opposed to those with mental disabilities who compete in the Special Olympics, I believe that it is time that Paralympians be understood for the serious athletes they are. The Paralympics have a select few winners and many losers, and unlike the Special Olympics, not everybody gets a medal. Qualifying for the Games is no cakewalk, and for myself to just make the USA team this summer, I must swim a time that puts me first or second in the world—and faster than the record I set in Atlanta in 1996. Over my 20-year career, I've seen lots of athletes come and go. The ones who win and come back to compete again are those who push their limits and exceed expectations.

As my taxi skirted the Olympic Park and passed the Sydney International Aquatic Centre, Stadium Australia and the New South Wales Tennis Centre, I recalled entering the Barcelona and Atlanta venues. But this was noticeably different.

While the venues in Barcelona and Atlanta were spread across wide swatches of city, often taking hours to reach, the Sydney Olympic Village, which will house up to 15,300 athletes and officials, is within a few minutes walk of the Sydney Olympic Park with venues for 15 of the 28 sports. The remaining sports are all within 40 minutes of the Village. One of the reasons Sydney won the bid to host the Olympics was that athletes would benefit by having all the venues close together, conserving precious training time. In Barcelona, despite feeling like Michael Jackson when the bus that ferried us to the Olympic Pool had to cut its way through the throngs of cheering hot-blooded Spaniards, the trip ate up more than an hour each time. In Atlanta, a number of athletes missed events due to transportation problems. Sydney had learned from previous events.

In the Swim of Things
The mammoth Sydney International Aquatic Centre was swarming with hundreds of mere mortals utilizing the pools and facilities. So much for expecting sacred turf, where only the elite were allowed to train and compete. The facility was already catering to thousands of visitors daily for competitions and recreation in a dazzling complex equipped with competition and leisure pools, spa, sauna, steam room, gymnasium, café and garden. The only changes still to come would be the addition of another 11,000 seats to the grandstand, as swimming remains one of the most popular Olympic and Paralympic sports.

After working out for an hour in the near-empty gym (which surprisingly, didn't hold a candle to the facility I use at the Anglo-Chinese Junior College on Dover Close) I persuaded the judges of the World Lifesaving Championships to let me train in the competition pool during a break. Swimming all alone in perhaps the world's best pool was a treat, while swimming before a crowd again reminded me of what it would be like in October. One spectator even cheered when I got out. Still, I was surprised to see sand and debris on the bottom of the pool. As the Lifesaving Championships started again, I continued swimming in the diving pool next to the main pool; here, the lifesavers—huge men and women— swam before and after their races.

So strange, it sometimes seems, that we train so long just to spend less time swimming between two walls. I recalled the first time I entered the Atlanta Olympic pool in 1996. I’d cried. All the training in the world never prepares you for the emotional battles waged in international competition. But being here now gave me a chance to get comfortable with the facility, and will give me an edge if I make the USA Team and return in October.

Crunch Time
Come September and October, no doubt every square inch of the facility will be packed with spectators for the Olympics, and hopefully for the Paralympics. Already, hundreds of people visit the Olympic Park and tour the various venues daily. Almost everything was shaping up as workers put the finishing touches on the Athletes Village, located a five minute walk from the Park, which will host 16,000 beds, 8,000 bedrooms and 4,000 toilets.

Like watching others getting into shape, Sydney studied how Barcelona and Atlanta had capitalized on the tremendous potential of staging the Olympics.
The Olympics serve as a giant incentive to jump-start a community into shape while enlisting international and local support to move mountains. Barcelona realized this, seizing the opportunity to reinvent the city and improve an ailing infrastructure. The stunning Athletes Village I lived in, previously a dilapidated shipyard, now boasts some of the city’s finest beachside residences. In contrast, most of the Atlanta venues had been built as temporary facilities.

Sydney will have its moment in the sun while cashing in on A$6.3 billion in revenues. Not suprisingly, everybody I spoke with—from management at the SuperDome to the Sydney International Aquatic Centre—were trying to figure out how to make the venues profitable after the Games are over. Without a doubt, the Olympics will act as a catalyst, stimulating growth and economics in the city and its surrounding area, most notably the new town of Homebush Bay, which was an active dumping site until the 1970’s.

Much to its credit, Sydney has seized this opportunity to overhaul and upgrade the city while raising an entire community from the grave. With infrastructure and transportation blended into an ecological and environmentally friendly community, Homebush Bay now bustles with waterways, parks and complexes that will survive long after the Olympics. Pick up a plush, brand new penthouse overlooking the Olympic Park with views of the distant Sydney skyline for just A$580K, or book a convention for up to 20,000 at the Sydney SuperDome.

Sydney’s training schedule and my own training routine have been intense. Back in Singapore, I'm in the pool everyday and consuming massive quantities of protein and other good things to make my body run like a fine timepiece. I train along side Christelle, Leslie and Daniel, three of Singapore's Olympic swimmers with the only real difference being that I don't practice with a kickboard as I only swim with my arms.

The effort expended to build venues and train for events goes unmatched.

Soon, the world will see just how well the city and the athletes who compete in the XXVII Olympiad and the XI Paralympiad have prepared for these—the greatest sporting events on earth. And once all the flags come down and the events are over, all any of us will have is the knowledge that we gave it our best shot.