Crowned: the new era of girl power

Sydney Morning Herald
August 16, 2004

"People are starting to identify that the girls need to be treated in a different way. Women are more natural amongst themselves and so are the men." Several times in recent years Nugent has segregated the women's and men's team in a bid to improve their performances."

 
By Caroline Wilson in Athens
Finally an Olympic swimming relay gold medal without the shaved heads, the tough talk, the rippling muscles and the macho swagger.
 
When 20-year-old Jodie Henry swam the fastest 100 metres of any woman in the history of the sport yesterday, to anchor Australia towards its second Athens gold and a world record, she did so on behalf of a generation of female swimmers.
 
For Henry and her team - the teenaged rookies Alice Mills and Libby Lenton and veteran Petria Thomas - it was a scene-stealing performance which overshadowed Ian Thorpe's narrow victory over Grant Hackett and shocked their American rivals.
 
"It could do a lot for us," said Mills. "We've always been in the shadow of the boys. This will help women's swimming in the future."
 
But this was far more than just a gold medal, according to their coach Leigh Nugent. Not since 1956 has an Australian women's relay team won Olympic gold. Dawn Fraser, who watched the race shortly before dawn at home in Sydney, Faith Leech, Sandra Morgan and Lorraine Crapp beat the Americans then. And, according to Nugent, it is no mere happenstance that it has taken 48 years to break the drought.
 
Nugent took over the Australian swimming team after the Sydney Games and immediately saw that the sport was crying out for a philosophical shift. Not only were most of Australia's most successful and famous swimmers male, they and their coaches were running the show. The women, he said, had felt intimidated and had lacked confidence as a result.
 
"We're speaking to the women in a language they understand. The team environment now is a lot more equal. Perhaps in the past the women subconsciously felt they were not in the same class as the men. When your men are dominant you tend to talk more men's talk when you are addressing the team.
 
"We've put strategies in place to change the environment. We've spoken to the coaches and they're more aware now that women need to be treated differently."
 
Said Henry, who missed the Sydney Olympics after becoming physically ill with an attack of nerves before her qualifying race: "We're a lot more supportive of each other now. We're all great friends and we're a lot happier."
 
Nugent, a quietly spoken mentor with none of the confrontational fire of his predecessor, Don Talbot, said he had realised in 2001 that he possessed a young group of women sprinters capable of gold in Athens.
 
That was long before Lenton had broken the sprint world record and when Mills, only 15, more resembled an early 1960s version of her namesake, the British film star Hayley, as she sobbed on the gold medal dias.
 
Henry said she knew even before the race she would have to pass the highly decorated and more-favoured American, Jenny Thompson, to take gold. "I felt pretty relaxed and I knew if I caught her I could pass her. Before the race I knew I was not the Olympic champion, I was not the world record-holder, not the world champion, I was nothing."
 
Even so, Henry flinched when told that Thompson - a veteran of four Olympics and 10 medals before the race - was amazed at being passed. "I dove in with a slight lead and it was a surprise to be passed by someone," said Thompson. "It doesn't normally happen to me. It's normally the other way around."
 
In fact, Henry did not realise she had passed the American because she was breathing to her right with Thompson on her left. After climbing out of the pool - having swum her 100m in 52.9 seconds - she felt as if her legs would collapse beneath her. "I was in shock."
 
But American reporters asked Henry three times whether she had amazed herself in taking over Thompson, and three times she said no. "I've watched her swim many times and I've seen other swimmers catch her. Petria [Thomas] caught her last year."
 
Henry and Mills have trained together for seven years in Brisbane. Their coach, Shannon Rollason, was an instigator of the new non-sexist attitude in Australian swimming.
 
"People are starting to identify that the girls need to be treated in a different way. Women are more natural amongst themselves and so are the men." Several times in recent years Nugent has segregated the women's and men's team in a bid to improve their performances.
 
In Sydney, Dawn Fraser paid this tribute: "It's probably the most impressive swim I've seen for quite a number of years."
 
In the 1956 relay victory, Fraser actually stopped swimming, thinking a false start had been called when the starter's gun went off a second time by accident. And still they won - and set a world record.

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