When I had the privilege of meeting Debbie Meyer, "World Swimmer of the Year" in 1967, 1968, 1969, 1968 Sullivan Award winner, the first woman to swim 1500m under 18 minutes, the first under 4:30 over 400m, the first and only woman to win Olympic crowns over 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle (all events in which she also held the world record, along with the 1,500m), she reminded me of the gap between "her time" and now: there was only one season, often one period of a few weeks a year, one big meet, in any one year, only one chance every four years to meet competitors from around the world and test your claim to being the fastest in your day.
Meyer's memory is confirmed in the annals of swimming history as August comes round once more: of the total of 15 world records she established over 200m, 400, 800m and 1,500m, nine were clocked in August, all the others in July, and all 15 between 1967 and 1969. A short season by today's standards but a spectacular one nonetheless.
Back in 2007, Meyer recalled some of the other greats of her era (and all-time) when asked to cite the highlight of career in the pool: "That's really hard. Asked what "Donna (de Verona) and Claudia Kolb did two Olympics and that was an amazing thing back then. In the Sixties we had one international competition a year if we were lucky. My whole career was special because I did it because I loved it. I was inducted in the National High School Hall of Fame recently but I didn't swim in college because there was no swim programme for girls in those days. I still get honours and every one has a special place because it comes at a very different stage of your life."
This month reminds us too of those who never got the chance to prove how special they were before the eyes of the world on the biggest of occasions. It is 30 years since Moscow hosted a boycotted Olympic swimming programme that suffered badly from the absence of Americans, among others.
Among those who never had the chance to convert special to Olympic champion (because of the presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan and the boycott called because of that) is Craig Beardsley, a New Jersey swimmer who set the world record in the 200m butterfly 30 years ago this weekend and 10 days after the Olympic final went with out him and was won in a time 1.55sec slower than his best and slower than five of his best times that year. Among others in great form that August was Bill Barrett, on a 2:03.24 world mark over 200m medley this day 30 years ago. A couple of weeks before up in Canada, Peter Szmidt had set a 400m free world record of 3:50.49.
Years later, Beardsley told USA Today: "You meet people, and once they find out you were a swimmer, they usually ask, 'Did you go to the Olympics?' It's never an easy answer, and there's always a footnote. When they ask, 'Oh, did you get a medal?' it's kind of hard to tell them that I was not there because then you have to go into the whole story, and the last thing I'm looking for is sympathy. I just try to avoid the question and change the subject',"
Beardsley’s tale was all the more tragic when events of 1984 are taken into account: he missed making the 1984 Olympic team by 0.36 of a second. "I was devastated," he said. He and his family went on holiday to Hawaii and did not turn on the television. It would have been too painful.
Beardsley went on to work on Wall Street, his place in sporting history never quite what it might have been. "If it [boycott] was going to do some good, then we could sacrifice. But as time went on, as we realised what little impact it had, I became angry for what the boycott did to all these people, my friends and teammates, and people in all those other countries too."
Tracy Caulkins told the same publication: "What really hits home to me about the boycott was the Soviets didn't pull out of Afghanistan for nine years. Did it put any pressure on them? No, it was just a missed opportunity for many athletes. It just doesn't seem fair." Caulkins would have challenged for gold in at least three solo events, while her would-be 1980 teammate Mary T Meagher, world record breaker over 200m in 1979, 1980 and 1981 and for the first time over 100m in 1980, would surely have scorched a 'fly double in the Russian capital.
Of the 13 men’s events in Moscow, nine were won in times slower than those achieved in Montreal in 1976, the historic victory in the 1,500m freestyle by home hero Vladimir Salnikov the only world record to fall among men. East German women ensured that all 13 finals barring the 100m butterfly were won in times faster than the 1976 champions had swum. The most prolific performer was Rica Reinisch, who would later battle for prosecution of doctors and coaches who fed her steroids and damaged her health, short and long-term, and for compensation from the German Olympic Committee that assumed all of the dubious glories of the GDR upon reunification, just as the DSV adopted all the national records of the East knowing very well that they were produced by steroid-induced athletes who were largely the victims of abuse.
As for Caulkins and Meagher, what a testimony to their characters and the work of those around them that both held on, lived through highs and lows and then soared to claim the thing they were deprived of in 1980 - Olympic gold - four years on at a home Games in LA. As Meyer put it "...there was a lot of determination, dedication and desire in me and that makes people successful."
It was coach Sherm Chavoor, mentor to Mark Spitz, who "brought it out" of her, she said. Chavoor had a reputation, like so many leading coaches, for being a hard taskmaster but Meyer knew a different, decent man. "Everyone considered him a Simon Legree [Legree is the vicious slave-driving plantation owner of author Harriet Beecher Stowe's imagination in the classic Uncle Tom's Cabin, an 1852 book that had a profound effect on American attitudes towards slavery and contributed to the environment that gave rise to the American Civil War], but you know he had a heart of gold and you worked for him, you respected him. If he said 'jump', you said 'how high'."
The theme tune of many a world-class partnership, then and now.
