Rio Reflections: Chad Le Clos Healing As He Aims To Be Golden Gladiator Once More

The Rio 2016 Olympics long gone, SwimVortex continues its look at the reflections of the champions and others who stepped up to the podium at the Games in August, at the things that flowed from success and plans already made for the follow-up.

After the men’s 50m freestyle and Anthony Ervin and the 100m freestyle and Kyle Chalmers, we turned to Joseph Schooling, the US-college-based ace from Singapore, and then to the woman swimmer of the Games and generation, Katie Ledecky, and the swimmer who pressed her close over 200m freestyle, Swedish pioneer, Sarah Sjostrom, the Olympic 100m butterfly champion.

Today, Chad Le Clos, South Africa’s most decorated Olympian, the first man home in the Olympic 200m freestyle with a clean record but fourth in the defence of the 200m butterfly crown and now determined to prove himself all over again. SwimVortex talks to a man still raw from Rio but brimming with ambitions.

The targets ahead, he tells SwimVortex, include:

the world record and winning once more over 200m butterfly – come world titles next summer to become world champion over 100m freestyle after parting on good terms with long-term coach Graham Hill, he wants to establish the CLC Academy and through it find a better pathway for South African swimmers by changing the way things are done back home A Gladiator Intends To Return To Winning Ways

Chad Le Clos – by Craig Lord

Rome, scene of celebration and blood-letting for some of the greatest victories and defeats in the history of humanity, the birthplace of so many things that form the very foundations on which our ‘modern’ lives are built. They knew how to win and lose here.

So does Chad Le Clos. He not only ploughs a lonely lane at the Foro Italico’s magnificent Sette Colli pool: he is the only swimmer in the water and but for me, a few folk from arena, his sponsor, and the bloke blowing pine needles off the poolside, he has the place to himself.

Blue sky, sun up, autumn yet a whisper, high summer of the north and swimming long gone.

The Sette Colli pool – by Craig Lord

Michael Phelps set to go at Rome 2009 – Photo by Patrick B. Kraemer

Beyond a session of somewhere beyond 5km, Le Clos joins me up on the top row of the spectators stand overlooking the pool.

Out of competition mode, the venue has no crowd-control barriers to block the view of the rest of the Foro Italico, its stadia for track, tennis and many other sports, the classical statues that ring them, the whole thing lined with a painter’s dream of a pine-tree skyline.

It is the kind of place where you can close your eyes and hear the crowds of yesteryear and all the way back in time, the spirit of sport watches from every column and the shoulders of each stone guardian, warrior and angel alike at this modern Colloseum.

Here is where Michael Phelps set the world records over 100 and 200m butterfly at the cutting edge of passion, the pace and temper raised by the shiny suits crisis, the gladiatorial nature of the 100m butterfly battle with Milorad Cavic epitomising the schism that FINA poured into the pool like poison in 2008 by simply failing to appreciate (let alone understand) the nature of the sport it governs.

Le Clos was a cub on the move back then: 16th in the 400m medley heats and 17th in the 200m butterfly at his debut World Championships and on the cusp of breakthroughs at the Olympic Youth Games and the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

Those records set by Phelps in Rome may not last quite as long as the venue has nor will, while their longevity will be meaningless in the context of old Rome a 15-minute drive away. In swimming terms, they stand still – and may do for a while yet. It will take a special kind of gladiator to take them down.

Le Clos is among those discounted by some now that he finished fourth in the defence of the 200m butterfly final four years after pouncing past Phelps for gold at London 2012 with a last lunge for the wall on his way to unexpected celebrity in the year he left his teens behind. In the 100m there was a sense of deja vu for Le Clos: shared silver with Evgeny Korotyshkin in London and then with both Phelps and Laszlo Cseh in Rio, all three beaten soundly by Joe Schooling.

Troubled water passed under the bridge of Rio 2016 but Le Clos is not done; far from it, he says. That’s why we find him here, fresh from the swim instead of downtown taking in the sights with the rest of Team Arena on this fine company excursion of photo shoots, dinners, a little luxury in the lifestyle – and in his case the chance to train on the way to further racing on world cup tour and then the world short-course championships.

In the arena team are several big names who have no intention of going on a cup tour useful to the pockets of those who wish it to be so but in competitive terms, entry, time and timing, a damp squib of an event in its death throes.

No matter. Le Clos is out there in tour for different reasons this time round:

“I’m doing what’s required. I’m not going crazy. I’m staying fit and making decent money but its not the money: I want back that feeling of winning. I just wanted to get back on the winning train, feel happier and get back on top of the podium.”

taking and posing for a selfie: Chad Le Clos and Greg Paltrinieri at the Foro Italico – by Craig Lord

He got a taste of that by a wide margin in Beijing at the world cup yesterday and today: 1:49 in the 200m, then another easy win, on 49.35 in the 100m butterfly today. Results in full.

The World short-course Championships, in December – in Windsor, a place designated by the Weather Network as “the smog capital of Canada” because it is downwind from several large coal-burning facilities in the United States, will offer the sharper challenge. Even then, nothing remotely like the big long-course showcases that Le Clos is keen to prove himself at once more.

He sets out on this next chapter a lone lion, Rio having marked the end of his days with coach Graham Hill and pride at Seagulls swim club, Le Clos plans for a fresh start under new guidance not due until a period of reflection and talking towards an announcement around the start of the New Year.

Le Clos had spent the bulk of his life (almost 18 years) as a Seagulls swim club member and almost 15 years under Hill’s personal tutelage. The partnership ended with swimmers and coach still on good terms but in need of change, says the charge.

Arenas Old And New

Le Clos, most likeable, polite and a man with a mind for his sport, surveys the scene about him, turning his head away from the pool to take in the Foro Italico, the home of CONI, the Italian Olympic Committee that, along with the citizens of Rome, has just been told by the Mayor of Italy’s capital that there will be no Games bid. There may be good reasons, cost at the helm of the count but on such a day it is easy to conclude that this is a city and a facility that cries out for the Olympic festival, last here in 1960, to grace the place once more.

Rather than Python’s ‘what did the Romans ever do for us’, I ask Le Clos what did the Romans ever mean to him. He casts his mind back to school and says: “When I think of Rome, I think of gladiators in the arena. The tunnel leading to the pool, the atmosphere here. Its all here. This is almost like a modern arena at a time when sport is the only war that many people see in their lives”.  His tone suggesting ‘thank goodness for that’, he returns to the days of Caesar:

“I always think of it like the lions coming out and the slaves being brought out to fight in front of the people. Scenes from all those old movies are right here before you. I think what we do in sport is our way of doing something very similar.”

History repeats sometimes. After the Olympic trials this year, Phelps noted that he had only been able to bring himself to watch the race in which Le Clos pipped him for Olympic gold at London 2012 well after the event that would drive him out of sporting retirement. Le Clos found that hard to believe but does so no longer:

“At the time I was like ‘Oh, please, there’s no way he won’t have watched that’ but now I actually understand. I can see how upset he must have been in 2012 at me beating him and honestly, I think now I’m more upset than he was simply because he’s won so many golds. I can understand now where he was coming from.”

Raw But Ready To Do Something About It

Le Clos is raw. To some extent it had been that way all season: both his parents have been battling cancer, his mother’s remission ending in February when an ‘all-clear’ was soon followed by a lump and a bump for her and family.

Weeks before the Games, Le Clos issued a statement to say that he would not be giving media interviews but that his parents were struggling with ill-health and the story would be told in a documentary entitled “Unbelievable”.

How had Le Clos coped with it all and managed to keep his mind and physical preparation on track? How had he found strength in the midst of such adversity? Watch the video and you see that health is one of many obstacles that Le Clos faces: he rates the pool in which he has long trained, a place where his parents have had three cars stolen down the years, as a 2/3 out of 10. It looks even worse than that compared to the Sette Colli in Rome.

As Le Clos says in the documentary: “Its the difficult times that make you.”

He also says this, in the hindsight of the Rio harvest: “There’s a lot of ways of looking at it. Let’s start of by saying that the Olympics for me was not a successful one. When I got back to South Africa there was a huge reception, almost as big as after London. Not quite as big but the people were celebrating my success, surprisingly. Like, my parents said how proud they were of me. My dad was saying ‘imagine yourself 10 years ago and you could say you had three silvers and a gold at the Olympics’. It’s a great achievement.”

“But for whatever reason, I can’t see a successful Games. I have looked at it from 100 angles and every time I see it as a failure for me.”

As South Africa’s most decorated Olympian speaks he turns his gaze away from me to the blue sky, the row of pines that line the Foro Italico, his perspective detailed and general, his conclusion the same:

“It is what it is and like I said before the Olympics. Like I said before Rio, I’m not a guy who’s going to make excuses for anything. I’m not going to blame my parents’ sickness for a bad result. I’m not going to shy away from the fact that the 200 ‘fly was the worst race of my career.”

Michael Phelps, by Patrick B. Kraemer

He pauses, tenses a touch in the way humans do when they are berating themselves with thoughts of ‘I really should not have let that happen’. There is a process to go through from raw to perspective and strength renewed.

“I haven’t watched the race yet. I’m not ready yet to watch it because it just hurts so much. As I said just after the race, as hard as it is to accept that I did lose that race, it is not even the fifth worst thing that has happened to me this year because of events outside of the pool.”

Perspective

Bert Le Clos and the family there to support their son

There was prescience to the perspective about to arrive in the shape of a pall over the Le Clos household in Olympic year 2016. Chad recalls: “My dad said to me last November when I was in a mindset of ‘I have to win; I have to win’, ‘listen, would you rather have four gold medals or eight gold medals or howevere many and have your mum’s cancer come back?’

“He actually predicted it. It was weird. I said ‘No, don’t be silly – of course not’. When I look at that now in hindsight, it is such a wierd thing that it turned out like it did.”

Good for him to see that unsuccesful games: longevity of excellence and the dedication and commitment required all thirsty for fuel. But it was not what Le Clos wanted; it was not even what Le Clos is capable of. Even so, in wider perspective, few would consider Le Clos’s efforts in Rio a ‘failure’.

Rio Recall

We start with the 200m freestyle and event in which Le Clos raced the semi and the final like a man possessed, his courage and opening speed and emotions taking a toll on the rest of his week, perhaps.

Le Clos reflects: “A bronze would have been great. I always race for gold, though, and with 20m to go really thought I could have won that gold and still do think I could have done that.”

At the last turn he was convinced he had it in him to retain the thumping lead he’d built up. Sun Yang and the * he tows after testing positive for a banned substance in 2014, stopped the clock first, the outside smoker from South Africa just shy but celebrated as the first man home with a clean record. Says Le Clos: “I was breathing on the wrong side and I paid the price.”

A price at the hand of man tainted by a doping penalty that rules should have ruled out if rule makers were ever to listen to athletes and coaches sick and tired of the struggle for clean waters.

Chad Le Clos (RSA) by Patrick B. Kraemer

(L-R) Michael Phelps, Chad Le Clos and Laszlo Cseh – shared silver at Rio2016 – by Patrick B. Kraemer

The 1:45 of Le Clos was “a national record and huge PB for me”, he says before moving on. “Then there’s the 100 ‘fly. A little bit slow but silver and it wouldn’t have been anything better: Schooling, 50.39, the fastest textile ever inside Crocker’s 50.40, so, I got beaten fair and square there.

He reaches for the ring and glove for his take on the 100 ‘fly podium:

“Me, Michael and Laszlo, we got knocked out, beaten fair and square. It wasn’t on the touch or because of anything else: we got beaten fair and square on best times.

Le Clos then turns to the dark cloud that overshadows all his efforts at this stage in the process of a ‘if-only’ recovery that many fourth-place finishers in Olympic waters must go through. “But then I look at the 200 ‘fly and, with respect to Michael and everybody else….”

He breaks off and talks through what he does not want to convey, namely that he thought he could have won.

“I don’t want to say that because it’s not fair to Michael and the rest. …

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