Top 20 Most Significant Swim Stories Of 2016: #10, Mireia, Fred & The Alchemy Of If To When

SwimVortex continues a countdown of the most significant swimming stories of Olympic Year 2016.

Our series so far:

11: Gregorio The Great 30-Lapper 12: Putting the Great Back Into Britain 13: Masters, Servants & Subsidies – a model of governance that has had its day 14: The ruinous nature of runes in an Olympic year 15: Custodians in Crisis: FINA – Same As It Ever Was 16: The Australia/ China interface highlights questions of faith & fair dinkum 17:  Schools Out; Schooling’s In: aspiration, inspiration and the impact of Michael Phelps 18. The Swimming Selfie 19. The Canadian Comeback  20. On Hosszu Heights

Today, Mireia Belmonte (her Golden Moments) and her coach Fred Vergnoux. “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster; And treat those two impostors just the same; … Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools …” [Rudyard Kipling, If]. 

No 10: Mireia Belmonte & Fred Vergnoux: If to When

“Two silvers in London and my salary actually went down after that and it made little difference. To Mireia, too, except in one thing: after that she said straight away ‘I’m going to win in 2016’. The only option was to win; all other results would have been a disaster. That was in her mind the whole four years.” – Fred Vergnoux

Coach Fred Vergnoux stood next to his Australian peer Michael Bohl for every stroke of the Olympic 200m butterfly battle in Rio, the two men willing, cheering and urging their charges on with every sinew of energy they had to give to it. In the water: snap. What a race, a three-way fight with Natsumi Hoshi, of Japan, taking bronze. Thrilling stuff.

Mireia Belmonte emerged the winner, by 0.03se over Maddy Groves. The win is a big part of why she makes our top 20 today but truth be told, it could have been Groves and Hoshi on the same score were it not for a fingernail here, a finger-stretch there. Gold counts for much, no matter the margin of one alchemy over another. Add in the trail and tale of Belmonte’s success and you have the makings of paragraphs for the pantheon.

Asked to recall the golden moments in Rio, Vergnoux tells SwimVortex: “That race was very special not just for the gold: to stand up next to Michael Bohl and enjoy that and hear him say ‘great, fantastic job’ and then celebrate his own swimmer will always be a special memory for me.” He adds:

“It came down to the last moment. We were both so happy. There were no losers; they were both winners. The three of them, in fact: Natsumi was on the podium with Mireia in 2012 and we shared out last pre-Rio camp in July with the Japanese.”

Madeline Groves – by PBK

Natsumi Hoshi – by Patrick. B. Kraemer

He recalls the Japanese binging over rice for the Spanish to share with them and the daughter of head coach Norimasa Hirai exchanging souvenirs with Belmonte. Such are the tiles of sporting camaraderie that so often go untold in the heat of the hour. They are the inside lore of swimming, including the relationships and respect between coaches and the way puzzles come together in perfect shape sometimes. Says Vergnoux:

“I have a lot of respect for Michael Bohl. The connections are there with Bill and Michael. And it was so special to have Nori and his group right there in the result, too. All three of swimmers in there fighting for the medals. Special and unique relationships take shape – and I’m very grateful for them.”

The Bill and Michael are Sweetenham (who hired Vergnoux to the Britain program, the fruits of those years a part of the revival of British swimming) and Jamieson, the Olympic 200m breaststroke silver medallist at London 2012 who made it three vested interests in the silver count at those Games, with the twp won by Belmonte over 200m butterfly and 800m freestyle.

Vergnoux will soon be announced as the new Head Coach of Spain and will lead Belmonte and teammates to Tokyo 2020. His experience will stand Spain in good stead, from the mesaage of ‘put the work in or you can forget it’ through to the advice he has to offer when the going gets tough – as you can almost guarantee it will for any world-class swimmer at some stage along the stream.

In 2015, shoulder injuries looked set to dash Belmonte’s prospects in Rio. Four-year dream and determination in Rio, indeed. As Vergnoux put it in that opening quote: “The only option was to win; all other results would have been a disaster. That was in her mind the whole four years.” To face that adversity and come through with flying colours? He says:

“It made it more sweet in a sense. You have to come through those rough times and lose sometimes to savour the sweetness of the better moment.”

Mireia Belmonte Garcia – Si! – by Patrick B. Kraemer

The savouring only kicks in when the result screams back from the scoreboard. Every moment leading to it is frought and/or blessed with all possibility. Vergnoux recalls nervous times on the way to the Rio 200m final.

After heats and semis, Vegnoux noticed that Belmonte was very much into the biomechanical analysis of her swims. “She looked at it all with a very technical, analytical eye. She’d counted her strokes and knew what they were.” And then she had a small panic attack.

“She had a crisis moment – and then she started to breath again. On the morning of final, I decided we would go to a different pool There was no-one else there; it was the smartest decision of my coaching career. We were away form it all for three hours and she trained a little bit of that time. We did some abdominal work, a little swimming but just as important was the fund we had. She was laughing with the physio and the mental [mind] coach said ‘make sure at lunchtime you have a joke, laugh and have a good time – make a point of it’. Well, we did. We told stories and jokes and we started to laugh. We were crying with laughter because we had so much fun.”

Vergnoux noticed the time and told his charge that she’d better get to her room and have some rest. They then left for the race pool at 6.30, four hours or so ahead of the showdown. By then, he was sure his charge was in a good place.

The rigidity had left her. In the final, as Vergnoux puts it, “she stopped counting strokes and just went for it. She stuck to the plan when it came to racing. Belmonte clung to Groves as the Australian turned half a second ahead of the Spaniard’s minute flat. Vergnoux recalls:

“The split time was perfect and I turned to the mental coach and said ‘she’s just right’. From there is was a case of ‘as fast as she could all the way home’. She’d done it: process.”

A national celebration ensued, a touch of those golden moments covered in our reflections of Rio series.

A League Of Her Own

Mireia Belmonte by PBK

One of the aspects of the tale of Spain’s first Olympic swimmming champion among women – another crown that can never be taken away – is the fact that Belmonte is often in a league of her own in domestic waters. There is no hope test each time she races, as is the case for many in the United States, Australia and elsewhere. What are the ualities that go into Spain’s standout? Says Vergnoux:

“She’s very different in the way she has a vision of swimming. She has this capacity to invest in the preparation and get involved in preparation even when it doesn’t matter. She wants to know how she can be better all the time. She is capable of really exposing herself to the highest level of regime to get prepared.”

This author popped into the Sierra Nevada home from home for Vergnoux’s squad back in January 2015 – and here’s a glimpse of the workload and the program.

Almost two years on, Vergnoux says: “Mireia also has that capacity to push herself to know when its time to slow down, when its time to push, when to have a little breaks: she’s very intelligent in that apsect. That makes a difference to other swimmers.

“Some do everything perfect in training but they don’t understand when to you have to race, when you have to push, when to ease off. Mireia is more conscious of that than the coach is sometimes. Its good for a coach not to change too much when they have the plan and they know it works but within that she ‘manipulates’ the situation in a good way.”

By that, he means that Belmonte not only reads what he body is telling her instuitively but understands where she needs to be on certain measures of progress throughout a season. “For example,” says Vergnoux, “she’s good at knowing the steps of where she needs to be: on skinfold, she knows where to be when at what stage of system; she’s in control of all those kinds of things and I don’t have to tell her; she knows her sleep and eating patterns and keeps to them; she knows when she must be on top of it.

Mireia is still a very young kid in some ways but she has that intelligence when it comes to what she has to do to be at her best. There are a lot of things that count. Nutrition, sleep, lots of things, not just swimming. As we all know, if you only study he day before the exam it’s going to be a disaster.

Mireia Belmonte – under the weather and out of the race in Windsor – by Patrick B. Kraemer.

There is another quality that counts for much in Belmonte:

“She’s very [into] winning; she’s very competitive: she’s a winner. That means she really hates it when things happen as they did in Canada.”

This month saw Belmonte race the 400IM and then the heats of the …

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