MICHAEL KLIM // Wed, 02 Jan 08
Interview with Australian swimming star Michael Klim, a multiple Olympic and World champion who was guest of honour at the inaugural Bali Sports Gala awards night held in Kuta earlier this month, along with netball star Natasha Chokljat and retired AFL star Richie Vandenberg. Klim spoke with Gala MC, Justin ‘Sambo’ Sampson from ESPN Star Sports in Singapore.
Sambo: You were telling me before it was pretty easy to retire. I saw you on TV, and you looked very comfortable…
Klim: Yeah I guess you get to this age where you’re 30, old and getting slow. It’s funny, you look at the guys who are 21 years of age…we’ve got a very fast young bloke called Eamon Sullivan and he’s right at the top as far as sprinting and I’m trying to chase these guys, so it makes it hard for the soul!
Sambo: Obviously you’re here with your lovely wife and you’ve just had a baby daughter, was that behind the decision to retire?
Klim: Yeah definitely, I guess your priorities change in life a little bit. For me, I was married to my sport for many years and I lived in Canberra just like (Australian netball star) Natasha (Chokljat) and 28 years I devoted to swimming, and then moved to Melbourne just to get ready for the Commonwealth Games and be part of that environment. Obviously when a child comes along your priorities change and now my wife’s pregnant again, we’re four months down the track and…(applause)…she’s had a couple of wines already so that’s enough darling, no more, but yeah life just takes its course and it’s a very good time for us, that’s for sure.
Sambo: How much training would you guys do? Put it in perspective for all of us.
Klim: Very similar to many other sports, AFL, netball, whatever, basically it’s our life. We train up to 20-25 hours a week, that’s 10 sessions in the pool and three or four sessions in the gym. If you get a bit more injury-prone as you get older you spend a bit more time on the massage table. I spent a lot more time there towards the end of my career, my physio and my doctor became my best friends.
Sambo: What amazes me about your sport is you’re just doing lap after lap after lap, hours after hours after hours. How do you stay motivated and focused?
Klim: Look, I wouldn’t say that swimming hasn’t affected me at all…(Klim goes into spasms prompting a burst of laughter from the audience)…But you do go a bit mental, especially swimming just straight down this black line, lap after lap you’re counting your strokes and you’re looking at the clock and it’s all about pace and your heart rate and you’re monitoring all these different things throughout the session. So it’s not as mundane as people think, but day after day it does get a bit tiring. But I guess we do it because we love it, just like you guys get out there and play your sports. Obviously I wouldn’t have swum for 13 years in the Aussie swimming team if I didn’t do it, so when you get up on the blocks or behind the blocks and you’re representing your country and you’re at your best, you feel good, you look good (he says with a self-mocking tone), it’s all a part of it… it always helps.
Sambo: You’ve achieved so much, you’ve got so many highlights. 1998 was obviously a special year, was it that, was it the Olympics, what really stands out for you?
Klim: Oh probably smashing the Americans like guitars. That day was enormous. We made it to the relay, they’d just erected an amazing stand for the Sydney Aquatic Centre which holds about 18,000 people so for a swimming event that’s pretty amazing. It’s not like the MCG or Telstra Dome, but when it’s enclosed it does give this amazing atmosphere. So Thorpey (Ian Thorpe) has just won the 400m on day one of the Sydney Olympics, and there’s Chris Fydler, myself, Ashley Callus the rookie and Thorpey. We made the Americans chase us and then Thorpey swam over the top of Gary Hall and we won gold and broke the world record.
Sambo: You certainly did. So what’s happening for you now, what’s the future?
Klim: It’s funny, my wife’s been on my back and we come over to Bali quite a bit, she’s half Balinese and every time we come here, it’s ‘When are we gonna get a place so when we can spend a few months of the year here?’ So hopefully you guys will see me around. But I’ve actually got some swim schools around Melbourne and NSW so teaching kids to swim, and just launching this skincare range as well, so yeah, keeping pretty busy, and trying to keep this waist line in shape as well.
Sambo: You don’t look like you have a problem to me, personally! Drugs in sport, there’s been a lot of that lately. We’ve seen Marian Jones, we’ve seen Barry Bonds in baseball…how many times do you guys get tested and how strict is it?
Klim: Just to give you one year, my best year 97/98, I was tested 28 times that year, so you’d be very foolish to attempt to do that, take drugs in Australia. Obviously myself, Thorpey, Grant Hackett were always tested at the meets. They say it’s random, but it’s random when they get you, it’s not random who they get. But obviously the evidence shows it’s there, it happens.
Sambo: You were telling some amazing stories about the Chinese. They came out of nowhere didn’t they?
Klim: Look these are only rumours, I wasn’t there but apparently the Chinese females used to fill condoms full of someone else’s wee and transport them to the testing room and obviously burst them at the appropriate time, and that’s how they used to get by. They used to rub special oil into their skin just after a race to mask some of the testing, so the stories you hear are pretty full-on…recently (German swim coach Manfred Thiesmann) suspected one of the Aussie swimmers of getting into drugs or whatever, but we’ve had a very good record and we’ve got a lot of pride in that and I think we can hold our heads up high which is good.
Sambo: Very much so. One final question. We’ve had so many world-record swimmers in Australia over the years, Hackett, Dawn Fraser, Ian Thorpe, who’s the one who you think is the pinnacle, or who’s the freak?
Klim: I know what it was like to train with Grant Hackett, he is probably the most determined athlete I’ve ever seen. He throws the most amount of tantrums in the pool, punching the wall, throws all his water bottles, but that’s because he gets angry with himself for not achieving a certain standard and he just keeps pushing himself and pushing himself. But as an athlete, Ian Thorpe, hands-down. Physically, he wasn’t built like a middle distance swimmer, he’s 105 kilos, he’s got amazing power and amazing flexibility and just the most perfect technique, plus he’s very smart and that’s part of it. But now there’s a guy called Michael Phelps who’s starting to take down Ian Thorpe’s world records…we thought no one would go faster than that, so maybe one day there’ll be someone faster than Michael Phelps? I’d like to definitely see that.