Sticking Up For The Home Team

I once beat the Olympian, Darren Mew, in a swimming race.

The venue was the swimming pool in the central courtyard of our school - Archbishop King Middle School, in Newport, on the Isle of Wight.

The pool was only about six metres long, so small it could not take our entire class at once for anything more than splashing around.
I pushed off with my legs at the start, cheating (it was one of the rules in such a tiny pool); the sole reason for my small, meaningless victory in a small swimming pool surrounded by concrete slabs and bordered on one side by what passed as a small vegetable garden for some of the nuns. It was a sunny day, and we were eleven years old.

Darren could already swim like he was born in the water.

I spent a lot of time in the sea at that age, and I can still hold my own when swimming, but swimming is hard work.

When you can casually scull your way along in the water, flipping onto your back whenever you want to, diving under the water and hearing the high salty pinking of the stones rattling along the bottom in the wash, doggy paddle for a bit, breaststroke (after a fashion) for a bit, and then flip onto your back again and float whilst looking at the clouds drifting over the hills above the town if it all gets a bit too stressful, then you rarely feel the need for a damn good front crawl sprint.

It's just one of those things.

Darren competed in a bizarre competition that I know not many people have heard of - the Island Games - in his teens. The Island Games gathers together all the sportsmen of the Islands of the British Commonwealth and sets them in contest against each other. It happens every four years, like the big competitions. I was part of the cadet force present at the opening ceremony on the jousting green at Carisbrooke Castle when the Isle of Wight played host, when I was fifteen or so. I had to salute Princess Margaret.

Then I saw him, on television a few years later, as part of the English team in the Commonwealth Games.

Then, the other day, I saw his name spring up in a swimming lane in Athens in the final of the Mens' 100m Breaststroke. He and a teammate made up a quarter of the finalists. They had trained together for years for the Olympics. They did not finish in the medals, and, as the first second and third rose up on the screen, the commentator consulted his notes.

"Mew's personal best would have won this race."

And, although I haven't kept in touch with him all these years - the most I've done is read his friendsreunited entry, or nodded drunkenly at him in an Island club - Darren's post-race interview really got to me.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That was terrible."

And he hung his head. His teammate was suddenly on the recieving end of a microphone, and provided the standard wry smile and shrug - a comment about training and luck was suddenly cut by the interviewer 'letting them' go and warm down, followed by commentary in the studio about how the pair of them were still good for another Olympics in four years' time.

Darren: you went to represent Britain at the Olympic Games, and I for one was damn proud to see you do it.

Thank you.