Gold medalist nearly misses pace altogether

Press, 29 July 1986, Page 27

Gold medalist nearly misses pace altogether

From

KEVIN TUTTY,

in Edinburgh

A member of the New Zealand wrestling team came dangerously close to costing the 18-year-old Aucklander, Sylvia Hume, her 100 m backstroke gold medal at the Royal Commonwealth Pool last evening.

Hume was having a massage in the New Zealand quarters at the games village three hours before the race when the wrestler picked up her accreditation tag by mistake.

He didn’t realise his mistake until he reached the security check at the village gate 15 minutes later on his way into town.

Accreditation tags are all important. Without it Hume would have had to endure a grilling from the security people when she arrived at -the pool, and that would probably have been enough to upset her vital pre-race preparation.

As it was Hume confessed after the race she was on the verge of panic because she could not find her tag. Fortunately the wrestler returned with it before she became a quivering wreck. From the time the tag was returned the evening rapidly improved for Hume and ended up being the happiest of her life. The slightly built — she was the smallest girl in the 100 m final — titianhaired backstroker, swam the perfect race, holding her stroke together determinedly as she was challenged by two Australians.

Hisashi Inomata, Hume’s coach, and the head coach of the Games team, said his protege had swum the race just as they had planned. She went out fast and came back as strongly as she could. Hume said after the race she had tried the same tactics in the heat in the morning, but she had

tired in the second 50m. “Tonight my coach told me to forget about everyone else and swim my own race.” For a competitor with limited international experience her tactics and control were admirable. Her only previous experience at international level was the Pan Pacific championships in Japan last August and warm-up meetings before these games in Leeds and Darmstadt, West Germany.

There was no sign of nerves from Hume as she marched to the blocks and took her introduction to the crowd. “I didn’t have a sore stomach or anything like that. After the race they were asking me to smile, but it was hard because my mouth was so dry.”

Mr Inomata said Hume often gets nervous before a race. “But at the warmup she told me she didn’t feel nervous, and I thought: ‘That’s great. She’s got a real chance’.”

He said his race instructions were very simple things, like “swim your own way, and kick it back really hard in the last 20m. That’s exactly what she did.” Hume’s time, Imin 4.005, was 0.71 s inside her previous best, set at the New Zealand championhips in Hamilton last March. Before the race Mr Inomata told Hume there was no certain gold medallist in the race. Hume’s time was 0.5 s outside the Commonwealth games record set by Lisa Forrest at Brisbane four years ago.

“Since Tokyo last year Sylvia has really progressed,” said Mr Inomata. “She has started thinking about what she is doing. Until then she wasn’t aware of the high level of competition internationally. After Tokyo she realised what international racing is about. She started to look at a higher level.” Hume’s winning margin was only seven hundredths of a second, but that was irrelevant the coveted gold was in her grasp. Her time, besides being a personal best, was 0.33 s inside the New Zealand record set by Carmel Clark at the Los Angeles Olympics two years ago.

Clark was a finalist in the same race, but she has not reached the level of fitness she achieved in 1984 and she was a second off her best time in the final and finished seventh. After the race Hume had to leave her post-race media interviews to swim for New Zealand in the women’s 4 x 100 m freestyle relay. This time she was not as successful, but not surprisingly because the New Zealand team contained one freestyler and three backstrokers.

An hour after the event she was still being accompanied by an official because she had not been able to complete her drug test. Hume will now become one of the favourites for the 200 m backstroke on Wednesday. She confessed after winning the 100 m that she did not know which was her strongest event.