Nesty modest after swimming gold at Seoul Olympics

Press, 9 December 1988, Page 36

Nesty modest after swimming gold at Seoul Olympics

As Anthony Nesty walks around Gainesville he still gets the occasional handshake or “way to go”. Mostly, though, he is as anonymous as an Olympic gold medal winner could be.

Nesty was the best Olympic story that wasn’t written. He was the first black swimmer and the first swimmer from Surinam to win an Olympic medal, in Seoul, South Korea. But somehow he ducked most of the attention.

It is just as well. Even the brief flashlight of fame that he earned for defeating Matt Biondi in the 100 m butterfly made him uncomfortable. Nesty has little interest in publicity. He prefers the kind of solitude he will find hunting in South Carolina. Nesty is happy to be the first medal winner from Surinam but does not want to be used as a symbol that blacks can be champion swimmers. He considers that to be common sense and not worth discussing. “I don’t get into that,” he said. Nesty prefers to be just another 21-year-old living in an apartment in Gainesville and trying to attend the University of Florida. Trying, because >• he is still waiting for results on his latest entrance tests to see if he will be eligible to swim for the Gators in January. The medal he won by edging Biondi by one-hun-dredth of a second on September 21 has made his routine just a little more complex.

Nesty is proud but shy. His drive and goals are all internal. Pats on the back do not particularly interest him. He is embarrassed even when store clerks and acquaintances in Gainesville who saw him win on television congratulate him. “I always go in some stores, and they say, ‘aren’t you the guy?’,” he said. “It’s getting a little calmer now. That’s good, though. ' “I don’t like fame too much. Fame starts to take away what you used to do and what you used to say when you’re with your friends.”

He does not keep his gold medal around to admire. It is back home with his parents in Surinam. “He takes everything cool, I think,” said his mother, Pamela Nesty. “He’s not a fussy guy. Maybe he’ll change later, but I hope not.” Nesty laughs at the thought that the medal should have changed him somehow.

“A lot of people think that when someone wins a gold medal their life is supposed to change, at least mentally,” he said. "That’s not true. I did great in one meet. I forget about the meet I did great in and try to do better in the next one.”

More so than perhaps any other sport, success in swimming is the result of effort put into training. Nesty is a model at training. “I practise, then I’m a couch potato all day,” Nesty said. “It takes a lot of time, but you’re not going to swim forever.” “He’s one of the best trainers. I have had,” his Florida coach, Randy Reese, said. “And for not really having a lot of years of background, he does a tremendous job of training.” Perhaps that type of determination was born out of his love for hunting. Since he was a boy he has hunted deer, dove, wild boar and duck in the rain forests of Surinam.

“Hunting is real fun, but it’s something you have to enjoy,” he said. 4“ You

have to have the patience to sit there for hours. But you think of a lot of things when you’re standing there.”

If his medal was not touted as a breakthrough for blacks, it was quite an event for Surinam. Back home, his mother was so anxious she couldn’t watch. “I was a little nervous. I didn’t look until my daughter said, ‘Anthony won the gold’. Then I ran to watch the television. I still didn’t believe it until I saw he had the gold medal,” she said.

She spent until 3 a.m. answering the phone. “We got so many telephone calls from our family, and reporters called from England and Australia. I will never forget that.” To the rest of the world Nesty was billed as an unknown and part of a ragtag group of athletes from Surinam. The country entered five other athletes. One in tae-kwon-do, three in track and field, and one cyclist.

But Nesty has been well known to swimmers. He won a gold medal in the 1987 Pan Am games in the 100 m butterfly and holds a national high school record in the 100yard butterfly when he swam for the Boiles School of Jacksonville in 1986.

“I think anyone that is really in the swimming community would know him. He only lost once in the 100 m butterfly in 18 months before the Olympics,” the Boiles coach, Greg Troy, said. The one thing Nesty admits was enjoyable about winning the medal was the exposure it gave to his home.

“It was very fun to be the first medalist from Surinam. Now everyone knows where' Surinam is. They had a little map in the papers,” he said. Nesty went back there last month and his victory was celebrated for three weeks. Crowds met him at the airport of the country’s capital of Paramaribo, and there were a parade and several dinners in his honour. Florida, NZPA-AP