Former Olympian Has Strange Notion About Winning Medals Again--at Age 32 : Sandy Neilson Swims Back to the Future

The old-timer sits well back from the swimming pool, on a lawn chair under the shade of some tall pine trees. There is a Masters swim meet in progress, but the old-timer isn’t swimming today. Just watching, helping with the timing, encouraging a friend.

With only the slightest prompting, she takes us back to the summer of ‘72, to Munich, West Germany, the Olympic Games.

The old-timer, Sandy Neilson, was a kid then, 16 years old. She was shy but poised, and a beautiful swimmer. The event was the 100-meter freestyle, to the far wall and back. Neilson had qualified third. The favorite was Australia’s Shane Gould, although American star Shirley Babashoff was rated an outside chance to win.

Neilson?

“I was a dark horse,” she says. “As we were parading in, I told myself everyone in the race was nervous, and if I just kept calm, I’d be less nervous than anyone else. I was pretty relaxed.

“I hit the start, I was leading at the wall and I hit the turn well. It was like everything was clicking, and I never felt so light. I felt no muscle sensation or tiredness at all. I felt like I was swimming on air.

“For a second I had the thought, ‘Am I supposed to be here?’ We had an expression we used, and halfway down I told myself, ‘Haul buns, Neilson, you can win this thing!’

“As I hit, I looked up and watched Shirley and Shane hit the wall.”

Then Sandy cried during the national anthem, of course, and went on to win gold medals in two relay events, the 400-meter freestyle and the 400-meter medley.

And that was pretty much it for her brilliant career. She was too old to swim at the next Olympic Games, and she had a college career and a life to get on with.

Now our story jumps ahead 14 years, to the present, to a pool in Houston.

The old-timer is talking about her preparations for the 1988 Olympic Games. She plans to swim in them. She plans to win a medal. She plans to blow sky-high one of the enduring myths of sport, that old people--20 and up--can’t be competitive in the water.

When it comes to myths and misconceptions, the flat-earth theory was easier to kill than this one will be. If Neilson pulls off this comeback, swimming will never be the same.

Sandy will be 32 in the summer of 1988. By comparison:

--The 1984 U.S. Olympic women’s swimming team was the oldest American team ever, with an average age of 18 1/2. Some of the ladies had prolonged their careers because they had missed the ’80 Games, thanks to the U.S. boycott.

--The oldest American gold medalist ever was Frances Schroth, who helped win a relay gold in 1920 at the age of 27.

--Kornelia Ender of East Germany won two silver medals in ’72 at the age of 13. Neilson was--and still is--a year older than Gould and Babashoff.

--The oldest competitive swimmer ever to be world ranked is--guess who? Sandy Neilson, sixth in the world in the 50 meters last year.

So where has Sandy Neilson been these last 14 years?

She retired from swimming. She dabbled at inner-tube water polo, skiing, restaurant work, secretarial work, coaching. She was elected to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, where she squished her hands and feet into wet concrete for posterity.

Then, in 1982 at a masters meet, Sandy met Keith Bell, a 34-year-old doctor of psychology and masters swimmer from Austin, Tex. Sandy had already returned to light, recreational swim training then, with no plans other than to get wet twice a week.

Bell watched Neilson swim. He was an all-American swimmer in college and has coached a lot of swimmers, but nobody like this. He couldn’t believe it.

“I told her that watching her swim brings joy to my eyes,” Bell said. “Her stroke is so beautiful. I think she is the most efficient freestyle swimmer in the world. When she swims, watch the other coaches. They all stand on the deck and watch her. She seems to glide through the water effortlessly. Other swimmers are extremely strong and fairly proficient in the water. And many women are better conditioned, although that won’t be the case in ’88.

“But nobody in the world is as efficient in the water.”

To make a long love story short, Sandy and Keith hit it off right away. They started training together. Now they live together in Austin, where they share this crazy dream of knocking the swimming world on its buns in 1988. They work together in Keith’s practice, and they train together.

They’ve been real good for one another.

“When we met, she was on cruise,” Bell said, referring to Neilson’s life in general and swimming in particular. “I don’t think she had a lot of goals. She was having fun, enjoying her life and her friends.”

But there was something inside Neilson quietly struggling to get out. A great swimmer.

Two years after the ’72 Olympics, Neilson went to UC Santa Barbara and decided to swim for fun. When her coach put too much pressure on her to compete, she joined the inner-tube water polo team. She later returned to competitive swimming, and in 1977 won the national collegiate 50- and 100-yard freestyle events, but her college career was all kind of anti-climactic, like a great runner taking a victory lap. She had to get on with her life.

“Society says after college, people get a job, a real job,” she told the Austin American-Statesman.

Sandy listened to society. She quit swimming cold for three years, and tried all those things mentioned above. At 25, she got back in the water, for fun. She got into the Masters program and did real well, but it was all a lark, a way to keep fit, make friends.

Then along came Bell, with unorthodox methods and that one idea.

Bell trains like a maniac, 365 days a year. Sandy worked out with Bell, gradually buying into his intensity and energy.

“One day I casually mentioned to her that she could break a world record,” Bell said. “At first she was intrigued by the idea. Then I told her, ‘Hey, no, I’m serious . You can do it.’ She thought it would be fun to give it a try.”

Now, you have to understand the Bell-Neilson concept of fun. Bell is a psychologist who works with athletes and stresses positive thinking. A workout is not a workout, it’s play or practice. Obstacles and roadblocks are referred to as challenges. You don’t make sacrifices for your sport, you make choices.

Whining, griping and moaning are staples of a swimmer’s training, but not under Bell. In one of the several training-psychology books he has written for swimmers and other athletes, one chapter subhead is: “Complaining--it’s Cancerous.”

One day Bell had a big workout scheduled for Neilson.

“Wow, I don’t know if I can do all that,” she said.

“Out of the pool,” Bell said, curtly. “The practice is over.”

“No, wait, I’ll swim. I’ll try it,” Neilson pleaded.

“Then try it tomorrow when you can do it with a positive attitude,” Bell said, walking away.

There is no pain involved in the Bell-Neilson training method.

“We don’t talk about pain,” Neilson says. “We don’t associate the feelings we feel in swimming with the word pain. Pain is a signal of danger. What we feel is a signal to push on. We call the feeling zinging, when you hit that threshold. We think of it as an enhancement. Swimming’s not a pain.”

To some, that kind of psychology might seem simplistic, even corny. And Neilson admits it took her awhile to convince her body that what it felt wasn’t pain, but zinging.

But this new mental and physical discipline were just what Neilson had been searching for since 1972. And in Neilson, Bell found the perfect blend of skill, dedication and temperament to put his concepts to work. That great swimmer was in there, waiting for someone to call her out.

“I didn’t have a lot of encouragement to go on (after the ’72 Games),” Neilson said in a Swimming World interview. “I didn’t really have any goals and I didn’t have a lot of support. I didn’t have anyone tell me I could do better, so I just quit.”

Then came Keith, and talk of the record.

“I missed the world record (in the 100-meter freestyle) by less than one-tenth of a second,” she says. “Then I never swam another 100 free after that, never took the chance. When he said that (about a record), it kind of clicked.”

In the ’72 Olympics, Sandy swam the 100 in 58.59. In 1984, on the same day that American women were finishing 1-2 in the Olympic Games in L.A. (Carrie Steinseifer won in 55.92), Neilson swam in a meet in Clovis, Calif., and clocked a 58.3.

Neilson and Bell don’t consider her a longshot for a medal in ’88.

“Her chances (of winning a medal) are excellent,” Bell said. “At the nationals she was second in the 50 and fourth in the 100. She’s one of the leading contenders, one of the top 10 in the world in her events. Nobody is better in the water, and it’s still a skill sport. If the trials were held today, she’d be a good bet to make the team.”

For Neilson, the challenge isn’t entirely in the water. Part of the challenge is getting to the water.

In the Austin area there are relatively few good indoor workout--oops, make that practice--facilities. Keith and Sandy were training with the swimming team at the University of Texas at Austin. The kids loved Keith and his motivational attitudes, and they loved Sandy and her amazing style and enthusiasm.

But a parent of one of the swimmers didn’t like the idea of the 38-year-old coach and the 30-year-old former great swimmer swimming with the college kids. The parent leaned on the school’s athletic director, and he ordered Sandy and Keith out of the building. Now they work out at a fitness center where the pool is too short, and has an uneven bottom and no markings. They see the pool as a challenge.

There are other subtle psychological and social forces at work against Sandy. There is no known physical reason why a 30-year-old swimmer cannot be competitive with a younger swimmer, perhaps be even better. Marathon runners are markedly better at 30 than at 15, and so are most baseball and basketball players, and so on.

But women have always retired from swimming, and gymnastics, early. That’s the way it’s been, and nobody has really challenged that way, until now. Sandy Neilson wants to be a pioneer. She wants to break down barriers, win races, win medals, have fun, encourage other women, and men, to keep on competing beyond their teens. She’s on a mission.

“I don’t think people know what to think about a 30-year-old swimmer swimming against 16-year-olds,” Neilson says. “At the U.S. Open, I realized I was the only woman over 22, although there were a couple of men 23, 24, and George Cook is 26 or 27.”

On occasion, a parent will complain about this old lady entering a meet and winning medals that should be going to youngsters. But for the most part, other swimmers and officials have been supportive of Neilson. So have her parents back in El Monte. Even when she was a hot-shot wonderkid, the very first question they would ask her, after every meet, was, “Did you have fun?”

Now they lend her money when they can, because this business of going for the gold in ’88 costs money. Neilson could take free sweats or goggles here and there, but refuses on principal. That’s the old way, and she and Bell are searching for acceptance and support on a broader scale.

Until it comes, in the form of something like a corporate sponsorship, Sandy is scraping by, financially. She depleted her savings, then ran her Visa card to its limit.

“It’s been hard,” she says. “A 10-dollar entry fee is a lot.”

Not long ago, Neilson was talking to a famous U.S. swimmer, a current young superstar who is from a wealthy family.

“We don’t want outside money,” the youngster told Neilson. “It would tarnish our amateur standing.”

“Mary, some of us need money,” Neilson said. “Do you think I dress like this, in old jeans and things, because I want to? I haven’t bought any new clothes in over a year.”

That kind of sacrifice--OK, choice --was foreign to the youngster. Her eyes widened.

“You do that to swim ?” the kid said to the old-timer.