When Mollie O’Callaghan delivered a devastating burst on the final 50m of the 200m Free in Paris, to launch from 3rd place behind Siobhan Haughey of Hong Kong and Mollie’s training partner at St Peters Western, Ariarne Titmus, the outboard motor that she engaged to produce a final lap of 27.98 was built in Springfield.
Mollie’s 27.98 final 50m took 0.66 seconds out of Arnie in the 200m Free. Arnie was the defending champion and she was not someone you’d ever want to take on but against Mollie’s gold medal-winning performance, Arnie had to accept silver. Canadian 17-year-old superstar Summer McIntosh made a very sensible decision to ditch the 200m Free because, frankly, she would have been battling for bronze when her extraordinary talent was acquiring gold in the 400 IM.
So Mollie can reflect that she has climbed the highest mountain in Paris, beating arguably the greatest freestyle swimmer at the Paris Olympics.
Yet the story of Mollie’s mind-blowing engine “Made in Springfield” needs telling.
The story’s venue was the Waterworx Swim Club, an operation so humble that their Facebook page has very little “Mollie” cheering, rather a list of updates on Aqua aerobics classes.
The sort of unheralded operation that lives and breathes what it does, and relies on people whose passion for teaching and coaching is far greater than their desire to be paid accordingly.
It’s a long way from the glamour of Paris, but Waterworx Swim Club was where Mollie built her outboard engine, her leg kick.
Nicholas Smith of the Queensland Academy of Sport pointed out that Mollie’s underwater turns and her underwater kick are where she gets her edge.
He explains that in the context of Mollie’s World Record 200m Free in the 2023 Fukuoka World Championships in this video:
Paul Sansby
Paul “Cowboy” Sansby’s passion for coaching young swimmers would be tough to beat. His coaching journey started in the 1970s when he emigrated from the UK to Bundaberg as a competitive swimmer, based at the Fairymead Swimming Club. His move to Brisbane a few years later, to be coached by Bill Sweetenham and Ken Wood, considered legends of the swim coaching world.
Under Sweetenham and Wood, Paul improved his PBs but also developed and sharpened his coaching skills. His first coaching gigs were at Lawnton and Jindalee swimming clubs until he was made head coach at St Peters Western in the late 1980s, the club that Mollie now swims for under Dean Boxall.
After a decade at St Peters Western, he and his business partner, Greg Fasala, established Waterworx Swimming Club.
They have produced a long line of great swimmers but it was when Sansby teamed up with another coaching legend, that things went to a new level.
Pete Cherry
When Pete Cherry arrived to help Sansby at Waterworx in 2007, he came with a great reputation.
Gina Rinehart’s profile on Mollie, which you can read here, lays out the respect that Sansby had for Cherry.
“We had been together ever since (until Pete passed in 2021). We were like brothers, and he has developed the skills of so many great champions, including kids like Mollie,” said Sansby.
Cherry’s particular focus was the underwater kick.
Sansby said Cherry would really accentuate the kicking part of training and would break it down in great detail, in a way that was ahead of his peers.
Mollie O’Callaghan started at Waterworx in 2012 when she was eight. She started to swim at four and competed from the age of seven. When she moved on in 2019 at the age of 15, the outboard engine that powered Mollie past Arnie in Paris was fully in place. Her ankle flexion had developed and State Championships and a National Championship were the results.
Dean Boxall has taken Mollie to the next level and bringing 11 Olympians through the St Peters Western program is an enormous feat in itself (surely, the world’s #1 swim club) but Sansby and Cherry and the team at Waterworx Swim Club delivered a massive contribution towards Mollie’s devastating finish.
In 2021, Pete Cherry passed away but his legacy was that 0.66 of a second that Mollie took out of Arnie in the final 50m of the 2024 Olympics 200m Freestyle.
Published 30-July-2024
