Rice reflects on a splash of class

In the world of sports, there are a few who need no introduction. Stephanie Rice is one among them.
It was at the 2008 Beijing Olympics the then 19-year-old swimmer set the pool ablaze by winning three gold medals in world record times. It’s been nine years since that day at the Beijing National Aquatics Centre. But for Rice, it’s still as fresh as it can get.

“Looking back, it feels unreal,” said Rice, who is in Bengaluru as the international event ambassador for the TCS World 10K.

“The first medal was the 400M individual medley. It was the first day of the Games and it was my first race at an Olympics. So to win that medal was a huge achievement. This was my dream since I was just a young girl. So I just achieved my biggest dream in my first race.

“Before the second race (200M individual medley) I caught a flu. I was potentially not going to race. Then I told myself ‘I’m here in China and just need to give it a try. If I come last it would have been an embarrassment or else you wouldn’t have another chance.

“ So when I won that race, it gave me more confidence. Third was the relay and it was really great to win as part of a team and do it with friends,” she recalled.

The Beijing success put Rice instantly under the limelight. She soon became the face of Australian swimming and as the next Olympics in London came along 2012, many thought Rice would at least repeat her show in Bejing, if not take it a notch higher.

But things didn’t unfold that way as the Australian finished fourth in the 200M individual medley and a joint sixth in the 400M individual medley — events she had dominated four year ago.

“I don’t think it was a matter of focus or being passionate,” she said. “The big difference between my preparation for London and my preparation for Beijing was that, in London I was the reigning champion, whereas going into Beijing I was just another person in the team who would hopefully do well. Things were a lot more relaxed, less pressure.

“Leading into London, it was lot more expectations, having to balance the media commitments, the sponsorship commitments, it was pretty much a full-time business.

“There was a lot of distractions. But I wouldn’t say that I lost focus, it was a balancing act that I had to pull off. Before London, I had my third shoulder surgery, and four months before the Games, I had a torn tendon in my shoulder, then food poisoning a few weeks before the Games. Everything just seemed to go wrong.”

Like many other sporting disciplines, swimming has had its fair share of doping cases. South Korean Park Tae-Hwan, China’s Sun Yang and Jessica Hardy of the US have even made the headlines. Rice, who has maintained a clean profile throughout her career, admitted there were moments when she felt that the field was not clean.

“Yes. Somehow you can sense it. There are many ways people can cheat today. But having said this, you can’t generalise and say a country is a drug-cheating nation.

 I think, that’s just the nature of sport. I don’t thing we can ever get rid of drug-cheating in sport.
“I think the cheats will always be a step ahead. That’s because they (the anti-doping agencies) test for something that they know about. And you always have something new coming up in the market that can help the athletes. There will always be something that will not be on the list.”