Hackett still laps it up

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LOOKING back on the 18-year history that Denis Cotterell shares with Grant Hackett, the Miami coach can pinpoint the moment when he realised he had a kid who was not just good, but destined for greatness.

It was a regular training session at Miami’s Pizzey Park pool, back before a second 50m pool was added and the facilities were limited to one pool and a bare-bones gymnasium.

Cotterell was doing his usual thing, buzzing around the pool-deck, stopwatch in hand, possibly an ever-present coffee cup nearby as his squad – led at the time by distance supremo Daniel Kowalski – ground away.

A 12-year-old Hackett was working his designated training program that day, several sets of 400m that progressively increased in speed.

Cotterell wasn’t entirely unaware of the potential of the gangly Hackett.

“I always keep an eye on the ones I think might have that bit extra,” he says.

But on this day he would see something more than “a bit extra”.

“I wasn’t really timing his 400s to be honest. I had a lot of other kids to worry about,” Cotterell said.

“But there was one set of his I did time. When he finished I looked at the time, saw 4min27sec and thought ‘no that can’t be right. Not for a 12-year-old’.

“So I told Grant, ‘I don’t think that’s right’. And he was miffed at me. He said ‘OK, I’ll do it again. I’ll prove it’.”

So Hackett ploughed through another 400m and took seven seconds off the first time.

Cotterell, one of the hardest people in the game to ruffle, was ruffled.

To put the time in perspective, it would have won Hackett the national under-13 age championship at the time.

“He swam that time just proving a point to me. And in training. And he was 12 years old and wasn’t even taking swimming too seriously back then,” he says.

“But if he thought he could do a set better, he would do it again. He always wanted to do another one then another one and nail himself to the wall one more time.

“Some people say that’s why he’s a danger to himself and his health but I never stopped him because as far as I’m concerned, that’s a winning characteristic.

“Even though it broke him down a few times, it’s a winner’s behaviour.”

The episode provides another insight into Hackett’s unwavering training ethic.

No one trains harder than the dual-Olympic champion, reigning world record holder and Australia’s greatest distance swimmer, who still pushes himself to the point of vomiting in training.

He swam the Athens Olympic final with a busted lung. Cotterell admits that he was also battling the Epstein-Barr Virus when he won his maiden Olympic 1500m title in Sydney.

Hackett could easily have taken the road chosen by Ian Thorpe this year and enjoyed a break to go to the Super Bowl, to New York, to royal dinners and nightclubs.

He doesn’t need to keep swimming. There’s plenty of money in the bank, a waterfront house on the Gold Coast, a healthy investment-property portfolio, a prosperous racehorse part-ownership and a gorgeous girlfriend.

But Hackett celebrated his landmark Athens win by returning to Miami to prepare for this week’s world-championship trials where he took out the 200m, 400m and 800m, and is on the verge of winning the 1500m freestyle.

He will go to the July world championships in Montreal in search of a record four-consecutive 1500m titles, as well as gold medals in the 400m and 800m.

He is aiming for a third-Olympic 1500m gold in Beijing and perhaps his first Olympic 400m freestyle title. He has also indicated he will keep swimming beyond Beijing.

So, in a word, why?

“I’m just really passionate about swimming,” says Hackett.

“I have very basic needs and a very basic philosophy – I just love the sport.”

Nothing gets past Hackett, says Cotterell.

“Even after his 1500m heat (yesterday), I was going through his lap times, gave him his splits and fudged one-tenth of a second,” he said.

“I wanted to make the second 25m of a lap look a bit better than it was and I took one-tenth off.

“And Grant said ‘Hang on, if I did that then this time is out and it doesn’t add up’.

“So I had to say, ‘OK, you got me. I fudged it’.

“I mean, it was one-tenth. And he picked it up. Who does that?”