Stroke Of Genius

Sun Herald

Sunday August 3, 2008

By Andrew Webster

Since Stephanie Rice was dragged into the fracas surrounding that night at The Loft, more attention has been paid to the swimmer's Facebook profile and choice of company than her record-breaking achievements in the pool.

She refers to him by surname only. "People would say to me, 'Oh my god, D'Arcy's going to the Court of Arbitration [for Sport].' And I'm, like, hasn't he already been there?" She likes Nick D'Arcy; they used to swim on youth teams together. "He's a really great guy. It's such a shame for him. It's a shock and, you know, we didn't realise how big it was going to become."

Stephanie Rice sympathises with D'Arcy but that's where it ends. As far as she's concerned, his story is over. She's had enough of the events at The Loft bar on the final night of the Olympic swimming trials in March, when D'Arcy allegedly punched former swimmer Simon Cowley. Rice had left the Sydney nightclub early and was tucked up in bed when her boyfriend, swimmer Eamon Sullivan, sent her a text message at 2.30am. "He was like, 'Oh my god, something massive has happened,'" she recalls.

They had no idea. D'Arcy was charged with recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm, then Rice was inexplicably dragged into the media circus that ensued. Searching for clues about the night, the press prised open the team's Facebook profiles and found Rice posing in a policewoman's uniform. Then they put her on the front page.

Rice has grown tired of explaining those images. They detract from what she has achieved and where this precocious 20-year-old is headed. They obscure that first night of the team trials when she walked into the marshalling area before the 400-metre individual medley and asked coach Michael Bohl, "What time do you think I can do tonight?"

"I reckon a 4.35 would be a really good swim," replied Bohl.

"Yeah, that would be a really good swim," she said.

Shortly after, Rice was stretching out to touch the wall and all she could hear when her head emerged from the pool was the roar of the crowd filling the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic Centre. "Why is everyone so excited?" she wondered.

She turned around and the time on the clock hit her like a sledgehammer: 4 minutes, 31.46 seconds. A world record. Rice had taken five seconds off her personal best and usurped American Katie Hoff - considered the best female swimmer on the planet - who had set a record at the world championships in Melbourne last year.

"Oh f--k!" mouthed Rice, on live national television.

Four days later, she was doing it again in the 200-metre medley, taking almost a second off the record set 11 years ago by China's Wu Yanyan, who was later convicted as a drug cheat.

Rice still marvels that the focus hasn't remained on these things in the lead-up to her first Olympics. "People have been like, 'You're the girl from the Facebook thing.' No, I'm the one from the Olympic trials. I thought one day [of media coverage] was pretty funny. It's getting a bit boring now."

We aren't bored by our golden girls of the pool, though, their thousand-watt smiles with perfect white teeth. Tracey. Lisa. Susie. Libby. Leisel. It's a never-ending production line of breakfast-cereal ads.

Rice has the smile, too, but also an edge. At the press conference after she smashed the 400-metre medley mark, a reporter queried her about claims that the public ought to be suspicious of her boyfriend Sullivan's 100-metre freestyle world record set in the weeks before the trials, that his rapid improvement mirrored drug cheats. "'Oh, the power couple are on drugs,'" she mocked. "It's all crap."

Swimming scribes report she has some diva-esque qualities: the pout, the flick of the hair. "She likes the notoriety a bit," says Bohl, her coach of five years. "She doesn't mind it if the attention is cast her way." Her mother, Raelene Clark, says, "She's always been like that. When she was very young, she was shy. She gained confidence from her sport."

Still, there's no sign of prima-donna behaviour when I meet Rice after an early-morning slog with her club in Brisbane. What I do find is a self-assured girl - confident enough to answer every question thrown at her - but one devoid of pretension, wearing her Australian swim-team tracksuit, and probably still coming to grips with the position she's in. It's worth remembering she only turned 20 in June.

"I was saying to Mum that 19 sounds young. You can get away with a few things. But 20 sounds old and you have to be a bit more mature," she laughs.

Brisbane born and bred, Rice started swim classes as a toddler. "She's always been in the water," says Clark, a bookkeeper and also mother to Courtenay, 13, and Mitchell, 5. "But she wasn't focused on winning at an early age, which I think has helped her. A lot of these kids are amazing swimmers early on but they fall out of the sport, burnt out."

The decision to chase the Olympic dream came at 14 when Stephanie, Clark and Stephanie's father, Warren Rice, a building project manager, changed her school so she could concentrate on swimming.

"I was never the popular person in school because I was there for only half the time," says Rice, whose parents divorced when she was three. "Friends would always be talking about the party at the weekend. They would say, 'Just come out.' And I'd say, 'I can't.

I have training.' When I was in grade 12, the trials for the worlds were on at the same time as my school formal. I couldn't go because I had to race."

But the sacrifice paid off. Coach Bohl identified a weakness in the individual medley ranks and during the past two years, his protege has struck gold at the Commonwealth Games and double bronze at the world championships, along with two world records at the Olympic trials.

Clark says her daughter has always believed she had an amazing future. "And I've believed it, too. We just didn't believe it would happen so soon."

"My life's changed a lot since the trials," admits Rice. "But in a good way. I've loved every minute of the things I've been offered since, things I've always wanted to do: magazines and photo shoots."

Of course, her relationship with Sullivan, 22, has brought an avalanche of headlines but the fascination is wearing thin for her. Describe them as swimming's "Brangelina" and she chuckles. "What a joke."

The pair met at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and started chatting on the free phones provided by team sponsor Telstra. Three months later, they became an item despite Sullivan training out of Western Australia and her in Queensland. Now they pay the phone bills themselves.

"They're hard to justify," says Rice. "But the way we see it, we don't get to go out to dinner and we don't go to the movies together. We talk every day, no doubt. We send each other little gifts. But it's udifficult because he's in Perth, which is two hours behind me. I'm in bed and he's just getting home from training and having dinner. It's been hard. A lot of people say it won't last much longer - people who've had long-distance relationships."

Despite the kilometres between them, Rice has drawn inspiration from her boyfriend, who broke the 100-metre freestyle world mark at the NSW championships a few weeks before the Olympic trials. "I've seen him go through hip operations and shoulder reconstructions and sickness because he's a sprinter," she says. "To see that you don't have to have a smooth preparation and you know you can still be the one..."

Life will improve after the Olympics when Sullivan follows his coach, Grant Stoelwinder, to Sydney. The marketeers are salivating at shopping Sullivan and Rice as a couple. Media buyer Harold Mitchell earlier this year predicted they could earn millions. "It's your classic love story and we all love a fairytale," he said.

Rice and Sullivan have declined any opportunity to tell their story - she prevented Sullivan speaking to Sunday Life for this article - although they have recently entered into a six-figure agreement with Davenport and shot a racy underwear campaign.

"They both have a job to do and that's to swim as best they can," says Clark. "That's what they want the focus to be on; not on a fairly young relationship."

There have been other distractions outside the pool, in particular the events at The Loft. Despite two appeals, D'Arcy has been banned from the team and, at the time of writing, was due to appear in court. The court named Rice as one of five swimmers he couldn't approach as part of his bail conditions, because she'd been in the circle of swimmers D'Arcy had socialised with earlier that night.

But those impositions didn't concern her as much as the Facebook photos splashed across front pages. "That's what upset me the most: that people were linking me to D'Arcy as this big party girl. I'm not a party girl. I was in bed when that happened."

Besides, aren't swimmers lightweights in the alcohol department? "I'm a massive lightweight," she laughs. "I don't even like drinking. I go out to dance and have a good time with my friends. If we're coming to a meet, I'll still go out and dance. I love dressing up and looking pretty. It's always training clothes and dirty hair and no make-up. It's nice on the weekends to do your hair and feel like a normal girl again."

For the record, the policewoman's outfit was worn at a fancy-dress party where revellers had to wear something starting with the initials of her club, St Peters Western: SPW. "She's not someone who drinks and dresses up as a policewoman regularly," says her mum. "She enjoys life, like anyone."

Rice maintains her Facebook profile - sans the pictures that continue to bounce around cyberspace. "I liked those photos," she smiles. "If I didn't like them, I wouldn't have put them up." Rice was forced to take "all but three" down by Swimming Australia officials. "It did knock her around," reveals Bohl of that time.

"I sat down and talked to her about how you can never change perceptions and to be more careful. But she got over it pretty quickly - about three days. That's the type of girl she is."

Each day from 5.45am, Rice will churn through five to six kilometres of the pool. In the afternoon, it's two and a half hours of the same. During the week, she'll slot in two sessions at the gym, two long runs and plenty of core-strength work. Working on Bohl's squad is no picnic.

She predicted her records would be broken and was right on one count: Hoff reclaimed the 400-metre individual medley crown at the US trials in June. Just as daunting, Hoff walked away from the meet having overshadowed Phelps, the world's best swimmer since Ian Thorpe hung up the black bodysuit.

"I didn't expect my world records to last for long," says Rice. "It's going to take more than what I did at the trials to win the Olympic gold."

You can bet she will enjoy life after Beijing, no matter what transpires. She and Sullivan intend to travel the world for three months. "Egypt, Europe, London, New York," she says, dreamily. "Just wherever we want to go, we're going. I haven't

had two weeks off since I was 14. It will be good to be a normal girl again."

© 2008 Sun Herald

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