Her victory was a long time coming: not since the dawn of the Cuban missile crisis, not since the Pope excommunicated Fidel Castro, not since Balfour’s parents were mere toddlers, not since Anita Lonsbrough won in 1962 had a British woman stood aloft any international podium in celebration of a 200m breaststroke victory.
So much for history. ‘It’s something to tell the grandchildren about one day but it’s not something I dwell on, to be honest,’ says Balfour with a smile that belies the grit at the core of a Scot whose triumph was wrought from the courage of her convictions: in God, coach Fred Vergnoux, the training regime he insisted on to turn talent into treasure – and, most importantly, in herself.
Courtesy of a silver medal behind world record holder Leisel Jones, of Australia, at the Commonwealth Games in March, and another silver, over 100m on day three in Budapest, Balfour, 22, lined up for the 200m in lane four alongside Agnes Kovacs, former Olympic and world champion with a European record and a home crowd in her favour.
So much for history. The here and now had a new tale to tell. It showed before the race got underway as Balfour approached her blocks in quiet confidence, reciting Matthew 22:37: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’ There is no substitute for passion.
Balfour won her title from the gun, reaching the half-way stage 1.5sec up on Kovacs before pulling away further down the third length and emerging from the last turn the only contender for gold. Only in the last 15 metres, as the fatigue of a lonely race set in, did the stroke that comes closer to Jones’s sublime technique, start to falter.
She stopped the clock on 2min 25.66sec, 2.76sec ahead (the biggest winning margin since 1974, the year in which David Wilkie became the last Scot to take a European crown) of Yuliya Pudlisna, of Ukraine, with Kovacs forced to settle for third on 2:28.90.
‘It hurt so much at the end. It was difficult to race alone like that. With every breath I kept saying “come on, come on, pull”,’ said an exhausted Balfour, the first British woman to win two individual medals at a European Championship since Jackie Wilmott 25 years ago. A gold as a member of the 4x100m medley relay on the final day of the championships also made her the most successful British woman ever to grace a European Championship.
Just a year ago it would have taken a leap of faith to pencil the Scot in as a prospective champion: after missing the Olympic final in 2004 and finishing 10th in Athens, she then slipped to 18th in the world in 2005 over 200m, some of that owing to a mistimed taper.
God moves in mysterious ways and this born-again swimmer with a passion for Christ and a growing self-belief to match, now finds herself fifth fastest ever with a current world number two ranking (courtesy of a 2:24.04 at the Commonwealth Games) and European gold and silver medallist over 200 and 100m breaststroke respectively. Faith plays a big part. ‘I’ve given my life to God,’ says Balfour who, from time to time, can be found singing gospel music to pensioners in retirement homes in and around Edinburgh. ‘Everything I do has a bearing. I believe things happen for a reason. What happened at the Olympics was a good thing. I think God has a plan for each of us.’
We may never know whether the intervention of Frederic Vergnoux was divine or not but the arrival of the French coach in late 2004 heralded the beginning of a new regime, one that has started to produce fine wine from the waters of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Pool. ‘When I arrived in Edinburgh, I was not very impressed with the fitness level of the whole group,’ said Vergnoux, who expects world-class swimmers such as his wife Alena Popchanka, 2003 world champion over 200m freestyle and winner of three bronze medals for France in Budapest, to be ‘more rounded athletes’.
Vergnoux insisted that Balfour work hard on her relatively poor freestyle and backstroke skills as a diversion to breaststroke. ‘My freestyle’s not really very good!’ Balfour laughs. ‘I can pull with paddles and fins but when it comes to swimming I struggle. I’m the slowest in the squad.’
In addition to better skills in the water, Vergnoux opened the pool door and let the wider world in, taking his charges hill-walking, running, kayaking and adding weights to the mix. On a team camp in Canet, southern France, this summer, team games formed part of the training regime, while altitude training and cross-country skiing are planned for the future.
‘It’s great. It’s added a whole new dimension. I don’t get bored … there’s no time to,’ says Balfour. She talks through laughter of post-graduation plans of learning piano and Gaelic to fill the time once spent studying sports science. ‘I just want to go back to bed after training these days.’
Vergnoux smiles, shrugs in a delightfully Gallic way and says: ‘It’s an option to be here. Your choice, is what I tell them. But if you do come, you do what I want. Kirsty has never missed a training session. It’s demanding – 10 sessions in water and 10 out some weeks, weights, pilates. Swimming is a hard sport. It can’t be 95 per cent, it’s full-time. All or nothing.’
Attitude starts at home. The youngest of four sports-loving sisters, Kirsty’s ethic is inherited: Scott, her father, is an age-group world champion at triathlon, a sport he pursued with such vigour that it led him – with the blessing of wife Cathy, a teacher to blind children – to make a big career change after 30 years as a maths teacher. Pilates, yoga, fitness are the things he teaches these days. His daughter’s own sporting conversion has been both amazing and graceful, relying in part on a tweak in a great technique.
Team Balfour consulted Milton Nelms, partner of Shane Gould, the 1972 triple Olympic champion, and a guru of water skills. In Melbourne, when all eyes were on the phenomenal perpetual motion that is Jones, few noticed that Balfour was also cutting a path of least resistance through an unforgiving element that fights those who fight it.
‘When you race like that, it feels effortless and it gives you faith in your ability. You believe in yourself,’ says Balfour.
Vergnoux sees greater things ahead. ‘It was a really big drop to 2:24 but I believe the potential is much, much better than that.’ Beside him, Balfour smiles knowingly. Inner strength is at work here. ‘Penny Heyns (double Olympic champion on breaststroke for South Africa in Atlanta 1996) used to say she liked to use her talent as an act of worship to God, to try to give everything back to Him because He gave it. That’s what I try to do as well,’ says Balfour. ‘It does matter but I think it’s also good to realise that there are more important things in life than swimming, to not get too puffed up and proud about it all.’
Vergnoux recognises that such things make a massive contribution to whatever it is that makes Kirsty Balfour who she is. ‘For me as a coach, even if I stopped coaching Kirsty now, she would remain among the top three swimmers I’ve ever worked with. We go well together … sometimes it’s intense. Sometimes we have a little bit of a strong discussion. That’s the way it should be,’ he says with a smile.
His coaching is ‘not so much about teaching but about tuning, improving what they already do well’. He adds: ‘Communication is very important. On a regular basis I explain what I’m looking for and we deal with one thing at a time. It’s quite simple. In terms of Kirsty’s breaststroke, we try to repeat things, and when there is an improvement, we look for something different to work on. At the moment we’re working on starts, underwater streamline, improving the break-out. The next thing will be better turns, then something else after that. It’s not rocket-science.’
Neither is there a magic formula to Balfour’s improvement. ‘Kirsty’s in the right place: she has her family around her, she goes to church, she goes to swimming, it’s stable, she is not a very complicated person,’ says Vergnoux. ‘Everything is where it should be to achieve a lot better.’
Which means a stable swim-free zone beyond the pool at home in Fairmilehead, south of Edinburgh in the foothills of the Pentlands. Balfour likes to spend time with family and friends doing things ‘that make me feel normal … I’m still living at home with my parents. The separation from anything to do with swimming is important, finding places and things to do where you’re not thinking about swimming.’
Nonetheless, she is aware that there will be times of great intensity over the next two years. The post-Budapest season holds four overseas training camps in the lead-up to the world championships in Melbourne next March. Those are important not only to escape the Scottish winter but also to provide opportunities that simply don’t exist at home, even in the relatively good circumstance of Edinburgh. ‘It’s good in Edinburgh but we couldn’t have done there what we did at the camp in Canet before Budapest,’ says Vergnoux. ‘I could think swimming 24 hours a day. If there was an aspect of a stroke that needed more work, we could return to the pool at any time. We could spend longer in the water if we needed too. It’s flexible and it’s outdoors. You have to train in whatever conditions arrive that day – hot, cold, windy, whatever.’
Good preparations for the inclement weather on Margaret Island, where Balfour made her mark. So much for history. ‘We have to go back, analyse the things we did right, what we could get better,’ says Vergnoux. ‘But right now it looks like we’re on the right road.’ A question of keeping the faith. n
Courtesy of Swimming Times Magazine
To subscribe to Swimming Times, please click here.
