Body Lengths by Leisel Jones

Author:Leisel Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Schwartz Publishing Pty. Ltd

Melbourne may not have started out as a great meet, but it sure ended up that way. I walk away from the Games with three individual gold, the 100-metre world record, and also a gold and a second world record for the medley relay. My Nanna had a ball. Mum is chuffed to bits. I even had a great time with my roommate, Brooke Hanson.

In fact, Melbourne capped off a pretty awesome year for me. Aside from the Commonwealth Games, I set world records in the 100-metre and 200-metre events at trials in March. I broke the 100-metre short course world record at Nationals twice. I gained my seventh straight 200-metre title, seventh overall 100-metre crown and my maiden 50-metre win at the national swimming titles in Brisbane. I also won the Swimmer of the Year award in Brisbane.

But the thing that means the most to me? That’s easy. On 10 December 2006, I win swimming’s People’s Choice Award, as voted by the Australian public.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but my on-deck interview with Nicole Livingstone at the Commonwealth Games, just moments after I won the 200-metre event, was something of a career turning-point for me. It couldn’t have been less calculated or less scripted if I’d tried. I never intended to open up like that. And maybe that was the key. Maybe people could see I was being completely honest. Until then, I had always been very strategic and structured about what I said publicly. I had been closed.

But in that short interview, I opened up; I just talked. I was brutally honest and I spoke from the heart. Athens in 2004 was such a bitterly hard time for me. It knocked me, just as many things in my life up until this point had knocked me. My dad leaving, our bankruptcy … these things had affected me much more than I realised.

I was learning I was not as mentally tough as I’d thought I was.

But to come out and say these things to the Australian people? I’d never meant to do that. These were off-the-cuff comments. There was no agenda. I’d been honest in the past, but the wrong sort of honest – the sort that shows disappointment at the end of a race and gets you in hot water.

Now, though, I had a different message: it’s okay to not be okay. And the Australian people responded to that.

I am touched, honoured and really surprised to become the first female swimmer to win the Telstra People’s Choice Award. I might be walking away from 2006 with a ton of gold, but the support of my country? That’s priceless.

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