Swimming pool master

by Brian Pound

It’s somewhat apropos that Don Talbot landed in Canada on Halloween Night, 1972. He’s been scaring hell out of the system ever since.

Talbot came to Canada from his native Australia following the 1972 Olympics, looking for a new challenge and a continuation of his education. He got both, and along the way acquired an outspoken attitude that has not exactly endeared him to some people in the upper regions of the sport he loves and coaches, swimming.

Perhaps it is fitting then that Talbot resides in a place called Thunder Bay.

Despite Talbot’s outspoken ways (the Canadian Amateur Swimming Association’s failure to keep native swimmers away from American universities and their failure to create a recruiting program from the national Learn-To-Swim plan, are Talbot’s two biggest beefs), he has been good for Canadian swimming, and in particular, the Thunder Bay Swim Club.

At the National Winter Short Course Swimming Championships in New Westminster in March, Talbot’s club won the overall team title by the length of the pool, captured the women’s title, and placed second to the Olympium Club of Etobicoke in the men’s events.

Talbot hopes that this winning attitude will rub off on the male members of Canada’s swim teams at both the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton this August and the World Championships in Berlin, which follow ten days later.

For Talbot, you see, is the head coach of Canada’s national men’s swim team at both events. And, to that end, he has dedicated himself to the proposition that Canada can be a winner at swimming.

“We can win at Edmonton and we can win at Berlin,” says Talbot. “Our Canadian men swimmers are just as good as any in the world. My job is to convince them of that, and get them up for both meets.”

Convincing swimmers they can do the job and getting them up are certainly two of Talbot’s strongest fortes. During a 15-year coaching career in Australia, Talbot developed seven Olympic gold medallists, and, he says, “I can’t remember how many world record holders.”

Talbot, who turns 45 this year, is therefore somewhat disturbed when he returns home from an international meet without at least one gold medal.

“I don’t like going to something like the Olympics and Commonwealth Games and not winning gold,” he says. “By 1980 I expect Canada to be established as a major threat. We can be there. We certainly have the talent in Canada to win gold medals.”

Looking at the Commonwealth Games, Talbot sees his native Australia as the biggest threat to Canadian swimmers. “They’re always ready for these Games,” says Talbot. And he throws in England and New Zealand as two other countries who will be in the thick of the fight.

The Canadian Commonwealth Games team will number somewhere between 40 and 45 swimmers. The number in Berlin will be in the neighbourhood of 30 to 33.

Because the World Championships follow so closely on the heels of the Commonwealth show, Canada’s Berlin team may have to be chosen before the Edmonton Games. And despite the problems that may cause, Talbot is convinced that Canada can produce her most successful World Championship team ever.

(Canada won a gold and two bronze medals at the initial 1973 World Championships and finished with one silver and two bronzes in 1975.)

Talbot is a landed immigrant who is now eligible for Canadian citizenship but doesn’t know if he wants to apply for it.

“Don’t get the idea I’m not happy here, because I am,” he says. “Canada has allowed me to do the things in swimming I’ve always wanted to do, plus get an education.”

Education is an M.A. in psychology from Lakehead University, the centre out of which Talbot has developed his powerful Thunder Bay Club.

Why did he come to Canada?

“Two reasons really,” explains Talbot. “I was having some internal problems with the Australian Swimming Association and a couple of personal problems of my own. The Thunder Bay job also afforded me the opportunity of carrying on with my education.”

For Talbot, leaving Australia meant leaving a coaching career that began in 1953 “because I needed the money.”

It was in 1957 that Talbot developed his first world-record holder, Jon Konrads in the 1500m freestyle. There have been many superb swimmers since that time who have knifed through the water with the magic Talbot touch. Of them all, though, Talbot says that Brad Cooper, a freestyler, was the most talented. Cooper won the gold medal for the 400m freestyle at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Talbot himself was a swimmer, but he doesn’t talk much about it. “Just say I was bad.” is his comment if pushed.

When Talbot first came to the Thunder Bay club it totalled 60 swimmers. Today the club flourishes as probably the finest in the country with a membership of 145, many of whom are of international calibre and world ranked.

But the end of Talbot’s reign as a coach may be nearing.

“Nothing is definite about this yet,” he says, “but I can see myself coaching through the 1980 Olympics and then, perhaps, getting into the advisory end of sport. I’d like to use my psychology background in that area.”

And who replaces him?

“There are between five and seven really good young coaches in Canada at the moment,” Talbot says. “They have the talent we need to produce winners at the international level. And there are many, many other coaches just behind them with the potential to produce what we need as well.”

Before he does officially bow out, though, rest assured that Don Talbot will be in there gearing Canada for that elusive swimming gold medal.

It had better happen. Canada is not noted for earthquakes.

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