A swimmer’s story

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Sally touched the wall at the end of the swimming pool and heard the cheers. She knew that she had won the race. She got out of the water and her coach came towards her. He was not smiling. “You can do much better. You are a great swimmer just like your brother, but he stopped swimming when he decided that friends were more important. You are good enough to take part in big events like the Olympic Games.”

Sally learnt to swim when she was five years old and really enjoyed going to the swimming pool with her father and brother. Then a talent scout from one of the local swimming clubs saw her. He asked her to swim for his club. So, at the age of eight, she started to take part in swimming competitions. She won a few races, and the club coach asked her to come for extra training. Soon she was training three times a week with races at the weekend. She didn’t really like training but she loved winning.

One day her father told her that he was now her new coach and that she had six training sessions a week.

“But Dad, I don’t have time for six training sessions a week.”

“Oh yes you do. You will have three sessions before school from six o’clock to seven thirty. And the other three sessions will be after school from four to six o’clock.”

“But when will I have time for my friends? And what about my orchestra practice?”

“Sorry, Sally, but you will have to leave the orchestra. And your friends are not so important at the moment.”

During the next six years Sally won a lot of national and international events, but she was no longer a happy, carefree girl.

Then one day she realised that she didn’t want to swim any more. She wanted to have fun with her friends, go to parties or just hang out with them. She told her father that she wanted to stop swimming but he said she couldn’t. She began to hate the early morning training sessions. She hated spending a sunny Saturday swimming, knowing that her friends were in the park, having fun. She even hated winning because she knew that her father was never happy with her performance. “Why did Mum have to die when I was a baby? Why did David fight with Dad and then run away?” Sally just did not know what to do.