Veteran Sheppard ready for one final fling

Published on Sunday 21 July 2002 01:00

Shrouded in anonymity and painfully aware of the general indifference shown to her chosen vocation, from her base far away in Vancouver Island, swimmer Alison Sheppard could be forgiven for being a member of the bitter and twisted club. But not a word of it. Instead, as Scotland’s outstanding medal prospect for the Commonwealth Games, the 29-year-old just keeps rolling along, improving her standards and displaying a delightfully sunny disposition. She brooks no talk of being second best.

Sheppard has already posted several markers to justify her ambition of triumphing over the mighty Australians in Manchester. In the pool that will be used for the Games, she struck gold at the British championships in April, lowering her Commonwealth, British and Scottish record to 24.96secs in the 50m freestyle, and picked up a silver and bronze at the World Short Course championships in Moscow earlier this season.

It’s a far cry from her days as the nearly woman of the international circuit, a stalwart of four Olympics whose rise to prominence is a glowing testimony to the virtues of perseverance and also the benefits of being in love with your coach. Because, up until she met with Gary Vandermeulin, at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Sheppard’s career was about reaching finals and finishing sixth.

"The last few years have shown what can happen when you have somebody like Gary who believes in you and can get the best out of you," says Sheppard. "All those years of early alarm calls, of gritting your teeth and getting ready for another session amid the darkness in Glasgow ... suddenly it’s been worth all the effort. I almost chucked it in after Barcelona in 1992, then told my mates the ’94 Commonwealth Games would be my swansong, but I’m a pretty determined customer and the thought always nagged away at me that I might leave swimming without truly realising my potential."

Since meeting up with Vandermeulin, Sheppard has amassed a stack of medals and records. "The training has made the difference," she says. "I used to spend hours swimming up and down a pool. But now I do far more work out of the water and it has made me so much stronger and fitter. I spend two to three hours a day, six days a week in the gym, and only spend one or two hours actually in the pool, but I’m getting faster so it would be stupid to give up whilst I’m in this kind of form."

With a Canadian coach and a healthy lifestyle, Sheppard has benefited from the introduction of lottery funding. "I’d have needed to find some sort of work and there is no way nowadays that you can reach the top without swimming full-time," declared Sheppard, who worked in a bank before moving across the Atlantic.

It’s a long time since the teenager turned out at the Olympics in Seoul. But one suspects that all her labours and the money invested in her will be vindicated in Manchester.