Olympic hero David Wilkie admits he could find swimming 'soulless'

NEW heroes will arise. Those were the words used by Scotland team boss Jon Doig when he announced the squad for next month's Commonwealth Games in Delhi, and they were words based on a firm knowledge of the past.

Many of the great names of Scottish sport first came to prominence at the Games, and foremost among them is David Wilkie. The swimmer from Edinburgh won eight gold medals at major championships, culminating in his triumph at the 1976 Olympics. But it all began in his home town in 1970, when the Commonwealth Games were held in Scotland for the first time, and he won a bronze in the 200 metres breaststroke.

Wilkie is based in the south of England these days, but was back north of the border recently to be inducted into the Scottish Swimming Hall of Fame. Forty years on from the event which first brought him to public attention, he recalled his podium finish at the Royal Commonwealth Pool as a "freak" event, and admitted he had often been less than enthusiastic about putting in the long hours required to train for his event. "I was a total amateur in those days," Wilkie, a schoolboy of 16 at the time, remembered. "I hardly trained. I didn't know what to expect - I really didn't know what swimming was all about, competing at that level.

"And I was really totally unprepared and unready. And therefore to get a bronze was quite a freak in many respects, in my eyes and in my coach's eyes. But the Commonwealth Games set me off on the right path."

His subsequent achievements constitute proof that he was a world-class swimmer, and perhaps undermine his claim that his third place in the summer of 1970 was a freakish result. But he believes to this day that he had a poor attitude during his early years in the sport, and thinks if the Games had been held elsewhere he would not have done so well.

"The home support made a hell of a difference, because I was a lazy little devil. I didn't go training - I hated training.

"If you don't do the work, no matter how talented you are, you don't get any rewards. And swimming being a hard sport, you really have to put in the hours and get in that water. I just didn't do that. I couldn't be bothered.

"I was 16. Not that I had anything else on, I just didn't like swimming.

"I just didn't enjoy it. I grew up in Sri Lanka and when I came back to boarding school in Scotland my father thought it would be a good idea if I joined a swimming club.

"I went along to Warrender Baths Club in Edinburgh. It wasn't the most appetising pool to train in - Victorian pool, with steps on the side, nylon lane ropes, 25 swimmers in this wee pond.

"It was like swimming in the Forth. It was choppy; it was cold. I just didn't get swimming. I couldn't understand why people went up and down on laps. For what goal? I thought.What reason?"

Perhaps the only real reason, negative though it sounds, was that there was no better way for the teenage Wilkie to pass his time. "The rival attraction was being at boarding school and doing nothing. There wasn't really any rival sport. I'd played rugby and football, but I wasn't any good at those.

''I finally realised that I did have some talent. We had a training camp before the Games, and that was unheard of. We trained around East Kilbride.

"That was really the first time we'd actually trained as a group of swimmers. The training camp imposed what swimming was like. Did I enjoy it any more? Well, probably not."

Such dissatisfaction with swimming is reminiscent of Andre Agassi's claim in his recent autobiography that he hated tennis, only Wilkie reckons that the American and his fellow sportsmen had it easy. "I think I'd rather be a tennis player. Swimming is tough.

"You see all those kids swimming up and down. It's a soulless sport in some ways. The majority of training has got to be in the pool, and it's got to be two hours minimum, then four hours once you get to the big time. So swimmers work hard. And in those days the rewards were very limited. We were amateurs. The Corinthian values were very strong. Nothing wrong with that." Only, when pressed on the matter, Wilkie accepted that some aspects of those values were wrong - or at least, the way in which they were applied was not wrong, and ran contrary to the best interests of the sport.

"I left swimming at the peak of my swimming career and I could have gone on for another eight years. What annoys me a little bit about the amateur values is you were stopped from doing something you did really well because of somebody's attitude to the sport.

''1976 was the right time for amateurism to end, but it dragged its heels because of the people who ran sport. They were determined to maintain their position of power. Now there's a lot wrong with professional sport, but if you can make a living out of something you're good at you should be allowed to do that."

Wilkie did make a living out of swimming, as part of a promotional team which in his words "extolled the virtues" of Adidas swimwear. Another member of the team was Mark Spitz, the winner of seven gold medals at the 1972 Olympics.

"Mark was a nice guy. Typical American - they would talk a lot and not listen much. He had an ego the size of a bus, but maybe people like that have to have egos the size of buses to do what they do. But the Americans always expected to do well in swimming, and they still do."

Scotland do too these days, thanks in no small part to the legacy left by Wilkie.