Brent Hayden
The reckoning.
A successful athlete … must block out the rest of the world, must concentrate on the task at hand. There will always be crises, there will always be emergencies; the athlete who is going to succeed under pressure must learn to draw into the body, to perform despite any distraction.” —Angie Abdou, The Bone Cage
A tall, solitary figure strides across the pool deck at the UBC Aquatic Centre. He ambles toward his coach to chat about the day’s practice before flopping onto a mat for an easy stretch. Muscles loose, he grabs a kickboard and pull buoy out of his gear bag, dropping them at the edge of the pool. The swimmer snaps his goggles on and shakes the tension out of his arms. A quick pause for a breath before he dives into the pool, breaking the surface with an emphatic splash. His sinewy, muscular physique slices through the water with precision and ease. Length after length, his arms pull him through the pool—a study in strength and grace.
This is how Canadian national swimmer Brent Hayden begins each training session. He toils away in relative obscurity, the rhythm of his strokes broken only by brief pauses to adjust his goggles or get a new set of instructions from his coach. Nine practices each week. Over 20 hours in total, averaging 5,000 metres per session. Innumerable kilometres over the course of his storied career, culminating in a number one world ranking for the 100-metre freestyle at the close of the 2010 season.
It’s a league beyond Hayden’s start in racing at age five, having failed swimming lessons twice before that. “I was scared of the water and did nothing but distract the other kids,” he reminisces. By Grade 7, though, Hayden started moving up through the ranks, regularly placing in the top three at meets. At about the same time, he began taking Isshin-Ryu karate. “I was the kid who wanted to play all the time, and karate taught me discipline and a better awareness of body mechanics.”
Sensei Tom McDonagh had a huge influence on the young swimmer; when McDonagh died a year ago, Hayden paid homage to him by adorning the right side of his already-illustrated torso with a Japanese-inspired cloud and three stars tattoo. “The three stars are on our karate crest and they signify a couple of things: the three styles of karate that make up Isshin-Ryu, and the battle of mind, body and soul. I’ve been dealing with a lower-back problem for the last three years, and it basically symbolizes my battle to stay positively motivated.”
An auditory quirk affecting his performance off the starting blocks is another challenge that Hayden continually trains to overcome. “I had a hearing test done when I was little, and at first they said I was completely deaf in one ear. Turns out my hearing isn’t wired properly—too many neurons are firing, and it causes a lot of brain fatigue. Sounds take a split second longer to register with me, and that hampers my reaction time.” Ongoing work with a specialist over the past couple of years has all but eliminated the deficit. “Our primary focus is to get the right body mechanics to get off the blocks quickly and efficiently,” he says. Once known as a come-from-behind swimmer, his starts are now among the best in the world.