Prepared for Glory

Atlanta Sports Awards Honors Amanda Weir as Amatuer Athlete of the Year

By Carl Danbury

    For world-class athletes, training your body and mind often begins at a tender age. Countless hours spent in the gym, on the track or in a pool often can make for a lonely existence, particularly for those attempting to excel in an individual sport. Amanda Weir’s journey to Olympic glory began when she was an 8-year-old living in Minnesota, which is not exactly a hotspot for swimming. When her parents Jim and Julie Weir moved to Lawrenceville right before the 1996 Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta, Amanda wasn’t sure that swimming was for her. In Minnesota, after reluctantly joining a team, she demonstrated the natural ability that would lead her to the Olympics 10 years later, yet she refused to pass other swimmers in the pool because it might make them feel bad.
    “She would swim and catch up to them, but she wouldn’t pass them because it might upset them,” her father said. “She was trying to be polite.”
     For the past 10 years, Amanda has spent more than 300 days per year training in the pool. The results speak volumes for hard work.
    “[Spending so much time training] makes me more competitive and gives me that extra something to know that I have done the work when I get behind the blocks to race. It’s the satisfaction to know that I have prepared,” she said.

Off the Block
    Amanda, who will turn 20 this month, was a member of the 400-meter freestyle relay team with Kara Lyn Joyce, Natalie Coughlin and Jenny Thompson, who set an American record finishing second behind Australia in Athens, Greece. She won a second silver medal in the 400-meter medley relay.
     After the family relocated, the Weirs placed Amanda in Swim Atlanta’s youth program, which had a good group of talented girls. Her new coach for her age group was unimpressed despite the fast times she had posted in the past, which placed her in the top 1 percent of girls her age.
    “Stu (Wilson), now the coach at Georgia Tech, said she was just not fast in practice,” said her father Jim. “Then we wander off to a meet at Auburn in October and she races in a 50-yard freestyle event and Stu said ‘Oh, she likes to race doesn’t she?’ Amanda has always liked to race.” She set her first National record for her age group at 12. It was her first of six such records.
     Coach Chris Davis began working with Amanda at Swim Atlanta when she was 13. “Unlike many elite athletes, she is extremely low maintenance,” Davis said. “She was always so focused and so intense that I tried to make her training fun for her.”
    “I always made fun of her trying to get her to smile and challenged her in any way that I could,” Davis related. “I always made bets with her because she likes all challenges. I got tired digging into my pocket for money. She enjoys proving people wrong.”

Anchor Down
    At 14, she almost quit swimming, and Davis backed off on her training regimen allowing her to swim only when she wanted to. Last year as a freshman at Georgia, she also had a tough transition period and began to doubt whether or not she wanted to pursue her swimming career.
“Amanda doesn’t adjust well to change,” Jim said. “It’s not her forte. She likes things to be consistent as possible.”
     Consistency was difficult to come by in 2004 and 2005. After training hard for the pre-Olympic trials where she finished third, Amanda and the other swimmers were taken away from any comfort zone they might have had. First, they traveled to Stanford University to train. Then, they were whisked away to Mallorca for more training just prior to the Olympics. Once the Olympics concluded, Amanda had one day to adjust before moving into her dorm at Georgia.
    “The whole first year in college was tough,” Jim said.
     Despite the difficult adjustment period, last spring, Georgia swimming coach Jack Bauerle chose Amanda to swim the anchor leg on four relay teams, a testament to her talent and ability to focus.
     Amanda was the first to anchor four different relay teams to first-place finishes at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships last March for the University of Georgia. Her team set two American records in the 200-yard freestyle relay and the 800-yard freestyle relay. Georgia also took first place in the 400-yard freestyle and the 400-yard medley relay with Amanda as the anchor.
     She also finished second in the NCAA Individual 200-yard freestyle and placed third in the NCAA Individual 50-yard freestyle. In addition, she won the consolation final in the NCAA Individual 100-yard freestyle.
     Last summer at the 2005 FINA World Championships in Montreal, Amanda garnered two more medals in relay events. In December 2005 during the U.S. Open, the meet held at Auburn, she won both the 50-meter freestyle and 100-meter freestyle. After the event, she said her new training regimen has paid dividends.
    “I’m really excited to be racing again,” she said. “This season, I’ve switched things on my training. I’ve done a lot more weights. I’m really happy with how I swam, but my 100 is still far off my best, so I think I learned that I need to be off weights longer or rest more. This is the part of my year to make some changes and see what I need to do for 2008.”
     In early February, Amanda established her personal best time in the 500-yard freestyle at the Orange and Blue Invitational at Auburn. She is sitting out of NCAA competition this year and will enroll at the University of Southern California next fall. Her father grew up in Orange County and the family vacationed there often. Amanda enjoys spending time at the beach and is “a California girl at heart,” according to Davis. She has an extensive collection of sunglasses, which earned her the nickname “Hollywood.”
    “I never go to a swim meet without at least three pairs,” Amanda admitted.
     This champion swimmer will represent the U.S. at the 2006 FINA Short Course World Championships (25-meter pool instead of the Olympic size 50-meter pool) in Shanghai, China in April.
     While her list of swimming accomplishments grows from week-to-week, Davis said she is an amazing person away from the pool, too.
“I know what she does and I know how much she gives up. Not only does she handle herself well in the water but out of the water as well,” Davis said. “If you asked her to sign autographs for eight hours for young children, she wouldn’t gripe once. Unlike many elite athletes, she is extremely low maintenance. The two things she likes the most is attending a swim meet and staying at hotels.”
     Jim said that from a parents’ perspective, Amanda could not have turned out better. “She handles herself well around adults, other kids and groups of people,” he said. “While she is not necessarily an extrovert, she is capable of handling herself in interviews and everything else she has had to go through, so we are really proud of her.”

Championship Heat
    Despite all of her accomplishments, Amanda’s best days may be still to come, according to Davis. “She has a unique workload capacity, to that of a middle distance swimmer rather than a sprinter. She has a longer torso and shorter legs than most sprinters and she trains at a very high level,” Davis said.
     Amanda has always had a beautiful stroke in the water, but there are several things she has tried to improve upon in training. “She was never a great starter and she was a sad, awful kicker,” Davis said. “She made a conscious effort to improve her starts, her kicking and her turns. I truly believe her best years are in front of her.” Davis believes her best event in the future could be the 200-yard freestyle.
    “For some reason the 200 has always been more challenging for me. I think it is more of a mental hurdle to cross than a physical one,” she said. “I am finally beginning to realize that it can be my strongest event. I think that kicking has helped a lot with that.”
Amanda focuses her energies on preparing for the next big event, according to her father. After Shaghai, she’ll begin focusing on the Summer Nationals, the PanPacific Games in Vancouver, the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, the U.S. Olympic trials and then the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
    “I am big into goal setting. I begin every season with goals and write them down. Chris and I talk about them and those are the things that push me in practice,” Amanda explained. “My goals are to set American and World records. That is what I am definitely shooting for in the next couple of years.”
Mental preparation, physical training and working on technique never end for a world-class athlete like Amanda Weir. Like many amateur athletes who do not participate in the most-recognized and most-publicized sports, her hard work and accomplishments go largely unappreciated. But, if and when she steps on that highest block at the medals ceremony in Beijing, we’ll all remember the dedication and sacrifices she made to get there.
The Atlanta Sports Awards’ first Amateur Athlete of the Year is Amanda Weir, a most deserving recipient.
    “[To receive this award] means that other people have deemed you worthy of receiving it and that is such an honor. It’s a really big honor just to be nominated. It is as great an achievement as anything you do in the pool; to win it is awesome,” she said.

Weir photos courtesy of USA Swimming.