In her first Olympics, as a shy and retiring teenager, she finished so close to last place that she thought of forever abandoning her quest for Gold.
But she pushed herself, even when she could find little joy in the pursuit, and the agony paid off when she stood on the podium twice to earn her place as South Africa’s Golden Girl in Atlanta in 1996. At the time of this interview in 2015, Penny Heyns was still the only woman to have won both the 100m and 200m breaststroke at the Olympics, and her lasting achievement bears testimony to the grueling discipline, self-sacrifice, and public acclaim that accompanies a career in the sporting spotlight. In this candid interview, Penny talks to Ruda about the pressures of competition, the trouble with fame, and the art of turning opportunity into destiny.
Transcript:
R: Hello and welcome to the Change Exchange and I always get my tongue tied around that one, the Change Exchange. Say it quickly and let’s see if you can. Our guest today is Penny Heyns that we still remember as the golden girl of swimming. You’re still the only woman who has ever won the 100 and 200m breaststroke at the Olympics.
P: That’s correct.
R: Quite a thing!
P: I guess it is in hindsight, at the time you’re young and you don’t really realise the enormity of it and I fully expected each subsequent Olympic Games that someone would do that. And strangely enough it hasn’t been done yet.
R: Did you just…when did swimming become the thing in your life. I mean as a child one just does all kinds of sports at school and then how did you grow into that?
P: Well I grew up along the coast, I was born in Springs but we moved down when I was about a year old and if you grow up along the coast you’ve got to know how to swim. So I suspect I learnt around the age of two or three, joined the school team at seven and only really seriously began swimming for a club level at the age of 12. Umm…as my story goes, it’s not because I loved swimming per say – it’s more the fact of recognising that I have talent and feeling a responsibility that to really develop it to its fullest. And it became apparent that swimming was the stronger of all the various sports that I did and so I guess I went from there.
R: And it’s a hard discipline, it’s… you put in hours, and hours and hours?
P: It is and also because it’s lonely. I think the only other discipline that perhaps is even harder would be gymnastics – because of the injuries and stuff like that. But it’s not a team sport and even if you’re a runner you still have that interaction with your teammates, swimming is very lonely. But I like that, I like the sology (sic).
R: What goes on in your head while you’re doing your lengths?
P: Well it really depends, I formed a habit later on while I was in College because I was so home sick. I had to find a way to focus on the here and now so I started counting my strokes and which you don’t do in free and back because it’s so complicated but in breaststroke and butterfly, I counted my strokes and what I did there, I focused on the details because ultimately success is really just a reflection of excellence in the details. And I suppose aside from that, sometimes when you are doing the longer distances, you sing some songs or stuff like that (laughs).
R: But it sounds like almost a meditation.
P: In a sense it is. And since I retired if I think back on my swimming career, initially anyway, the part I really missed was the training that time alone and the quiet of that.
R: Interesting. But you were very young, only 17 when you left for America?
P: That’s correct.
R: How did that happen?
P: Well, it was the Olympic year in ‘92 when I was in matric; umm it was the first year that South Africa was readmitted into that Olympic fold, it really came as a bit of a shock … I really didn’t believe that we would go, I didn’t grow up with an Olympic dream, because we’d been in isolation for so long. And then some of the scouts, I guess from America, were out at our Olympic trials and offered me a scholarship _ and, at first, I said no and I found out my coach at the time contacted them and said offer it again and they offered it again. I did not want to go.
R: Why, why?
P: Well, Barcelona was incredibly disappointing for various reasons. I came 33rd and 34th,which I always joke and say it’s close to last place. And so that was the first time in my career I thought it’s a good idea to retire. But as I sat and…
R: And you were 17 (laughs)?
P: I was 17 yes, the only school pupil on the Olympic team as far as I know. And everyone else after swimming went out and enjoyed Barcelona, and I stayed behind wrestling with this idea that I have an opportunity to go to the United States. And I believe we are given talent and the next thing it’s opportunity and what we do with it really determines our destiny. And I didn’t wanna go and I always stress this to my audiences, because often we think that when you have a desire for something that means that’s what you are supposed to do. And in my career I find out quite often it’s the opposite, you may not have the desire. That’s why, whatever you do in life, you must have a deeper foundation for why you’re doing it.
R: Why didn’t you want to go?
P: Well Nebraska is in the centre of the United States. It gets down to minus 20 Celsius, with the wind chill factor even colder.
R: And this is a Durban girl.
P: Yes, it’s a Durban girl and you know I always say my first nationals was in Durban and we stayed in a hotel and I was homesick and I saw my parents throughout the day and I was still homesick. So I was not the kind of kid that slept out and visited away from home a lot. So the idea of moving all the way to the States and you know it was very daunting. And plus at that time I really didn’t love swimming too much given that I’d had such a disappointing Olympics.
R: So what…what made you decide that I’m going to take this on?
P: Well, I was quite prayerful about it and just felt that if I don’t go, I’ll always wonder what if and if I don’t go I also can’t tell myself or my Maker that I’ve done the best I could with the opportunity and the ability I had. So I had to give it a go and I kind of thought it would be one semester and I can say ‘been there done that’. But I realised as I went on and finally kind of settled in over there, that it is a great opportunity and at times grew to really love the sport.
R: At times?
P: At times (laughs). I think it’s important to stress that, because a lot of people think as long as you love something then you’re supposed to do it and if you don’t, you move on and a lot of extremely talented people in various areas of life that are led by their emotion and they never really reach their full potential.
R: So how did you handle that?
P: Crying in my goggles.
R: It’s an incredible change for a young girl growing up there completely by yourself?
P: Yes
R: Your mother didn’t go with you or anything?
P : No, in fact it was a two-day trip and I arrived in Nebraska in Lincoln, it’s a tiny little airport. I arrived at two – three o’clock came, four o’clock came and the airport was empty, then five o’clock and at six o’clock, they remembered I was arriving. So it was very difficult the first semester and the was one other South African girl who’d arrived and some other South African guys, but they were older than me, another generation of swimmers. I really didn’t know them and I always joke that I swam up and down crying in my goggles, which is the truth. There was no Skype or email, I couldn’t just call home. I had to wait for every second Saturday. So I lived from every second Saturday to second Saturday. And that’s why I say, I realised at some point that I’m wasting my time unless I change my mind-set. And that’s where the habit of counting strokes came in, because if I could manage what I am doing in the moment, to stay here and control whatever it is I am doing right now, that’s the only way we can be successful. You know then I’ll be able to be a little happier and as I did that, obviously, I improved in my swimming. And if you improve at whatever you’re doing then you become a little more happier.
R: And then came ‘96 and the famous double victory.
P: Yes.
R: Did you see it coming; did you think it might go to, might happen?
P: Well I guess if someone had told me in Barcelona that you might go to the next Olympics I would have thought they were nuts. Let alone go and swim a final and I never knew that no one had done the double. If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have done it, so ignorance is bliss. Umm….I had set some goals in ‘94, the second time I wanted to retire from swimming at the age of 19 and my mother said “you can retire or you can choose to live with your failures and learn from them and that could be the catapult, the nugget of truth you need to go on to your future successes”. And there I set some goals for the following two years. And that swim-meet at the World Champs, the South African, no the Australian girl broke the world record and I realised that in two years’ time I could maybe attempt to swim that time, fully thinking that she would continue to break the world record. That led up to our Olympic trials in March of ‘96 and I broke the world record for the first time and obviously going into the Olympics as a world record holder….
R: Go back to that moment. What, what was it like?
P: The foundation was laid pretty solidly for the two years leading up to that, so I knew arriving at the swim-meet that I had the potential to break the world record; I had actually just missed it the year before. And umm, I think because I just didn’t plan on it happening then and I actually found out a few days before the swim that my parents were getting a divorce. So it could have shattered the goals I had, but I believe because the foundation had been laid for so long beforehand that, the really wasn’t room for any excuses, which in itself is another very valuable lesson. We always keep that excuse in the back pocket and you won’t reach your potential. The swim itself, the first 50 wasn’t as fast as it should have been and, umm, I still don’t how … but I came back faster than ever before and it was the world record. Great elation, hoped to break it again in the evening but with all the commotion post world record and the excitement of it, you know swimming is a sport where you need to be relaxed and find a rhythm and if you tense up and try a little bit too hard, you miss, which typically is what happened, for quite a few of my world records until later in my career.
R: And then that day at the ‘96 in Atlanta, ‘96 Olympics in Atlanta. How far apart were the two races, the two finals?
P: I think it was like two days apart. Those days you still swam heats and finals and now you have heat, semi-final and final the following evening. I had visualised that race for three months prior to the Olympics. Knowing that in Barcelona I was so overwhelmed by everything. I knew that going into Atlanta, I can’t allow myself to feel that ‘wow this is the Olympics’. I have to consider it as just another event, same race, same people I’ve swan over, you know against over the past few years. So I visualised the race, all the details of it over a hundred times, so by the time I actually swam the race, it was the heat of the 100 breaststroke, it was a matter of just let my body do what my mind had already done and it was really a sense of I can’t wait to swim. I expected the other girls would swim faster as well, but it turns out weren’t as fast as I thought, so I knew going into the final that I am safe if I swim 90% race, I could win and 100% I could get my record I again. It turns out it was only 90%. I made some mistakes in the final.
R: And when you realised the magnitude of this, that you’d been the first women, woman to do this? Umm, can you remember that? Was it all too much?
P: I don’t think I knew till quite a bit later. I know after winning the second gold I kind of knew a little more what to expect on the podium, to take my time walking around because you know they had TVs there and they had ushers rushing you along. Everybody else is prepared and takes their time and I was this good little girl following the ushers around and I really on the first gold medal didn’t enjoy it that much. I just went through the motions. Umm … there’s a South African hospitality area usually at the Olympic Games and post medal presentations and stuff, we went over there and all the media, it was just a frenzy. I didn’t really know, I just went with the flow and I don’t think South Africa knew what to do with me. So in a sense, we were kind of pioneering the way forward. I was very fortunate that I, not by my own doing, had the right people around me from the very start. One of them being Zelda Van Vuuren, my manager at the time and now business partner. And if you don’t –and this is what I see with the guys today – if you don’t have the right people around you, you’re so young, the fame and relative money, today it’s much more. It really just, it could go to your head. And you’re tugged in every direction and everyone just wants to celebrate it, it could lead to party upon party and I think maybe guys are a little safer than girls but like I say, I was really protected. And I think that allowed me to continue and have longevity in my career, otherwise I think it might have unravelled with ‘96.
R: And the relationship with South Africa. Did you, did you see yourself absolutely as South Africa?
P: Definitely, in ‘98, I kind of went through another one of those blips where I thought I should retire, this time I was serious. So much to the point that Sam Ramsamy said, “maybe you shouldn’t swim the Commonwealth trials, sit out and watch and find out what it’s like not to be competing”. And I did that and decided I’ll continue swimming and ahh, despite what he tried to do in terms of getting me into the team, they sort of had their rules so I couldn’t go to the Commonwealth Games. At the time I was training in Canada and they offered that I could swim for Canada and I don’t know, because we are all Commonwealth, there would have been a way that I could have done that. I turned it down because I felt I was born in South Africa for a reason and if I go that route, I could never turn back.
R: What, what was it like…I mean South Africa was flavour of the decade and we were as a country, we were celebrated and carried on everyone’s emotions and you became one of the personifications of that. Did you at 21, 23 feel that?
P: Umm, in my case, I look back and feel I was very blessed and lucky that the pinnacle of my Olympic career anyway, happened in ‘96, post our World Cup successes during the time that Madiba was president, which in itself was just amazing. Umm, because he really took a personal interest in the athlete it wasn’t just the President being informed by his staff, I mean he knew things before some of the people around him in terms of achievements. And Baby Jakes and others had the same stories, we had the same stories. I think that because I was based in the States for so long and the change in the country came, I really didn’t know what to expect. So when we returned home I kind of thought Josiah Thugwane would have the support of African people and maybe I would…there would still be this polarisation and there really wasn’t, it was the whole nation celebrating together and that was just… it was amazing. Umm, I still don’t have the words for it. I’m very grateful like I say for the timing of my career and for the people of South Africa. And I suppose I didn’t see myself as really bearing the flag in that way but in hindsight, as I say, with age you grow to appreciate it.
R: And then you were barely what 25 when you finally decided I’m out of here?
P: Yah, well I had umm 21, with’96 Olympics and sort of post Olympics, I would come back home and it was this great big hype. And I always say in the Jo’burg airport everyone knew who I was and I’d go back to America and no one knew who I was. And I went back to Lincoln Nebraska and I didn’t know who I was … and your identity changes or your sense of identity changes because it’s dictated by the reaction of other people and as athletes, we shouldn’t but we find our identity – or at least at some stage in our career – in our sporting achievements. And now, I had a double gold, a world record, more than I had imagined. My coach, which didn’t make it easy, I had been offered a position in Canada, partially because of the recommendation I had given and they thought I’d follow and I decided not to. Essentially, I was in Nebraska on my own without a coach. They had someone assigned but he wasn’t in the tower at the double Olympics pool and knows what to do … and so I was more the coach and that really didn’t work out well, and I reached a stage in 1998 where I absolutely hated swimming. I would go to the pool and get physically ill and that was just before the Commonwealth trials. Once I had decided and again very prayerfully, to go to Canada and continue my career, I had then decided it would be until 2000. So my decision to retire had nothing to do with performance or anything either than the fact that I felt in my gut that that was my career. My coach at the time said “listen things are changing in the swimming world cup circuit. There’ll be money now, you’ll be a little more professional. Don’t you want to continue?” And I just felt that it was the time to retire. Obviously one wonders.
R: You can’t say why?
P: No, just again because my decision to go was prayerful. You know, I had been in the States by then for almost nine years and I never knew what life outside of swimming was and umm, my ‘99 season was the best of my career. Eleven world records in 11 weeks and I don’t know how it happened. And it was on par to do that and even better in 2000, but then there were some unforeseen circumstances and some I couldn’t control with the passing of a teammate and I was a little too involved in that. And umm…some other decisions I made with regards to training. As you get older you’ve got to adapt your training and I don’t think we did that successfully, so 2000 was one step forward two steps back. It didn’t end the way I would have hoped. And if ‘99 was a reflection, then it should have been another double gold but it wasn’t it was a bronze. I didn’t retire because of that, but I felt at the time that it was the end of the career. Also, the people I admired in the sport and were my peers had sort of reached the age where they were retiring. And those days we were retiring quite early. I only announced my retirement … I think it was March of 2001 … because Sam Ramsamy and others had encouraged me not to and hoped I would change my mind. And umm…my mom passed away very unexpectedly in May of 2001 and when that happened, I realised that this was the right time to retire because had I not, I would have been back in the States or Canada and I wouldn’t have had that last Christmas and few months with her, so everything happens as it should.
R: So how does one make that…it’s such an enormous change. You say your life was swimming and you cut that off and then?
P: Complicated. For many reasons, I mean it wasn’t as simple as I’m just retiring from swimming. You know because I’d been based in the States and Canada to a large degree I escaped the hype of South Africa, the fame, I hate the word but all of that and everything that goes with it. I’m quite a private person despite the fact that I do a lot of public stuff, I think a little bit introverted so I was comfortable and safe in Canada, so I move back home and the adjustment to retiring from swimming, and the adjusting to returning to South Africa and that stage there weren’t any other successes in swimming and dealing with the public, just never ever felt comfortable. I think it was probably, a year or two or three ago that I started going out into public on my own cause you don’t know that people are looking at you because you’re looking funny or they recognise you. You know what it’s like. And African people are great and they don’t have inhibitions and they come in and chat and say what they want to say then it’s over and done. And, but especially conservative Afrikaans people because they don’t want to intrude, but at the same time they are still looking and it’s difficult. And I just would hide away rather and, on top of that, you know you hear about all the crime in South Africa and I’m safe over there and coming back here, for about 10 years that was very much top of my awareness. And … umm … of course my mother’s passing. And trying to go into the world of business and the adjustment.
R: What did you do? What did you find to do?
P: At first, everyone would expect you to go, continue in the world of swimming and, at the time, I think every swimmer has his or her struggles with the federation. Sometimes we are wrong and sometimes the federation has their part and I think it’s a bit of both. And so I had enough of swimming, I wanted nothing to do with the sport. And so I tried my hand at property and various other business ventures and I was very fortunate once again Zelda had worked … is an entrepreneur and I was kind of guided. When you come out of the sport that’s individual, you are the boss. And now I go into a business, I have partner who knows way more than me and I’m still trying to be the boss. So that in itself had its own issues that I had to learn and work through but long story short, by the time I think it was after 2010, I was asked by one of the coaches to get involved with his breaststroke swimmers and coach them and I was back on pool deck and really loved it, and found that for the first time again I had that gut feel. When I swam I went on a gut feel, I knew what I had to do and now again on pool deck I know what to do. And either than that, grew the swim clinics that we now present and camps. A lot of them in South Africa and surprisingly last year a lot of them up in Africa. Part of those countries are the expats. Tanzania and Kenya were more the local teams, umm … Namibia as well. So it’s a nice mix. And then, all along I’ve always been involved in the corporate speaking side, motivational speaking and in addition to that over the last, I think it was about four years we started adding other tools let’s say into the programme, brain-based learning development tools. We do a lot of stuff in the schools with the educators, in the corporate sector as well. I’m loving it. I kind of found out I’m a teacher at heart. And I love to motivate, you can be as tired and as down and whatever and suddenly somehow on the day when you’ve got to deal with teaching people and helping people, there’s a new energy that comes. So I’m loving what I’m doing. I think probably more so than even in my swimming career. I feel more at ease and comfortable in my own skin and feel like I’m in the right place in my life right now. I suppose it also comes with age.
R: And who are the people around you who support you?
P: I think obviously my business partner Zelda, who’s now the big sister. Her whole family, we joke I’m the adopted little one in the family because they are in Pretoria where I live. My father and my two brothers are strong supporters them still. There are other people one of them is a past teacher of mine throughout my high school years. My other mother, Louise Lemmer, who’s now the head of, Toti, Toti high school. I have people like that who are supporters still. And sadly for my generation, those of us who are still in South Africa, our close friends coming out of school and college and stuff, in my case especially, they are overseas. So you tend to, a lot of our work is over the weekends and so umm…it becomes a little bit isolated in that sense.
R: Hard to keep up the connection?
P: Yah, you kind of find this question of ‘what are you doing now?’ and trying to catch up after however many years awkward.
R: Yes! And you say you live in Pretoria now, are you, what’s your home like?
P: Ok, I kind of decided about three years ago that given the travel, having a home and the schlep of the responsibility was too much, so I sold and then opted to rent and lock up and go … and then an opportunity came about to build with a whole bunch of other people on a farm outside of Pretoria and I thought why not, you know, I need a washing machine, that’s about it. And you know for, I grew up in a home with animals and then going to the States and living in Pretoria for over 10 years, it’s almost been for 18 years that I wasn’t able to have any animals and now being on a farm, there’s 12 dogs! (laughs). They keep me busy, I’m tired! But it doesn’t just belong to me. I can come and go as I please, and I like the bush, I like to escape in nature and have my own time.
R: And what makes your space yours? Do you have something special that you take with you?
P: You mean when I travel?
R: No, into your new home, is there a special couch?
P: No
R: No?
P: No, a lot of stuff is still in storage. And I think I got used to when I was overseas to be quite minimalistic, because you know you travel a lot so I tend to carry that over. I suppose a bed is always important, you keep the same bed, the comfortable mattress. Umm, I just think moving now to an environment where I have more space, the bushveld, the farm and the animals, that’s home.
R: All of the very best. I hope it is a very good year for you.
P: Thank you, I am sure it will be, to you too.
R: Thank you.
P: Thanks.
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