‘I probably get yelled at more than anyone else’: Olympic hopeful Lani Pallister on having her mum as coach
The drive to get to the Olympics is strong but when your coach is a former Olympian themselves, and your mother, the drive to succeed is next level. This is Lani Pallister’s story.
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Steam is rising from the Griffith University pool as Janelle Pallister puts her squad, including daughter Lani, through their paces.
The Granite Belt, the mercury has plunged to well below freezing, and even here on the sun-soaked Gold Coast, it’s down to single digits.
But while most of us are snuggled under the doona, here they are in the frigid pre-dawn: Janelle, rugged up on the floodlit pool deck, stopwatch in hand, as her young swimmers churn out the laps with an eye on the clock and, in Lani’s case, her mind on Tokyo.
She’s striving to follow in the imposing wake of her mum and lifelong coach, who as the flame-haired Janelle “Big Red” Elford swam for Australia in the 400m and 800m freestyle finals at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, before going on to win gold, silver and bronze medals at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland. East German dopers robbed her of an Olympic medal and fate cruelly denied her a place at the 1992 Barcelona Games.
If Lani qualifies at today’s (June 12) Australian trials in Adelaide, a week after her 19th birthday, the Pallister women will become the first mother-daughter combo to swim the same event at the Olympic Games, a generation apart. Lyn McClements (Mexico, 1968) and daughter Jacqui McKenzie (Barcelona) made history as the first mother and daughter to swim for Australia, but Lyn was a butterflyer.
It could very well have been the same scenario but in reverse for Janelle and Lani, were it not for the misstroke of a pen.
“I always thought I was going to be a 100m butterfly swimmer,” Lani tells Qweekend after the swim session as she thaws out in the morning sun.
“Then one qualifying meet in Brisbane (in 2015) I accidentally highlighted the wrong event (on the marshalling sheet), so Mum entered me. Instead of being a 100m butterfly it was an 800m freestyle and because she paid for the entry, she made me swim it.”
Lani duly qualified for the state titles, made the nationals and won, shedding her butterfly wings but still flying. Another soon-to-be world-class Australian female distance swimmer – with a familiar mane of auburn hair and beaming smile – had arrived.
JANELLE, 51, has been guiding Lani’s progress in the pool since she was about six, after the family – there’s also dad Rick, 60, and Lani’s brother Owen, 20 – moved from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast in 2005.
Despite her own stellar swimming achievements, Janelle “fell into” coaching after a post-sport career as a Qantas flight attendant.
“Lani and Owen went through learn-to-swim and I was sitting on the side of the pool one day and they didn’t have a junior coach so I filled in,” she recalls.
“I was asked to stay on but I only ever wanted to do the juniors, help them out and give back to swimming. And here we are today.”
Janelle has emerged as one of very few top female swim coaches in Australia (the most notable being Ian Thorpe’s former coach Tracey Menzies), and among only a handful of former elite swimmers to have coached their own offspring. Dual Olympian Ron McKeon coached his children, Emma and David, early in their careers before they moved to Queenslander Michael Bohl’s squad. Bohl, who swam for Australia at the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, is the head coach at Griffith University and coaches his Rio Olympics-representative daughter Georgia, as well as Lani for some sessions.
In January, after many years coaching on the Sunshine Coast, Janelle joined Bohl at Griffith University, where Lani is also on a sports scholarship studying biomedical science.
Janelle says she and Rick – a retired police prosecutor, former triathlete and champion lifesaver who competed alongside legendary ironman Grant Kenny for Alexandra Headland Surf Club – were at pains not to be pushy parents when it came to their kids and sport.
“We had our children in all sports – tennis, basketball, netball, football, soccer, jiu-jitsu, surf life saving and swimming” she says.
“We wanted to give them their own choices about the avenues they wanted to go down. It was never ‘you’re going to be a swimmer’. We gave them a lot of different options to allow them to choose their journey in life.”
Both Pallister children excelled at surf lifesaving, winning a swag of state, national and – in Lani’s case – world titles. In 2018, Owen, then 16, became a surf hero when he rescued Canberra Raiders NRL star Iosia Soliola from a rip at Mooloolaba.
But after a breakout year in 2019, when she won the 400m, 800m and 1500m freestyle at the world junior championships in Budapest, Lani decided to focus on swimming in a bid to join her mum in sport’s loftiest ranks.
“I think (having that choice) it’s something that I’m beyond grateful to my parents for,” she says.
“Mum always said to me growing up, ‘you do whatever you want to do. If you want to play tennis, you go play tennis’. She and Dad gave me choices. It was my choice to stick with swimming.”
BRUCE Springsteen’s Born to Run is blaring from the bluetooth speaker on the pool deck as another Boss quietly but firmly lays down the law.
“You can either take my advice or not,” Janelle tells a chastened Lani, taking a breather at the blocks on a break between laps.
“Everything I’m saying is to help you,” the coach continues. “If you don’t want to take my advice, that’s on you, it’s not on me’.
It’s near the end of the session but Janelle – it’s always Janelle here at training, never Mum – has clearly seen something she doesn’t like from her star charge, who just happens to be her daughter. And it’s led to a bit of a tough love pep talk.
“We were talking about her stroke count and things and she just gave me almost that blank look,” Janelle reveals later.
“There’s times that we butt heads but the main thing is that, like any coach, I’m just trying to make them the best they can be. I do believe she knows I’m doing everything I can to help her.
“She even let it slip the other day that there’s times she does things just to annoy me,”’Janelle continues.
“I heard an interview recently with (American superstar swimmer) Michael Phelps and it was the same. Him and his coach Bob Bowman had a fantastic relationship but there were a lot of times that they were fighting, and Phelps did things just to annoy Bowman.
“You have your connection with all your athletes and you want them to be their best but when it’s your daughter, there’s a little bit more emotion involved.
“I think because she wants it (swimming glory), I want to help her get it. As a parent, we always do the best we can for our kids.”
Says Lani: “I think any coach has to get up an athlete. Being her daughter isn’t anything special (in the context of the swim squad). I mean, I probably get yelled at more than anyone else because I am her daughter.
“She doesn’t play favourites or any of that. Even if I’m having a really good session, she’ll still tell me that I need to do more, I need to be better and constantly pushes me to be the best person I can be. Which is what you need in a coach.”
Despite their earlier terse words, it’s all water off the proverbial duck’s back as Janelle and Lani laugh and joke through the Qweekend photo shoot, this obviously close mother-daughter bond as tight as ever.
“It’s definitely an interesting dynamic,” Lani says.
“I know it’s gotten a lot better as we’ve gotten older, especially now that I’m living out of home. I think it’s something that’s really special. She’s been there and done that before me.
“She’s a Commonwealth Games gold medallist, she’s an Olympic finalist, she was top five in an Olympic final in the same events that I’m swimming in almost 33 years later that I’m swimming in.
“I think that I’m beyond fortunate to have someone like her, and the calibre of athlete that she was and everything she’s been through and the experience she’s had, in the same events that I swim.”
As a mum, Janelle is also a life coach for Lani, and in the cutthroat arena of elite sport, her philosophy is refreshing.
“It’s really important, and I try to tell all my athletes this: swimming is something that they do, it’s not who they are. They can’t be defined by swimming,” she says.
“They’ve got to have a life. It’s really important to have a life and to know who they are outside the pool.
“When I was swimming, we were identified as swimmers. A lot of my generation, when we finished swimming, we didn’t know where we fitted, who we were. Learning from my mistakes, I’ve tried to encourage these guys to really find their purpose.”
But ask how proud it would make her to make the Australian team for Tokyo, Janelle chokes back emotion.
“Extremely proud,” she says, tears welling up in her eyes.
“It’s not about me as an Olympian, her coach or mum … it’s just about seeing her achieve her dream. You don’t get to where she is, or where the other girls are, without putting in the hard work. There’s a lot of sacrifices, a lot of things you give up.
“Any time that they’ve had a goal and they’ve achieved it, any parent’s extremely proud of their kids. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the local race or the Olympics.”
But with up to seven female distance swimmers, including Brisbane star Ariarne Titmus, vying for two spots on the Australian team for Tokyo, neither Janelle or Lani are under any illusions about how tough the trials will be.
“It’s tough, but if you’re in it you’ve got a chance,” Janelle says.
“The one thing she does have on her side is that she’s the younger of the group. I’ve said to her ‘if you make it, you make it, if you don’t it doesn’t make you a better person.
“I think I got that off Leisel Jones. She was always chasing that (Olympic) gold medal thinking that it was going to make her a better person. And when she finally got it, she realised it wasn’t the gold medal making her a better person. It was her as a person.”
Besides her mum, another major inspiration for Lani has been swimming legend Dawn Fraser, with whom she and Janelle have a close friendship.
“Dawn has been part of my family since before I was born,” Lani says admiringly.
“She was a mentor to Mum and was at my christening, and I’m extremely lucky to have her in my life. She, along with Mum, was one of the first people that ever really believed in my ability.
“She’s always told me that I could become one of the best distance swimmers in history, and to have someone of her calibre in my corner is just amazing.
“When I’m behind the blocks, I’m always happy but when I get to the blocks, it’s game on. Dawn always says to me, ‘if I don’t see you smiling behind the blocks, I’m going to give you a kick up the bum!’ That always makes me giggle.”
Lani, who beat Titmus in 2018 in the 800m freestyle at the Australian short course titles, set new national short course records last year in the 800m and 1500m (which the women will swim in Tokyo for the first time at an Olympics) and has been slashing her times year after year, says: “I’d like to say that I back myself.”
“Confidence is something that all athletes need going into trials because no-one else is going to give it to you,” she says.
“You’re not going to be just given a spot on the team, you definitely have to earn it. On paper, I’m still third ranked in Australia so on paper, I’m not going to make the team.
“But I have belief in myself that I’m more than capable of swimming times that would put me in the top two in Australia and top eight in the world, which would put me in Olympic finals.
“I definitely put a lot more pressure on myself than everyone around me puts on me but that’s something that I deal with. That’s my choice.
“Mum doesn’t put pressure on me, she just wants to help me achieve my goals. I think the fact that I’m so invested in my swimming, and she’s constantly there helping me, is another reason that I put pressure on myself. Because I just want to make everyone proud.”
LANI has watched the highlight reels of Janelle in her swimming heyday for inspiration.
“We used to put them up on the TV and Dad and I would sit there watching them,” she says.
“I think everyone now comments that I look like Mum when she was swimming, which is something cool, 33 years on.
“It’s weird that it’s all fallen into place the way it has. If Tokyo had gone ahead last year, I would have been 18 like Mum was when she went to the Olympics.
“She was an amazing athlete. I think Mum’s times are only two seconds slower than mine, and I have the super suits and the new blocks and goggles. It’s cool to see that 33 years on, those times would still be competitive in our events now.
“Her back end was a lot better than mine is. I like to go out fairly hard and kind of see how much I can hurt myself. Mum was always able to come over the top of everyone, which is something we’re both working on for me.”
Regardless of whether her daughter makes the team for Tokyo, Janelle believes the day may well come when Lani has to look at moving on to another coach to further her swimming career.
Lani, though, isn’t having a bar of that talk right now.
“I don’t want to think about it – it’d be a sad day that I do have to leave mum because she’s been with me my whole life,” she says.
“I mean, she threw me in the deep end when I was three months’ old and taught me how to swim, so it’s something that I’ve known my whole life and I don’t know how I would change that.
“I kind of don’t look at it as ‘oh, it’s my mum coaching me’. It’s ‘I’ve got a mum, a friend, a mentor and an idol’ … it’s all of those things combined into one person that I have access to all the time.
“I think we both love it. It’s been something that we’ve done our whole lives, and I don’t think we’d change it for the world.”
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