Wild antics: the real story behind Dean Boxall’s viral internet moment
From burnt-out schoolboy swimmer and deli worker to wild-haired, hip-thrusting, headline-stealing coaching sensation, Dean Boxall shares the sacrifice behind his viral celebration.
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It was a moment of the Tokyo Olympics few will forget.
Swimming coach Dean Boxall screaming in an unbridled, frantic celebration of pure joy.
He rips off his mask, thrashing his unruly blond hair about before grabbing hold of a glass barrier, gyrating his hips, before repeatedly punching his fists in the air.
Ariarne Titmus’s Australian 400m freestyle gold medal win at Tokyo in July was one of the great upset victories in Olympic history.
That celebration, which went viral on the internet and made the television news and sporting channels the world over, is of a jubilant coach celebrating the win of his champion athlete.
But there is a longer version of the story. One that led a schoolboy swimming champion, and one-time supermarket deli attendant, to become a world-class coach. Everything Boxall has ever done, ever worked for, was leading to this very public, very raw moment.
Reflecting on his unrestrained reaction to Titmus’s defeat of USA swim giant Katie Ledecky, Boxall says: “It was a release. A complete release. I was the architect of this plan. I was Arnie’s author of her pain.
“You are watching it (the race plan) come to fruition. And you see it exactly how you knew it would take place because of all the research you know about the competition (Ledecky) and about your athlete (Titmus).
“You can easily stuff it up, and people need to understand how much work went into it. The sleepless nights, the planning.
“I see my kids three times a week because I am here to fix things, to challenge. And it is a big sacrifice.
“That (his reaction to the Titmus win) was me pacing up and down at 1am in the morning.
“That is me coming home and not talking to my wife because my head is locked in, that is me getting that hour-and-a-half of sleep every afternoon that just had to be done – otherwise we would not have that plan.’’
The Titmus moment and his wild celebrationwas also Boxall’s destiny, because he was never, ever going to be anything other than a passion-charged coach with an unquenchable work ethic and a unique ability to take his swimmers on the journey with him.
Passion has been his constant companion, whether as a schoolboy Queensland and Australia representative swimmer, or as an adult coaching out on the pool deck.
Boxall’s mother Sally is a learn-to-swim teacher and that passion for swimming began young. “I was thrown in the pool at two months old in South Africa. My mum looked up and I was swimming,” says Boxall, whose family moved to the Brisbane suburb of Zillmere when he was aged seven.
“Everything I have done has been to do with swimming. I came here (to Queensland) and every job I have had bar one has been swimming.
“It is a journey and this (Titmus winning both the 400m and 200m freestyle at the Games) is like climbing the biggest mountain there ever has been.”
But passion and emotion only take you so far, and along his journey, the 44-year-old Cape Town-born Boxall has learned from the best coaches around, all the while being brave enough to do things his way.
Two of the crucial coaching attributes he scooped up along the way were in Qatar, while he was that country’s junior development director and then Qatar’s national coach in the early 2000s.
“That was the best. These guys (his current swim squad) don’t win if I didn’t go to Qatar,” Boxall says.
“Every facet of what I did there … if I had not done it, they (his current swimmers) don’t win. I believe that.
“In the program I had babies learning to swim all the way through to triathletes. I learned so much.”
His background as a swimmer means he understands the emotions swimmers feel before and after races.
“But being in Qatar, the two elements I learned were player management – because these guys didn’t want to swim, so they had to swim for me – and the other thing was thinking on your feet. And without that experience, these guys (St Peters Western Swim Club swimmers) don’t win.”
So consumed was Boxall with his work in Qatar that in 4½ years in the job he phoned home to Brisbane three times – once when his father Edwin remarried, once when his brother’s wife had a baby, and another time when organising his mother to come to his wedding to Andrea – a woman he first met on a train station platform in Hungary.
“While I was there I did not type in one thing about swimming on the internet or go to any courses. I thought ‘just let me fail and learn here; let this be my way’.
“It was a case of just working it out for myself because if I had searched about swimming and stuff, I would have missed those two elements – player management and thinking on your feet. I would have gone down the wrong path.’’
Boxall’s player management skills learned inQatar can now be seen the length and breadth of the St Peters Western Swim Club in Indooroopilly, in Brisbane’s west. It is the No.1 school, junior and senior club in Australia.
Club president Louisa Forrester gives a fascinating insight into Boxall’s relationship with his swimmers when she says: “I often looked after our (St Peters Lutheran College) boarding girls during school holidays and gained a lot of insight into how his swimmers feel about him by listening to the chatter in the back seat.
“I remember the girls commenting that they are not scared of Dean – and he appears scary at times – but they don’t want to disappoint him.
“This was apparent during very hard sessions when they would push themselves to unbelievable lengths.
“As a parent, I felt reassured when I realised that Dean is very perceptive and quickly picks up on signals when a swimmer was stressed about school or unwell.”
St Peters Western’s leading junior swimmer, St Peters Lutheran College Springfield campus year 11 student Ella Ramsay, says Boxall inspires her to perform.
“Dean never falls short of giving 100 per cent when showing up to training. He knows his swimmers and how to specifically get them to the next level,” Ramsay says.
“When I ever get to big comps, like nationals or state, I really enjoy talking to Dean before my swim. He gives you a big pep talk beforehand and really just motivates you to want to do the best you can and more.”
Boxall’s Qatar coaching experience was one of five “light bulb” moments in his career.
Another three big breaks were when he was understudy, twice, to Australia’s longest-serving coach Michael Bohl – at Commercial Swimming Club and then St Peters Western, and when he won a coaching scholarship to work under elite high performance coach Stephan Widmer at Chandler immediately after his Qatar deployment was finished.
Boxall says of Bohl: “He is my brother, my mate, he is like a father.”
He says the experience with Widmer as a “strictly high performance coach” was pure gold because it came on top of everything he had learned in Qatar.
“It was the perfect cocktail.”
But arguably the biggest break of all for the McDowall State School and Brisbane State High School old boy came right back at the start when, aged 20, he was plucked from the Brookside Shopping Centre Woolworths deli – hand-picked by experienced coaches Vlad Fodor and Alan Humphreys to head the swimming program at a new community pool at Kuluin in Maroochydore on the Sunshine Coast.
By age 18, Boxall was burnt out as a schoolboy swimmer and it was during an 18-month break from the sport that Fodor and Humphreys came knocking.
While Boxall was out of sight, he was not out of the mind of the tightly-knit swimming community, including Fodor and Humphreys, who thought he had the ideal personality to coach, despite his lack of experience.
“I did from babies right up to triathletes,” Boxall recalls of his first break into the world of coaching.
“It was a massive moment from two people I consider in my top five people of all-time. I lived with them, I travelled the world with them. That is how close we were.”
When Fodor, Humphreys and Boxall were reunited for Qweekend’s photo shoot, you could see the bond they have with each other. They are family.
Fodor says Boxall was made for their Sunshine Coast venture.
“We could figure out right from the start that he was the right guy for us,” says Fodor, who now oversees the UQ Aquatic Centre.
“We liked his approach, even without all the qualifications. He was pretty much green, he was a little bit different to your usual coach.
“I wanted the program to be led by someone with energy and passion and he displayed that from day dot.
“From the first day, he was exactly how you see him today, at the Olympics or other levels. He always gave 100 per cent and always cared.”
Fodor’s description of Boxall’s “energy and passion” is a common theme.
Speak to anyone about him, and those words come up time and again – and energy and passion were exactly what the world saw when watching his Olympic Games celebration.
Griffith University Swim coach Bohl, who masterminded Emma McKeon’s record-setting seven-medal haul at the Tokyo Games, uses the words “passion, highly intelligent, fearsome competitor and loyal friend” to describe Boxall.
“He hates to lose at anything. But he is a very popular person within the (Australian Dolphins) squad. He is personable,” Bohl says.
His personable side is there for all to see at any Queensland Girls Secondary Schools Sports Association or Australian Institute of Sport school meet as well, when he greets every one of his swimmers with a handshake at the end of their race – regardless of where they finished.
“I love seeing them standing in that moment,” Boxall says about his school squad.
“They must feel the pressure, feel the nerves and they get up and try and compete for their school and their fellow mates. Even if they came first or they came last, just give me your best.”
But of course it is with his elite 26-odd senior training squad that he spends most time building a bond so strong that Titmus told the world after her Olympics medal success: “He means everything to me.”
It was under Boxall that Titmus went from being a person who thought she could beat Ledecky into an athlete knowing she would beat Ledecky, because she trusted in herself, but also in Boxall and their training plan.
“She just knows it is just the most beautiful relationship any coach can have with an athlete,” Boxall says.
“We are mates, but then I challenge her and she listens to the challenge.
“She does not shy away, she talks it and she walks it.”
For all his intensity, believe it or not Boxall is also a joker. He is not Bob Hope or Jerry Seinfeld, but he is funny.
“He knows when the right time is to also let loose and joke around. Normally before and after the session,” says junior ace Ramsay.
“You have to (have a laugh),” says Boxall, who is now on the corporate after-dinner public speaking circuit. “I believe we have a great time. I believe in intensity, but I always believe in having a great time.”
He can also take a joke. Like the time Fodor and Humphreys organised a surprise birthday party for him at the Kuluin pool on the Sunshine Coast. Fodor lured him to the pool on the night of his 21st birthday where a sea of people – from adults to children – greeted him.
It was a great celebration, with the music blasting out across the district, prompting the appearance of the police.
What Boxall did not know was that Fodor had asked the police to arrive sometime during the night and pretend to arrest the birthday boy.
Boxall was stunned to be take away in handcuffs and placed in a paddywagon. “They took me around the block before telling me it was a joke,” he says.
It is just as well Boxall can laugh because he is at work at the pool countless hours – morning and night. And that work-job balance is only possible because of the support he gets from his lawyer wife, Andrea, 38, the mother of his two children, Kaden, 8, and Dane, 5. They met on that Hungarian train platform in 2008, married in Slovakia in 2009, and moved to Australia later that year.
“She is a tough, beautiful, stoic woman,” Boxall says.
“Andrea is a doctor of law in her country, Slovakia, and when she came here she had to restudy to become a lawyer.
“While I was preparing these guys for the Olympics, she had to do five subjects, with two kids, to finish uni. She was going to bed at 3am. She was coming home, looking after the house, looking after the kids and I was just being here (at St Peters Western).”
For her part, Andrea is nothing but supportive of what it took for her husband to achieve such success.
“I have seen how much hard work and sweat went into preparation over many years,” she says.
“To watch it unfold on the biggest stage was surreal. We are all very proud of Dean. It’s certainly a well-deserved reward.”
By Boxall’s own admission, he wouldn’t be easy to live with. So does he ever switch off?
“You can’t switch off when you are doing high performance. You are always thinking about the athletes, thinking of ways to get better or ways for them not to fall away.
“It is taxing, mate, it is very taxing. And that is where, if the cost tips over to that point, then I know I am done. But I am not there yet.”
With his co-coach Maxine Seear, a Sydney 2000 Olympic triathlete, giving him “more longevity” because of her coaching support, Boxall is pushing on with his high-octane coaching life.
So will he be pool side coaching at the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games?
“Everyone is going 2032 and beyond, but they don’t realise (the workload),” Boxall says.
“It is a cost. It is a possibility, but I do feel at one stage I will need a big break.”
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