Relief for swim star Sam Riley after court battle

Queen of the pool Sam Riley reveals how she coped with a “horrible” court battle just as she was trying to slow down.

SHE was a darling of Australian sport – a swimming sweetheart loved as much for her radiant smile as her medal-winning talents in the pool.

But Olympian Sam Riley admits she lost her happy face during a bruising three-year legal battle which threatened to tarnish her reputation as a sporting icon.

Speaking exclusively with The Sunday Mail, Riley has told how her attempts to downsize her swim school business to spend more time with her young family ended in tears when she was hit with a $1.5 million Supreme Court lawsuit.

She won the battle last week, but not before floundering swim school operator Alex Brown – to whom she had thrown a lifeline – subjected her, husband Tim Fydler and business partner David Noonan to years of emotional and financial turmoil.

Golden girl of the pool Sam Riley with her dog Sunny. Picture: Nigel Hallett

For Riley, accustomed to churning up lap after gruelling lap in her years as an elite swimmer, the legal ordeal was “exhausting”.

“It was a terrible experience to go through,” she told The Sunday Mail last week at her southern Gold Coast home.

“Unfortunately for us, we were just put in a position where we had to defend ourselves. We knew the whole time that we’d done nothing wrong and in fact it was the opposite – we’d been more than supportive.

“The circumstances surrounding the failure of his (Brown’s) business are really sad but it’s not actually our fault.”

Riley’s problems began five years ago when she decided to sell down her eponymous swim school empire to ‘simplify life and spend more time with family and kids’.

In 2014, she sold the Capalaba swim school to Brown, 62, an experienced swim coach who changed the name of the business to Capalaba Swim Stars.

But only two months after buying the business, he was struck down by potentially deadly brain illness meningitis and was admitted to hospital. The Public Trustee assumed control of his affairs.

Alex Brown leaves the Supreme Court in Brisbane. Picture: AAP/John Gass

Staff were not paid and quit, prepaid lessons were not being honoured and upset parents were contacting Riley’s company for answers. In early 2015, the swim school closed after customer numbers plunged from 500 to 30.

The Supreme Court heard Noonan tried to help but was allegedly told by Brown: “No, everything is OK.”

Brown later agreed for Sam Riley Swim Schools to run the Capalaba pool temporarily while he was in hospital, and it reopened for six weeks so lessons could be honoured.

“I thought it was morally the right thing to do for the families, the staff and for him,” Riley said.

“It’s not nice to see something that you’d built up – that families and children had been a part of – go down the gurgler and have kids miss out on their swimming lessons.

“We did what we could to honour the payments the families had made and hope when he’d recovered from his illness, he’d have something to come back to.”

The swim school finally collapsed when the landlord repossessed the pool because of unpaid rent. Riley’s company, which had coughed up about $20,000 in staff wages and reopening costs for the swim school, also paid the $60,000 in rent arrears.

On Christmas Eve 2016, Riley received a letter stating that Mr Brown was suing her for alleged breach of contract, claiming her company had failed to provide stipulated training and support and had also poached customer and staff.

“It was a real shock to receive that letter in the mail when we’d bent over backwards to help him,” she said.

“It just felt so ludicrous. We were trying to do the right thing.”

In a judgment handed down last month, Supreme Court judge David Boddice rejected Mr Brown’s allegations and found the failure of the swim school was “solely due to the unfortunate deterioration in the health of Brown”.

Justice Boddice found that while Brown had been ruled to have been lacking in financial capacity because of his illness, it did not mean he lacked the capacity to give a “coherent, rational explanation for the failure of his swimming school”.

Swimmer Sam Riley training in Brisbane in 1995.

He dismissed Brown’s claim but ruled in favour of Riley’s counterclaim for $60,000.

“It was a relief but because it’s such an exhausting and expensive process, it feels a little bit like a hollow victory,” she said.

“It’s a horrible thing to go through. The ironic thing is that we’d sold the business to downsize and to simplify our life. For something that was supposed to make life easier, it had the opposite effect.”

Riley is now steeling herself for another legal battle, with Brown lodging an appeal.

“The kind part of me feels sorry for him because what happened to him is a sad story, but on the flip side, he has been very unreasonable towards us and a little threatening as well,” she alleged.

It has been a tough time for the dual Olympic medallist and former world champion breaststroker, with her friend and ex-coach Scott Volkers also recently committed for trial on child sex charges.

Riley said she was shocked when Volkers was charged with indecently dealing with two girls under 16 in the 1980s.

Sam Riley won gold at the 1997 Pan Pacific Championships in Japan.

“All I can say really is that we didn’t see any of that behaviour when he was coaching us,” she said.

“I had 11 years with him and he was a fantastic coach. There was always a very professional relationship, even though I class him as a friend. We had a great squad and a lot of laughs. You have to make it that sort of environment when it’s such a hard slog of a sport.

“We’re definitely still friends and we keep in contact.”

Riley still has two swim schools and she, Fydler and Noonan also own several Snap Fitness gyms in Brisbane. She is also a board member of the Gold Coast Suns AFL team.

But the 46-year-old said her main focus was being a mum to her three sons, Zac, 15, Lucas, 14, and Jesse, 9.

“They all love surfing and the water and my little one, Jesse, has just gone from soccer to AFL, which I’m happy about being on the Suns board,” she said proudly.

“They’re all athletics kids who dabble in everything. I don’t know if any of them will be Olympians but they have fun and keep fit, which are the most important things that sport gives you.”

Riley is also involved with former star lifesavers Trevor Hendy and Karla Gilbert in a children’s mentoring program called LifeChanger, teaching kids lessons she has learned in her own life.

“Life has its ups and down and you need resilience to get through some of the dark times,” she said.