Commonwealth Games Flashback: Susie O’Neill sets a new gold medal record

AT the 1998 Commonwealth Games Susie O’Neill owned the pool and decided to celebrate in an unusual fashion.

SHE became known as Madam Butterfly but long before that she was just a small girl with a big scrapbook.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where swim queen Susie O’Neill set the individual record of six gold medals at one Games.

Ian Thorpe claimed joint custody of the record four years later but it remains unbroken, as is O’Neill’s record of 10 Commonwealth Games golds, a mark she shares with Thorpe and Leisel Jones.

When O’Neill thinks of her Malaysian gold rush her mind drifts back 16 years before it to when she was a nine-year-old schoolgirl and the Commonwealth Games came to her home city, Brisbane.

Susie O'Neill with her six gold medals

“It was the first thing I remember watching as a kid,’’ O’Neill said.

“The 1982 Commonwealth Games had a massive impact on me. I kept newspaper cuttings of that Games for years. It really inspired me. Hopefully it will be just as much of a thrill for young kids now.’’

So quickly did she rise O’Neill had the rare distinction of going to the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland with her then Lourdes Hill physical education teacher, Deanne Bopf.

“My first Commonwealth Games I was going into year 12 and Deanne was on the team as a high jumper. How weird was that? I was always call her Miss Bopf and she would say “It’s Deanne.’’

Susie O”Neill celebrates winning the 4x100m medley relay in Malaysia.

By the 1998 Games, O’Neill was an Olympic gold medallist in the prime of her career.

She swept five gold medals in the pool — three relays, the 400m freestyle and the 200m butterfly — with the record breaking sixth going on the line in the 200m freestyle.

History beckoned and the weight of it rested uncomfortably on her broad, experienced shoulders.

Her coach Scott Volkers decided it was time to pull the curtains, so to speak, and let O’Neill swim in a world of her own.

“The pressure started to add up. Scott said “don’t look at anyone. Just pretend there are two curtains on the side of the ropes and pull them closed when you race.’

“That really helped me and I used that for a couple of years.’’

Locked away inside her private universe she duly won her sixth gold then responded to a quirky suggestion by her manager Rod Woodhouse to do swimming’s version of a lap of honour.

Susie O'Neill, Giaan Rooney, Petria Thomas and Helen Denman celebrate relay gold in 1998.

“Rob said try and do something a bit different. It sounds so choreographed now.

“We decided I would swim half a lap up the pool after I got the sixth gold. I am not sure whether I made 25m.

“Swimming is so used to rules. I felt like a massive rebel.’’

The joy of Malaysia was accentuated by lighter moments away from the pool.

“After the events you could walk home to the village and you could buy corn from a street seller which has been cooked on a brazier. Isn’t that weird?

“I must have had 12 friends there. They had a wild time. They would go out all night after swimming.’’

These days O’Neill has a cult following for her humorous, often self-deprecating work on Brisbane’s Nova breakfast radio show.

Susie O”neill on the podium after yet another gold medal.

She admits she was a far more serious figure when she swam but nods along with Greg Chappell’s quote “I wish I could have been more light-heated when I played but if I tried to be that way I could never have been the player I was.’’

“Swimming is hard because events are won by such small margins you feel as if you have to do everything right — it’s very structured,’’ she said.

So structured that on her first trip away in the 1989 Pan Pacs in Japan she was scolded by a coach for feeding a gold fish in the foyer.

O’Neill admits she went through a phase after swimming when she struggled to adjust to the challenges of life beyond the pool and even threw away some of her swimming memorabilia including certificates given to her for Commonwealth records.

Madam Butterfly.

“I kept what I thought was the important things. I still have all those six Commonwealth Games medals. But I threw out my Commonwealth records. I have a vivid memory of tearing them up over a bin.

“I was thinking right I will move on to my next chapter of my life.’’

And so she has. The flight of a butterfly is never easy to predict but her journey is all the more fascinating for that.

Originally published as Commonwealth Games Flashback: Susie O’Neill sets a new gold medal record