Coach Dean Boxall breaks silence on viral Olympic celebration

The Tokyo Olympics gave Australia some unforgettable memories and swimming coach Dean Boxall has opened up of one of the best.

The 2021 Olympics were truly a Games like no other and swimming coach Dean Boxall made sure of it.

With Australia bringing home a bag of medals from the pool with Emma McKeon’s record haul, Kaylee McKeown becoming Australia’s new Olympic darling and Ariarne Titmus breaking Katie Ledecky’s middle-distance freestyle stranglehold, it was one of Australia’s great swimming performances at an Olympics.

And yet a week on, one of the most iconic moments from the Olympics was the reaction of Boxall to Titmus’ 400m gold medal.

At 20 years of age, Titmus finally had her time in the sun after the 24-year-old Ledecky, arguably the greatest women’s swimmer of all-time after being relatively unchallenged with world and Olympic titles since the 2012 Olympics, lost her 200m and 400m titles to the Australian.

But it was the 400m on the first Monday of the Games that truly released the pressure valve, and not just for Titmus.

Years of hard work went into Boxall’s celebration.

Nearly two weeks from the magic moment, Boxall has reflected on the moment his charge executed the plan the pair had worked on for years.

“It is unbelievable pressure and people felt the pressure just sitting on their couches at home, but we are living it every day,’’ he told The Courier Mail.

“I was the author of this race for Arnie who executed it to near perfection. I saw it unfold, I had written it out.

“Basically it was scripted and written and spoken and verballed how it must be done, so to watch that, something we have put so much into every single day at training, to watch it unfold, that is why there is a relief.’’

He added that it was also about watching Titmus get everything she had worked so hard for and dreamed about in the brutal training program it took to beat Ledecky.

Speaking to Checkpoint during the Olympics, he said it was “five years in the making, that there was a carefully planned operation of basically to try and take out the GOAT — it wasn’t a click of the fingers and ‘let’s see what happens’.”

And he didn’t hump the railing — he was channelling his favourite wrestler the Ultimate Warrior.

Titmus was already the 400m world champion but the Olympic title is that next level.

Boxall’s scene-stealing celebration was panned by bitter Americans who had seen their queen dethroned, with some saying he just wanted the attention for himself.

In response to a tweet from Aussie tennis coach Brad Gilbert celebrating Titmus, American tennis great Pam Shriver wrote: “Congratulations for OZ but Thank God you don’t celebrate as a coach like that. When the coach tried to be the show it’s (vomit emoji).”

American political operator Laura Chapin tweeted: “Hey all – what the Australian coach did isn’t funny or cute. It bigfoots a woman athlete winning a gold medal and centres the attention on him. It’s vulgar and frankly offensive and he should apologise to her. And everyone else.”

Boxall laughed it off as a pressure valve release, while Titmus paid tribute to Boxall in the aftermath.

“That is just the way Dean is,” Titmus said. “He’s very passionate about what he does and he becomes quite animated. This is just as much for him as it is for me.

“He has sacrificed a lot of his family life with his kids and his wife and his job. He puts 100 per cent into being a swimming coach and I would not be here without him.”

No wonder it meant so much. Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images

Speaking to Sunrise last week, Titmus revealed the brutal training regime the pair had worked out in the years leading to the Olympics.

“Physically, it’s a lot of training. On the days that I’m at the pool twice a day I could be there up to seven or eight hours and Dean is there a lot longer,” she said.

“More than anything I think it’s the mental pressure I was put under from Dean especially.

“I could not relax one day.

“When I’m not at the pool I’ve still got to think about my training, my eating and my sleeping.”

“But it had to be like that because of who I was facing. I had to perform in a race where I was trying to take out the best female swimmer ever.”

While the world sees what happens in that five minutes on the pool deck, the celebration was more about the countless hours, days, months and years it took to make Titmus’ — and Boxall’s — dream come true.