Lauren Boyle is the first Kiwi to claim four world championship medals. Photo / Getty Images.
Lauren Boyle is the first Kiwi to claim four world championship medals. Photo / Getty Images.
Does Lauren Boyle get the recognition she deserves in this country? Probably not.
The 27-year-old Whenuapai-raised freestyle swimming star is the first Kiwi to claim four world championship medals after winning silver in the 1500 metre event in Russia to go with three bronze medals from Barcelona in 2013.
In this she has eclipsed the three won by double Olympic freestyle champion and international Hall of Fame member Danyon Loader. To put her three bronze and one silver medals into some context, New Zealand has only won nine world championship medals, none of them gold.
There are a few arguments that could be presented about why Boyle might deserve more limelight, including the over-emphasis on Olympic success and the bugbear that women athletes don't get a level publicity playing field. But if it takes a major gold medal to receive the acclaim she deserves there is a significant problem named Katie Ledecky. The American teenager is one of those swimming freaks who turn up now and then and is simply unbeatable over the distances Boyle races.
At the age of 15, and as the youngest member of the America's team at the 2012 London Olympics, Ledecky blitzed the 800m final to announce her international arrival.
She is the 400/800/1500 world record holder, and beat the second placed Boyle by 27 seconds in the Pan Pac Games 1500m final last year. In this week's world 1500m final, she is said to have saved her legs - "barely kicking at all" according to one report - to give her more petrol for the 200m semifinal half an hour later.
The 18-year-old still cantered to another world record in the 1500, finishing nearly 15 seconds ahead of Boyle. And even though the the 1500/200 is a crazy endurance/sprint double to take on with such a short turnaround, a blistering finish in the semifinal propelled Ledecky into the final.
She is so good that the waiting media gets pulled under, loses perspective, quizzing her about any disappointments if she doesn't break a record. The rest of the field becomes an afterthought. It includes Boyle, a swimming mortal in comparison but a truly great athlete and superstar by New Zealand standards.
Two years ago, Boyle told me that it had been tough trying to set new benchmarks in a sport that had been in a lull in this country. She hoped to pull other Kiwi swimmers along with her. As a primary school kid, she had been influenced by Loader's two gold medals at the Atlanta Olympics, which she fondly recalled watching on her grandmother's TV. "It was an inspiring moment in my life," she said..
Gold medallist Katie Ledecky of the United States poses with silver medallist Lauren Boyle of New Zealand and bronze medallist Boglarka Kapas of Hungary
It was another five or so years before Boyle says she fully realised her talent for swimming, this sporting passion and another riding horses always running alongside highly successful academic pursuits. She even made her own decision to switch high schools, in order to take the Cambridge International exams.
Her mother, Linda Norman, has described Boyle as a fusspot. In that Herald interview, Boyle conceded she was a perfectionist "but I can be relaxed as well." The interview went along these lines. Open and chatty at times, she clammed up on her swim goals, describing them as personal matters.
Her mother has been a massive supporter and travelled to Kazan.
In a Women's Weekly interview, Linda Norman said a swim instructor actually spotted Boyle's talent at the age of six. The profile described Norman as Boyle's "chief cheerleader, taxi driver and shoulder to cry on."
"We've developed a pretty close relationship because of swimming, I think, and as I've got older, it's turned into more of a friendship, which is nice."
Boyle, who attended and swum for the University of California, headed to Australia's Gold Coast to train when New Zealand Swimming struck troubled waters, and appears on track for Rio next year, her third Olympics, despite the Ledecky hurdle. While Boyle has won Commonwealth Games gold and broken a world short course record, she knows the Olympic podium is an overly-dominant yardstick in Kiwi sporting eyes.
On recognition in this country, she told the Herald that many individual athletes also operated in the shadows cast by rugby and other team sports.
Boyle said: "There is more attention in Olympic years - we compete the other three years (but) in New Zealand that is not really acknowledged. It is not the same for women as men...but we're still people getting the same results and doing our country proud."
