Swimming: Ingram reflects on time's cost

Melissa Ingram has proved she's tough. Photo / Brett Phibbs

How much does time cost? For Melissa Ingram, that question moved out of the abstract and into a ghastly reality.

Half a second - just 0.5s over 400m, eight gruelling lengths - cost her thousands of dollars worth of Sparc funding; it cost her free access to the sports medicine and science required to keep her at elite level; it cost her the chance of representing her country on the biggest stage; it nearly cost Ingram her career; hell, it nearly cost Ingram her sanity.

This month the 24-year-old North Shore swimmer went to Brisbane for the Queensland state champs and broke five New Zealand records in the 200m free, 400m free and 200m backstroke. That alone is a feat worthy of recognition but to do so after the year she has experienced beggars belief.

It was her first significant meet after a three-month lay-off, a lay-off that saw her questioning her future in the sport that has been "my life".

The early morning wake-ups - 4.30am while she was at school, 6am since she has left - combined with the mind-numbing repetition tends to weed out the swimmers from the splashers at an early stage. You have to be "disciplined, determined and passionate" to make it in this sport, she says.

In a weird way it was the latter that very nearly forced her out.

After a good Olympic campaign, most elite swimmers would take the next world cup season off and recharge the batteries.

Not Ingram.

"I had a huge build-up to the Olympics, raced in Beijing, came home, didn't have a break and then went on the world cup circuit, which is six weeks competing around the world.

"And I went by myself."

From South Africa to Australia to Singapore, Russia, Sweden and Germany, Ingram was not only swimmer but also coach, mentor and manager.

"It was an amazing experience, I loved it, but I had to do everything myself. I would prepare to race but at the same time I was having to make sure my flights were organised and my taxi was ready to take me to the airport."

Ingram finally came home but left significant blood-iron levels on the road.

Weak and, although she didn't fully realise it at the time, exhausted, Ingram swum below expectations at the world championship qualifying meet, missing qualification in the 200m and 400m free and 200m back by less than half a second. She kissed goodbye to the Fina world champs in Rome and instead inhabited a new world of uncertainty. The fact those world champs will become historically irrelevant due to the farcical swimsuit debate was of small consolation.

"It was so brutal. It was one of the hardest things I've faced. I love swimming; I wasn't ready to retire but I was faced with the prospect of having to retire because there just wasn't the money there."

Ingram lost her Performance Enhancement Grant (PEG) from Sparc and was no longer a carded athlete, which meant she lost free access to sports science and sports medicine facilities.

"I was breaking down," Ingram admits. "I would wake up in the morning and feel physically sick. I would think, 'This is just a nightmare', but then quickly realise it was real.

"It was soul-shattering. It was horrible. I had put everything I had into swimming. It was my life. It's not like a nine-to-five job where you go home and switch off. Every minute of the day you have to live the life of an elite athlete. There's no off button."

The Government may not have, but Ingram's sponsors - Speedo, Moyes Holden Panmure and Balance - continued to back her. She also received a huge boost from the North Club when she won AIMES Awards that came with a $30,000 cheque.

"That has helped me hugely because I can't get my PEGs back until the Commonwealth Games next year so that would be 18 months without any money coming in," she says.

Finally, after taking three months off to throw herself into her nearly completed Bachelor of Arts (Ingram fancies journalism in a later life), and talking to the key people in her life, including recently retired friends Liz Coster and Helen Norfolk, the North Shore swimmer decided to dive back in.

What hadn't killed her would only make her stronger, she concluded.

"As hard as it was to miss the world champs, the repercussions of that have made me a stronger athlete. Hopefully when I'm standing behind those blocks, I'm tougher for it too."

What happened in Queensland a fortnight ago would tend to suggest she's right.