Swimming: Johnny Watterson talks to the European medallist about how he got there and where he's going
In Tennessee, Andrew Bree lives two minutes from the university swimming pool. He can see it from his window. Always part of his peripheral vision, constantly reminding him why he's living in the US instead of Ireland, why he has been swimming between 50,000 and 60,000 metres every week, why he has taken up yoga and why he uses a sports psychologist.
Bree has bought into the cutting edge of his sport and transported himself to a place that has been working for him for the last three years and has now delivered on the first part of the deal. At the National Aquatic Centre on Sunday, the 22-year-old also rumbled some things about his own character, discovered what it was like to place his trust exclusively under the control of someone else, his coach JT Trembley, and realised he could hold his nerve at the sharp end of world swimming.
Often in the American adventure for Irish athletes, the pay-off is disillusionment, but in Tennessee Bree has found a niche and, following his silver medal in the 200 metres breaststroke, the idea of an Olympic final next summer in Athens is no longer impossibly remote.
Swimmers live a parallel life to the rest of us. They examine the fractions and the decimal points of times and they usually know at what level they exist in their small world. Before the successful final swim, former Olympian Nick O'Hare had studied the split times of Bree's heat and figured that he could win a medal over the final 50 metres if he kept pace with the group. That's exactly what happened. The important issue was that Bree had the mileage in his body and the ability to swim to a precise tactic.
"Yes, that swim will give me confidence going into next year, and also more in my coach," he says. "In the final I was just remembering to keep it long and take a stoke less. We agreed that would suit me better and give me more zip in the final yards.
"Next year is obviously an Olympic year and there is also the European Championships in May. I don't know if I'm going to swim those. The only one I know I'm going to swim in is in March at the National Collegiate Championships. That's going to be a very fast meet, but again it's going to be short course metres. But I'll be shaved and tapered for it, and a week later I'll swim in a meet in Indianapolis and go for my Olympic qualifying time there.
"I figure that if I can go 2.14.04 in July of 2002, that by April 2004 I should be point-three (of a second) faster. I think I can do it. It's about getting everything right and not getting injured, like last year.
"This season, not a day has gone by where I haven't thought about the Olympics. I've a countdown on my phone that tells me how many days there are to go."
Bree arrived in Dublin from the US on the Tuesday before the Dublin championships, slept well for two nights and was in the pool competing on the Thursday. Virtually no adjustment to the time change, but it worked for him. But the Olympics will demand protocol, the holding camp, and the Olympic village. It's a different equation to balance.
"So long as I have my programme and my coach. That's important. He was in Dublin and able to analyse the race in the heats. He'd two pages of notes straight after the morning swim. If he wasn't there I would have gone and done the same thing in the final. Everything fell into place."
Now at home in the coastal hamlet of Helens Bay, just south of Belfast, Bree is in down time. When he returns to the US before the New Year, he'll arrive back to a college system that is designed around its sports. It is big business. Top dog is the college football team. Home games, at $38 a ticket, and always the 109,000-seat stadium is sold out. It's a long way from Campbell College and playing on the wing for the under-16s, where, at 17 years of age he was 5 ft 11 in. He's now 6 ft 6 in.
"There is probably four or five seconds in the difference between the short and long course over 200 metres. Short course is quicker. But I know that for me long course suits my stroke. With my height as well, the long is better. Now I know what I can do and I can improve. I'll go off and get stronger in the gym, maybe put in more metres in the pool.
"But it's also different at this level. Everything has been done in the water by all of the coaches. The aim is to try and find that something special."
