TERRE HAUTE —
A hero in his home country of Barbados, Olympic track athlete Greggmar Swift returned to Terre Haute two weekends ago and began his fall classes at Indiana State University last Tuesday.
“Business as usual” was how Swift, a junior on the ISU track and field team, described settling back into his student-athlete routine.
But there was one occasion when an economics instructor asked a room full of students: “Hey, do you all know we have an Olympian in the class?”
At that point, the rest of Swift’s classmates stood up and applauded.
So much for “business as usual.”
Swift, 21, earned this recognition by representing Barbados in the 2012 London Summer Olympics, competing in the men’s 110-meter hurdles. He finished his preliminary heat in 13.62 seconds, barely missing an opportunity to advance to the semifinals the next day.
Swift said he arrived in London a few weeks before his heat on Aug. 7 after running a tune-up race in Belgium in July to prepare for the Olympics.
Other members of the Barbados men’s hurdles team were Ryan Brathwaite and Shane Brathwaite.
Swift and the Brathwaites stayed in the Olympic Village, where they saw several athletes from different sports, including Usain Bolt and other track stars.
“All these guys I had postered up in my room and I’m walking the same ground they walk on,” Swift told the Tribune-Star last week. “So it brought me to the realization that ‘Hey, I’m just as good as anybody else out there.’ ”
Although Swift was focused on preparing for the Olympics, he found time to have fun away from the track.
“A week before the Games started, we went into the heart of London and went to a couple of parties,” he mentioned. “We shopped ’til we dropped. I got some headphones, some clothes, stuff to wear to school. … We drove around and saw all the historic places of England, too.”
Swift also visited a section of London called “Little Barbados.”
“It was really amazing,” he said. “We didn’t know it was there [until they got there]. It was a great experience.”
Meanwhile, his ISU coach — John McNichols, who wanted to support Swift in person — didn’t arrive at London’s Heathrow Airport until Aug. 6, one day before Swift’s heat.
“My plan was for me to get there to meet Greggmar in time for his morning workout,” McNichols said. “That would be a light, tune-up workout for him. I wanted to be there mostly to give him support and pat him on the back.”
But McNichols’ flight was delayed two hours and the special cell-phone plan he had purchased specifically for this trip did not work, so that morning meeting didn’t happen.
McNichols eventually borrowed a stranger’s cell phone and left messages with Swift to inform him he was running late.
“He went ahead and did his workout, which was good, because it was important that he stay on schedule and do the workout,” McNichols said. “It was disappointing for me, but the main thing was for Greggmar to get his workout in.”
Later that day, McNichols met up with Swift’s mother, Margaret, and they traveled to the Olympic Village, where Swift greeted them.
McNichols said the village contained high-rise apartments, which are being used as housing for the general population now that the Olympics are over.
“There was high security all around,” the Sycamores’ coach pointed out. “Greggmar ushered me in [to the Olympic Village], where I turned over my passport and they gave me a temporary credential. With that credential, I could go anywhere in the village with Greggmar. So we visited the Barbados team area and I talked with Greggmar and his fellow hurdlers, Shane and Ryan Brathwaite, and also their coach, Alwyn Babb.”
They visited others while McNichols tried to figure out how he would get in the Olympic Stadium to see Swift run his heat Aug. 7, because no passes or tickets were available for that session. The ISU coach did obtain an extra ticket for the Aug. 8 semifinals and finals for the men’s 110-meter hurdles, but Swift was not guaranteed a spot in those races.
On the evening of Aug. 6, McNichols and Swift ate dinner and discussed the race while inside the athletes’ cafeteria, which offered food from countries all over the world.
“They also had a McDonald’s in there, which I thought was interesting,” McNichols said. “It was obviously because McDonald’s was a major sponsor.”
McNichols and Swift then went shopping in the Olympic Village before parting company. McNichols left the village to visit other venues in London and returned to his hotel.
McNichols still wasn’t sure what to do about the morning of Aug. 7. Should he go to the stadium and try to buy a ticket outside the gate, possibly missing the race if he wasn’t successful? Or should he stay in his hotel room and watch the race on television?
McNichols chose the latter.
“The BBC [TV network] covered everything live,” he explained. “Track and field coverage was spectacular. So when Greggmar ran his heat, I got to see it like four times on replay. [The BBC reporters] made track and field, with their presentation, really interesting.”
Back at the Olympic Village, Swift admitted that he started feeling butterflies in his stomach on the morning of Aug. 7.
“I realized it was time for me to run in the Olympic Games,” Swift said. “It was nerve-racking. I had to calm myself down. I had trained all my life for this and I wasn’t about to go flush it down the toilet because I was nervous.”
Ryan Brathwaite told him it was OK to be nervous and “let’s run and make our country proud.”
“On the way to the track, we were super focused,” Swift emphasized. “We were ready. … After warming up, my nerves slowly, slowly started to fade away. I was feeling ready.”
But his nerves returned when he entered the call-room tent before the race.
“The lady was handing out numbers and calling out names and she said my name,” Swift recalled. “I was in Lane No. 1, so I got my number first. Then in Lane 2, it was Jeff Porter from the USA. … Then when she got to Lane 8, she said Dayron Robles [representing Cuba and the 2008 Olympic gold medalist in this event]. So I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve got to race Dayron Robles now.’ Then Ryan Brathwaite came over and told me to ‘calm down and get ready.’ That was all I needed.”
When the time approached to assume the race position, Swift noticed the size of the crowd.
“There were probably 90,000 to 100,000 people in the stadium and they were roaring,” he noted. “I never expected to see something like this. Again, I tried to keep my nerves together and keep everything together.”
But Swift had competed all over the United States and all over the world over the last few years, so he convinced himself there was no need to be jittery this time.
When the starter’s gun sounded, Swift jumped out fast.
“I had the best start of my life,” he insisted. “Like, it actually shocked me. I was leading the race through the first, second and third hurdles. Then the shock kind of hit me and the field came back. When the field came back, I started to panic a little bit … then I started to hit hurdles. That’s really when the field caught me. When you hit hurdles, with that quality of a field, they’re going to pass you. So you’ve got to be clean. When they started passing me, I started fighting it even more and they were drifting away from me.
“At the ninth hurdle, I was still in contention for qualifying for the semifinals. But in my mind, I didn’t know that because I was in the race. I only found this out later from the video.”
Swift admitted he made “a big mistake” coming off the last hurdle.
“I checked to my right to see where I was in the field,” he explained. “That 0.01 of a second it took for me to check to the right, the guy from France passed me, and he was the final guy to qualify for the semifinals.
“When I found this out, it was heartbreaking. I was really disappointed because I couldn’t believe if I had kept my head straight, I would be in the semifinals. … It was just a learning experience.”
While Swift placed fifth in the heat (Robles won with a time of 13.33), McNichols was cheering from his hotel room.
“I would have loved to have been in the stadium,” McNichols acknowledged. “But I know from talking to Greggmar’s mother later that she got to watch the race [in person] and maybe saw one replay.”
McNichols described Swift’s performance as “excellent.”
“He got out really well,” the veteran coach assessed. “For three or four hurdles, he was right there with the [lead] group. Then he bumped a hurdle, not enough to slow him, but maybe just slightly. He missed qualifying [for the semifinals] by two people. … I thought it was a very good race and he held together very well.”
McNichols didn’t get to see Swift in person until the next day, Aug. 8, outside the Olympic Village. Then he attended the men’s hurdles semifinals and finals that night because he actually had a ticket.
Swift and the Brathwaites? They went to some London pubs.
“Everybody in England embraced us because we were from Barbados,” Swift mentioned. “We had a blast. Barbados is almost identical to England. It’s just that England is a bit colder. I could call England my third home [behind Barbados and Terre Haute].”
McNichols, who did sightseeing at the British Museum of History and Buckingham Palace, flew out of London on the morning of Aug. 9, describing the overall experience as “unbelievable.”
“London did a great job of putting on the Games,” stressed McNichols, who had worked at previous Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (1984) and Atlanta (1996) as a track official.
So this was the first time McNichols attended a Summer Olympics from a fan’s perspective.
“I thought they were just as smooth as could be,” he continued. “People were friendly. The people they had working the venues were very friendly and helpful. The London police were very helpful if you had a question. Everything was set up great.
“I enjoyed every minute of being over there.”
Swift didn’t leave London until Aug. 13, when he flew back to Barbados.
“When I got back, there was a huge celebration,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it. There were [Barbados] flags everywhere. There were, like, a thousand people at the airport to greet me. All the Barbados media were there. … Everybody was so proud. I really felt the love.”
McNichols said Swift learned from his Olympic experience that “it’s just another track meet.”
“There’s pressure because it is the Olympic Games,” McNichols added. “But preparation, practice and all the other things, you’ve got to keep those as normal as you can, then get ready, go out and perform. So even though he was disappointed he didn’t make the semifinals, the experience of going through that and realizing that it is a track meet … that was valuable.”
The 6-foot, 150-pound Swift plans to represent Barbados in the 2013 World Championships at Moscow and he’s hoping to qualify for the Summer Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. He’ll be 25, not too old to improve on his 2012 performance.
In the meantime, Swift is taking time off from training. He figures his next meet for ISU will be indoors in December.
Swift, who majors in risk management and insurance, is looking forward to the Drake Relays, the Missouri Valley Conference championships and the NCAA indoor and outdoor championships during 2012-13 track season.
“I’ve just got to put in the work and listen to whatever coach [McNichols] says,” Swift said.
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Indiana State hurdler Greggmar Swift (right) represented Barbados in the Olympics. His time in a preliminary heat fell just short of qualifying for the semifinals.
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