Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Welcome to the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is Catherine Starr, who’s a former Olympian and Commonwealth Games athlete. Catherine, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thank you for having me on. I’m so excited to be here. So we got introduced by Julie McDonald, who was on my podcast a couple of months ago, talking about her experience at the elite, at the elite level of swimming competition and her journey through that. And she she introduced me to you and said, you should speak to Catherine. She’s got an amazing story, which has directed the what you’re doing now with your with your work with other athletes. So would you like to talk a bit about your your history as a swimmer and and what happened and what you’re doing now with your work? So, so what I’m doing now is, well, the history of my swimming. So I started swimming at three years old. And I had that fire fire in my belly, and I was going to be a swimmer.

And my first chapter of my book, which is called Rescue Me a Powerful Memoir by an Olympian. And the first chapter is called Pure Passion, which you can read it on, read it on my website. And I just talk about just that

when you when you’re just like that pure joy, the pure joy of doing something and in this energy inside of me, that this force inside of me was, I was going to learn how to swim like I was convinced I knew how to swim. I’d never had a lesson in my life. But I was convinced that I, I could swim. And here I am as three years old, you know, screaming my head off, swearing that I’m going to get in that pool and swim. And, and I did. And it was, you know, and then the dynamics of everything changed for me. Like I, like I was good. I was good at something. Like I felt like that feeling of what it is to be good in my whole world changed around me. And that became my drive. And so fast forward to eight years old, I’m the best swimmer in the state I have broken every state record. I’m, you know, I’m just as this young elite prodigy at eight years old and the 76 Olympics come on and I am aging myself. But the 76 Olympics come on and, and I just saw like one that how

proud my dad was. And so, and this is where so my I was on the British Olympic team. And this is where as some of you are going to be like, but she doesn’t sound British, both my parents are British and they immigrated to the States. And I went back to swim in England when I was 11 years old. And when my father was rooting for the Olympians, we had an Olympian up the road, his name was Jim Montgomery. And I was like so excited to see like my neighbor swim, like I knew an Olympian, it’s like, it’s kind of like finding a four leaf clover, like to, to, to like meet an Olympian. And this guy was a gold medalist, right? And he had won gold five gold medals. But at the same time, you had David Wilkie, who was who just won a gold for Britain. And I saw like my father who was who swam on the British team. And he didn’t go to the Olympics. He was in medical school at the time. And then the Cold War came and they only took a few

athletes, things like eight people on, you know, when he could have gone. So, so it was always like a thorn in his side. But to see the glory that came to him when he watched David Wilkie, you know, get the gold, like I felt this, like this kinship with my father about this love for swimming, you know, and so and it gave me like, first place in the family of four, you know, so it changed the dynamic, it changed, you know, that this this structure in my family. And then it created this bond with my father, like I became my daddy’s little girl. And and then this drive that I had to be an Olympian, it was this force of energy, this force, this single pointed force that nothing was going to get in the way of that. You know, and so here I saw like how my dad loved me. It was so primal. It was so like just the the everything that you just want, like this pure love from your dad, and in the swimming that gave me that joy. And

it was this cycleness dynamic that was created. And so as my career went on, it started to be more and more evident that I was going to be an Olympian. So my parents moved me over into over to Britain. So I because they felt that if I was going to be an Olympian, they, you know, I was going to follow on my dad’s footsteps, I needed to be in the system. This wasn’t like just show up at, you know, three months before, you know, trials and then, you know, represent a country so you can be an Olympian. This was like, no, you’re like, you know, so so that was like, you know, packed up my bags, I went over to, I went over to England and I trained actually with Sharon Davis. So any of your British swimmers, she’s a very well known British swimmer and commentator currently, you know, for the BBC over the years. So I went and she was the best she had a silver slash gold medal in 80. So she was behind one of the East Germans. And so she was a very

prominent, you know, athlete. So here I was going to train with this, you know, world class British, you know, swimmer and the best in the country. And so to be around that, like just to be around that and then to receive the accolades that I started to receive around me, they sort of bounced from like sort of the progression went from when I was a small child to identifying as a swimmer. So that was like my first identity change. And then my next identity change was that I was going to be an Olympian. And so then that became my pursuit. And during these times of like this goal, this end goal, was when I started to like my relationship with my dad, like winning no longer just became a thing. It now became, you know, faster times and, and, you know, higher rankings. And like the awards and what I needed to accomplish in the pool, seemed to in my little young mind, was directly related to how much love I was going to get

from my father, like how much attention he was going to give me. And that was then giving me this, it was like the cycle that I was in. So and it created the silence around me. It created this, you know, the the if I swim fast, then I can get this from my dad. But then at the same time, I’m getting the, you know, you have to do this for the coach. So like in the relationship with your coach is so intimate, it’s so personal, it’s so driven. And here’s this person who’s coaching you to so you can receive what you’re seeking. In my case, it’s like just seeking, you know, to for my to continue to be daddy’s little girl. And you know, there’s in the I have two of brothers and younger sisters. So so there’s like, you know, there’s vying for this, this role in this relationship, if you will. And so it was like this, this cycle, and it’s not that I was mentally aware of this at all that, you know, when I was going, you know, going through this, I just

knew the force that was behind me to be an Olympian. And that force really blinded me to really avoid like it really created a silence my voice. And so that’s a lot of the work I do is about giving an athlete a voice and really recognizing how you are silenced. Like, what is it that’s that’s causing you to

not speak up, not take that action, not, you know, like there’s a lot of reasons that we can come up with that all make sense to us about why we don’t do something or do something or not have something. And, and so I started to like, when I went back to like, write my story and write this journey, I start I evaluated all these relationships, my started to evaluate, you know, the dynamics that were created, like, how did this, how did this happen? I can point to, you know, the the institutions and the lack of people to go and speak to I can talk to the lack of action that was taken against someone in, and I should add in what I’m talking about here, which is so so I basically walked right into being abused by the head Olympic coach for the British Olympic team. And so I ended up after I trained with Sharon, I moved to Coventry where he moved from Norwich to Coventry and I moved from from Devon to Coventry didn’t know who he

was. And here I am training he had I trained with five guys and, and of those five guys, three of them are Olympic medalists, and then me. And so it was this elite group of kids and he only had one female athlete around at a time in this in his like, top level group. And so I was in like I was getting what I needed as far as like the training, but at the same time, I’m living this secret, because I’m having this, this at this, I’m being my character started to be assassinated, my character started, people started to refer to me in, you know, like if my training was disrupted, or if I wasn’t performing as well, or if I was a loudmouth American or whatever, despite the fact I actually didn’t speak with an American accent growing up, I actually had a British accent, and you did not know that I actually was from the, you know, had was born in the US to two bridge parents. You know, so I had that chameleon, the

chameleon voice and me. But then so, so but when I started walking into just this, this, the system, the system of, if I do this for the coach, then I will get this from my dad. And it was like, and not everybody has that dynamic. But what the dynamic was, what like this pursuit for the Olympics blinders on to whatever happens along the way, I’m not going to stop for it. And so there’s this this vulnerability. And you could point to a whole bunch of reasons why but I feel that a lot of the reasons why are because I was athletes in general, and this is the new platform, and I can probably get you give you a word and edgeways here since I’ve had this long run of a share. But athletes in general are not

they’re underdeveloped with their voice, they’re underdeveloped to communicate. So it’s like you give me a workout. That’s what I’m going to do. Like I understand that command. I do not know how to say, you know what my shoulders hurting, or I think my shoulders, like, you know, starting to get overtired, or I feel like my stroke is wrong, and it’s affecting, you know, this other part of my body. I spend more time trying to adjust my stroke and trying to fix it myself or try to do things within myself. Or I’m just going to push through that that practice, in order to like just get it over with not knowing how I’m sort of carrying my pain and compounding it. And so and so we learn how to adjust within our training. And part of that, but we aren’t learning how to articulate it, we aren’t looking how to speak it. So as and so part of when I talk about integrity is, if you aren’t speaking that in itself, so it’s omission, right, it’s an

omission of communication that in itself is being out of integrity. So most of us walk around out of integrity. And so and we’re just not, you know, just by having the omission of it. So with that being said, I didn’t speak. I was just there to do workouts. I was just there to train and then have this influence with this relationship and this dynamic with this person you call your coach. And there’s like ownership associated with that. So I was in this battle between I don’t want to follow your direction with I have to follow your direction with I love swimming with now I don’t love swimming. And it was this constant back and forth, trying to find my way through it all. So and that’s really a long winded question. So I’ll have a little break and I’ll turn it back over to you and see if you have any thoughts on that. It’s a good, good introduction to some of the some of the things that you sort of talk about in the book. And I guess

internally for you after being such a being such a young driven swimmer that loves loves swimming loves the water. And then you’ve got this internal conflict of everything that’s going on. Did what did that lead to in terms of your swimming? What did it mean? Did you start skipping sessions? Did you start to do things outside the pool that you wouldn’t normally do? Like what what effect did that have on on you outside the pool?

So I started I certainly started skipping sessions. So weirdly, the training changed my so there was a year of the abuse when the abuse started with Paul and then I had a whole nother year of training with him as a club coach. Never mind that he was also the Olympic head coach. So I had that one on one with him. So for for too long. So during that period of time, I started missing practice. I started it boys became of interest. You know, I just I was not a drug user, but I would drink I definitely was, you know, started drinking more and more. I just would say I started drinking, you know, that seemed to have been and drinking would be drink, you know, drinking to be drunk. It was not, you know, there was nothing sophisticated about it. And I would hang out with the older summer. So I blended in with so you have a 14 year old on a team with, you know, 22, 23, 24, 25 year olds, that’s a big age difference.

But they’re legally allowed to drink, right? So I have a young person who’s who’s like, well, I’m just going to hang out with the older people because we’re in the same environment, you know, so so the environment itself, lended itself to be able to make choices that were harmful for the development of myself as an athlete. Is it something that you can spot or identify when you are talking to a group of swimmers and you might have some one on one chat with with those swimmers? Can you can you recognize that not necessarily having gone through what you’ve gone through, but you can see some of those things start to to play out in younger athletes that you speak with? So well, yeah, definitely. So let me just give you a little story. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with the gymnastics community in the Larry Nasser situation that happened in the United States. So I’m actually ground zero on that situation. So I actually had one of the Olympic

gymnasts come to me and have a conversation. And it was out of that conversation that I knew that there was abuse that happened in that person’s life, because they actually came to talk to me about something else. And so, and that’s the part where and it was her and I and I took her to the lawyer and then the lawyer took it from there. And that’s really where the athlete A is. And she’s one of the athletes in athlete A. And so and that’s really where this this started from. So I have a sixth sense as in, you know, sixth sense, I have a sixth sense to be able to have a conversation because here’s what I’ve learned about athletes. In general, I have now since I’ve started the nonprofit organization, I started with, say, for athletes. And so during that process, during, you know, in over the past 10 years, I have a place on the field.

Particularly what’s going on. You’re not going to find it, you know, straight up, this happened. Will you do something about it? Like it just, it’s just, it’s just not there. So it sort of like leads itself in that direction. You kind of, you know, I just kind of know when people talk about something that there’s something over here in left field. And I know how to go and pick it up and find it and be like, Hey, something like this going on. And then the other thing, and so as a result of that, right, so as a result of like speaking with athletes for 10 years, what I started to realize was, is that athletes need to have like, need to sort of understanding what integrity was. And so now I refer to it as athlete integrity coaching. And this is where Julie and I have come together to really work with athletes. So they learn how to win from within with integrity. So what, what do I mean by that? They, we learn

how to be driven from within, like we’re not driven by an external outcome. We learn how to speak from within. So you’re really connected like with your truth, and the decisions you’re making with pride. And that’s where I had lost my way. Like I was like, there was a lot of shame. And there was a secret, like I’m carrying a secret. And when you carry a secret, you start making choices to keep that secret covered up. And it can be very small and inconsequential. But it becomes a major issue. And it’s a pattern that gets developed within you. If you if you choose to hide, if you choose to not express yourself. And so somebody knows all of you. And in, you know, and, and that’s what I do now. So I work with athletes now, to really uncover their path, their truth. And, and what’s really part of how I work with athletes is I need to know what you’re going to do the very next day after you’re retired. And so instead of life coming at

you, it’s going with you. You know, instead of like, well, this happened, or that happened, we don’t talk about what’s happened. It becomes a purpose driven process with athletes. So, so that’s where like when I the direction I’m going in. So when you’re in that, if you learn how to do that, you can’t, you can’t hide, you can’t talk and just athletes speak, and you learn skills that actually will help you when you leave your athletic career to move on into your, into your professional life and your personal life. One of the quotes that I’ve heard before that I quite like is conflict delayed is conflict multiplied, meaning the longer you put off saying something, the longer you keep it inside, the more the more it’s going to, to get at you or the more it’s going to maybe fester a relationship between you and another person where it’s going to be going down the wrong track. And, and I think teaching this stuff to, to

athletes in their teenage years is a, is a very valuable skill for them to, to learn and also coming from, from someone like yourself with that, that experience in, in exposing these things and talking about these things tend to give them to the confidence if they were to be in the same sort of situation. And it doesn’t even necessarily need to be that situation. There’s, I’m sure there’s many other things there as well, which, which athletes should and need to, to speak up about even just the basic stuff. Like you were saying if they’re carrying a bit of an injury, they might not say it to their coach, and then they’ll just make that injury worse. So those sorts of things knows the relationship with your coach where you can be back and forth, you’re on an even playing field. And it’s not that, that hierarchy necessarily where it’s, you do exactly what I say. Now it’s that more even, even playing field. It’s, it’s a much better relationship that

I think people these days want to be a, be a part of that. And I see that in, you know, see that in, in swimming with a lot of the good coaches coming through, I see it in Australian rules football as well. It’s like, yeah, that those, those relationships that the players enjoy a lot more.

Oh, I, I totally agree. And so I talk about like, you know, when we talk about this imbalance of power, like, what is the power? Like where, where is the power going? Right. And so it like you are the power. So and when you, when you understand that in its first place, right, then you’re, we, we’re not putting ourselves in a situation where it’s like our coach directed, did this, our coach does this, our coach does that, right? Giving us that direction. Because what I found is like and in my adult life, like there’s like a laziness, right? Because I’m like, oh, someone’s just going to tell me what to do. And then outcomes, an outcome that I like, and I’ve rewarded for it. So therefore, why do I need to figure out what I need to do? So you’re not having the self reflection. And you’re really, it’s like you’ve, you’ve given somebody or talents, and you said, you nurture them and I’ll reap the awards. And it’s like, no, let the, let

the rewards be secondary. You nurture them in a way that’s meaningful and have, and that’s where I think the balance of the power is when you’re now able to articulate those things. You know, in some days, it’s like, you know, I, you know, I have certainly no swimming and training. And it’s like, you know, in taking 15 minute off a workout because you were feeling like something most slared up in your shoulder, you know, a 15 minute that prevents you from, you know, a 90 to six months, you know, being out of, out of swimming. If you had that ability and that, and that trust that you get to build in the system. And that to me is like where you’re driving from purpose and from where you’re at, like, you know you. And when you can create the, you, you and trust within yourself to trust yourself with this communication, like I can develop the tools and I can help you, you know, unleash this power, this within you. And we just give it away or

it’s an underdeveloped muscle is really with the way I see it. And it’s this dormant muscle that is just going to make athletes that much more powerful and have that much more of a fruitful afterlife versus, and it doesn’t matter your results. And I think we spend so much time on the idea of the gold medal and so versus the idea of building what everything in sport, like the value of sport, there’s so much value in sport, but how many times have you heard about someone’s wrecked career? Right. And so all that value goes out the door. So how do you keep the value to last afterwards? Because that’s where the, that’s where the gold is. Yeah, that’s absolutely right. It’s like those, if you haven’t got not anything to fall back on, if you, if you, if the sport is the only thing you’ve got and you haven’t got there, you haven’t got the character, you haven’t got the plans on what to what to do afterwards. And you can’t see what

your life could be looking like in the next five, 10 years. It’s a very daunting path that you’re looking at when you retire. And I think it’s really important to develop something alongside if you are swimming or doing triathlon at an elite level, you need to have something else there in your life or else it’s going to be a very empty thing that that you’re going for. And one of the things you, one of the terms you mentioned earlier was athlete speak. And I mean, I see that you see it in interviews all the time, right? Like there’s, there’s terms, there’s ways of speaking when you’re getting interviewed, maybe after a race, you might be after a loss or a win. They’ll, they’ll say, they’ll say a whole lot of words that won’t mean a whole lot necessarily. And, but I mean, that’s understandable at the media level. You know, you get training in that and sometimes you have to be that way. But in terms of athlete speak, are you more

referring to on a personal level or with your interpersonal relationships, that sort of thing?

Yeah, when you’re, when I hear people come talk to me about like coach abuse, for example, or verbal abuse, emotional abuse, especially around emotional abuse, right? The way that it’s described or the way that they’re having this experience, like before it’s sort of even rising to the surface, there’s a way, there’s like just a pattern in a way that I’ve seen across athletes that they, they talk about it.

They don’t say, oh, it’s emotional abuse. Like they’ll talk about like, you know, various things in workout or what happened here, what happened here? And you start to hear the bigger story that they’re not putting together. And, you know, sort of see these patterns within that environment. I mean, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been just involved with many athletes where I’ve had conversations where I’m like, you know, something else is going on. And so based on, it’ll just be an off the cuff comment that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody other than it doesn’t fit with like that environment per se, do you know what I mean? And it’s hard for me to give like clear examples

because I mean, one, there’s a confidentiality associated with it because I’m speaking in a general way, but, you know, it’s just kind of like, oh, I had to, you know, do such and such on a balance beam. And it’s something that it’s out of the ordinary. And I’ve learned about every sport as a result in doing this. So I would hear things that were like, well, that’s inconsistent. Like that’s just inconsistent coaching. Like what value does that have? So I start kind of poking in this area of what they’re really saying. And it’s like, oh yeah, no, nobody ever does something like that. And, you know, you start, when you start asking and you start knowing. And so, so I have been a huge advocate of athletes who, and, you know, and over time I want to develop a team of athletes who really understand one their sport and two athletes speak. Because one, it cuts to the chase of where the issues are. And then two, it creates,

it just creates a voice, a stronger voice when we know like how you speak and we can undo these patterns in a meaningful way.

It’s like there’s a loose thread there that you identify and you just start pulling the thread and then it all starts to come apart by the sounds of it. Yes, pretty much. Yes.

And with this work, how do you sort of deliver it at the moment? Like are you going in and working with teams? Do you have people approach you? Like what’s the, how’s it currently work?

So, so I’ll tell you two things. So Safe For Athletes is on the prevention, abuse side of things. So we have policies on that. And that’s a nonprofit organization and you can request our policies at safeforathletes.org. And then, so that kind of runs itself over there. And so, but from team athlete integrity, we go into teams and we work with teams to set, teach what integrity is, teach the culture. Like it’s a culture change within that environment. And we just kind of, how do you, how do you be an integrity with yourself and just kind of walk through

and set the tone for the, for that team. And then we assign a team advocate to the team for the season. So to maintain and keep the new tools and the new, the new voice of engagement that’s available to them to deal with any issue that would come up as simple question or some issue that’s happened within their program of teammate, a coach or anything.

And so then we walk the, if it’s a 15 minute conversation, we can help them, they go on their way, but we help sort of kind of diagnose what issues, if they’re well within that program. And then we offer, some issues are more complex. And so then we recommend and we move athletes over into coaching. And so then we, it’s our athlete integrity coaching. The whole team, single athlete, single issue, multiple issues, we can coach them through that. But we highly recommend our athletes go through the whole program because part of the program is to have a purpose driven outside of your career. And then we also offer mediation training, like mediation for situations, but it’s more relationship based mediation.

As versus contract, we don’t get involved on a sort of illegal contract side of things. But we do offer mediation, kind of like couples counseling, right? Because there’s a lot of unspoken stuff that goes through that. So the idea behind what we’re doing is setting a tone and then having a way for any issue to move through the system. So nothing gets stuck, nothing gets faster than inside of you. There’s always a way to work through it. And so we work with retired athletes, we work with current athletes, and we work with teams, and we work with coaches. And so we have sort of a variety of like, if you’re a retired athlete, we want to go look at the patterns that were created for you as an athlete. And then we want to undo those and then redirect your ship in a meaningful way, that’s purpose driven. And in a way that like you know how to be coached, let us coach you, and then let you sail off into a new direction

if you so desire. But essentially it’s a combination of coaching teams.

And we just want to help the whole athletic community because we know there’s a huge need for this. And if you’re a coach listening to this, what would the benefits be to a coach to get you into work with their team? What would the benefits be in terms of the general team culture and then the athletes that you’re working with? What upside would you see there from a coach’s perspective?

So the outcome is going to be, first of all we’re going to teach everybody to win from within, right? So you can’t be in discord and in harmony at the same time. And so if you have a perfectly run program, everybody’s in harmony, you win every year, you have no injuries, everybody communicates, and the structure is perfect. What do you get out of the end of it? Well that is what you get out of the end of the night. Yeah. So and if you have a team that, where you have like for example, some teams have a very high profile or high performing player or a swimmer in their club or their program and the dynamics of that club are built around one person. How do you create an environment for everybody to thrive and win from within? Like how do you balance out the power with everybody, with integrity? But ultimately, everybody is going to walk away with being able to speak their truth without harming another, but be able to speak their truth.

And so and that’s like the gift of what every athlete’s going to do. So they’re going to be purpose driven. So from a team, you’re not going to have, like swimming, everybody has to learn how to swim. So you get a lot of people that don’t want to swim, for example. Not everybody needs to learn how to like do archery, because it’s not like a life or death situation, whether you’re an archer or not. But it kind of is if you’re a swimmer. That’s what essentially you’re in. Yeah. You know, so you get a lot of disgruntled people in swimming, for example, right? That’s not, they’re out of integrity just by being there and they’re being forced to be in that position, right? You know, like my brothers, they hated it, but they were there because I was a swimmer. You know, so and so how do you help the parents be integrity in those situations? You know, it’s like, so what we do is we’re going to infuse that. And so any team or any coach

that wants to change the dynamic in a meaningful way, whether it’s to bring the culture of winning and we win it through pride. That’s how you win, right? Pride, like you can go from like in my book at the opening part, I talk about, I was on a team. We never won one single summit. And on that team, we had five Olympians

and we didn’t win once. And you know what, there’s pride in that, right? You know, because it was like we were a tiny team and we just didn’t have the numbers, but still there was something about it like, but you know, our team didn’t win, but all the athletes performed. And there’s many situations where you’re in that situation. So from a coach’s perspective, I think you can give the gift to an athlete to give them a voice and give them the ability to articulate with purpose and with truth. And it develops young leaders and who can turn down a young leader?

I was talking to a family member last week, actually, and we’re talking about like year 12 here in Australia, that’s the final year of schooling. And when I was in year 12, they brought in a guy called Jim Steins who was like a legendary Australian rules footy player. And he would do these talks to groups of year 12 students. And so the whole year level’s 100 and something kids. And he did this talk, it was sort of a two-day camp it was. And to basically towards the end of the camp, he created the environment where people were open to sharing things that happened to them. And basically like everyone at the end knew exactly what everyone else had been through. And then at the end of that two days, that entire school year level was just bonded together as one. The two rival, not gangs, but the two rival groups within the year level came together and were friends for the entire year. And my family member, she was saying that

at a school that she works at, they had a similar thing where they had two days together. And there was this girl who was considered quite weird, quite unusual, didn’t really have many friends there. Turned out she was abused by her brother. And that’s why she was sort of the way she was. And then after that, everyone was just much more open to her and they understood. And then from that, just everyone sort of came around her. So those sorts of things, when you get, when you can create that environment where people are open to sharing, you develop those bonds and those friendships that you probably wouldn’t have, that if you didn’t go through that experience.

Yeah, well, we make a lot of judgments from like, I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at somebody and made a judgment, made and created a whole story about that situation in your head. And then the problem is, is that we believe it to be true. So now I’ve just lied to myself. And then the other thing is that on this sort of subject line is I’ll look at, I’ll make a judgment, for example, with my coach, right? Oh, he’s in a bad mood. I’ve made the judgment. I’ve decided that that’s what it is. And now I’m reacting to what I’ve determined to what it was. And so I’ve just lied about the situation. Now I’m reacting to the lie. So when you start learning how you do that within yourself, then that just changes everything. Like that just changes your relationships with others. It changes your relationships with you. And you get to hear yourself in just the way that we manipulate our own selves. Nevermind somebody else doing it.

And so when you can do that with a group of athletes who’ve been like, oh, wait a minute, I said that I looked at my coach this way or I did that. And one of the things we work on is this area about time. Like what’s your relationship to it? And I had this conversation with Julie about it. So I’ll just make it a public conversation in the sense that

like I have a friend of mine for over a decade. We at out in Malibu, it’s on the PCH in Los Angeles. And my friend has a beach access private beach. She lives in this private beach section. And you have to walk down this long trail. And so it’s pain and it’s just a pain to wait for somebody who’s always late. And so we have this, we’re like, well, we can be friends. Like I drive 35 minutes and I can count on my hand how many times I was late. And my friend doesn’t have a cell phone just to kind of put things in perspective in today’s time. So you can’t even call and say, oh, I’m going to be late. Like there is no calling, right? So it’s like this relationship based on like we know we’re both going to be on time. Like we can be friends with somebody on time. And we have this thing like I can’t be friends with somebody who’s not an on time person and swimmers predominantly are on time people. Like you got to be at your block at a certain time, right?

But then when you, if you’ve ever been around somebody who’s late, like it makes, for me, like I’m anxious, I’m irritated, I don’t feel respected, da, da, da. And it’s like, well, what is it? Why do I respond that way to somebody else being late? Like really, like, does it really matter? Like why am I, like why is that my reaction to that situation? Like why am I anxious? And it took me to figure out that the reason that I react that way is after training for two decades,

you win by what, a hundredth of a second. You can, can you even click that? I don’t know. Like when you’re swimming, remember you’re like on the stopwatch, you’d see how fast you could like start and stop this stopwatch. 0.09, I remember that. Yeah, it’s as fast as I can do it.

Okay, I beat you. I was like 0.07, just so you know. And I’m a middle-distance swimmer. You know, so it’s like, but even like so, but then you swim two decades to even go faster than that, like the difference of time. Like, and so there’s like so much lined up in that grief that you have with yourself at that, like you don’t want to feel the disappointment. Like in so constantly, you’re like, well, I’m not, you know, I’m just going to be frustrated at this person being late. It’s like, well, maybe your frustration is because of like not accomplishing something. Like it’s so driven by time. Like there’s just such a core to it, especially as swimmers, right? Two decades later, less than a tenth of a second decides victory and not decides what you believe is to be happiness and what’s not, right? And so, and it’s changing like that, like you change your perception in your relationship to things around you. I think that’s a huge value.

Yeah, totally. I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m great with it all the time, but I recognize that. Like it’s, I was up in a place called Nusa, which is sort of up in Queensland here in Australia, and sort of along the coast there, you’ve got all the people who travel around in their van and live out of it. And up at the National Car Park there, there’s not many spots, and there’s only a few sort of real prime positions to park there, to watch the sunset and to surf there and stuff. And it’s always these what called van lifers who will back up their things and they’ll be cooking their breakfast there and enjoying the sunset. And I’m thinking these bloody van lifers taking up all the good spots and taking all the good positions and just why can’t just everyone else sort of enjoy them? And I’m thinking, right, do I really care? Like what they’re doing there? They’re enjoying their life. They’re having a good time. I’m thinking, well, yeah, okay.

The issue I’ve got here is that they’re having, like they’ve probably got a lot of freedom there. They’re enjoying themselves. They’re relaxing. I’m like, okay, maybe I’m just a little too uptight today. So it’s like, most of the issues actually come down to issues where other people come down to issues with ourselves sometimes, I think. Yeah, all the time. Yeah, that’s right. I don’t even think it’s sometimes. It’s like all the time. And that’s really why I wrote my book. It’s like, here I’ve written this like really,

you know, it’s like, oh, I don’t want to read a book about sexual abuse. It’s actually not even, I mean, I certainly talk about it. But I actually get to, I really talk about when you get to the other side of it is how I was in the system, how I was stuck in the system. And like, it was me. Like there was, you know, my choices. Like it was me that, you know, what was I pursuing? What was I hiding? What was I manipulating? What did I want? Like there was a lot of like, it wasn’t,

the harm happened in its happened and its painful and all that. So I’m not discounting anybody getting abused because I certainly have had it and lived with it. But then the issue when someone asked me and they said, okay, how come you took so long? Like to even say something, right? So it’s like, what was in the value of me not saying something for as long as I did? Like there’s value in that. I got something from somebody else because of it. And so, and that is, it’s not the, like this person is a monster. There’s no question about it. Like I was in a situation that like from where I was going, what I was, the world I was in and the choices I was going to make, I was glued. There was like a magnet that was going to come together with that harm that was going to happen. But when I started looking at my choices after that, like those I need to take accountability for. And that’s the stuff was like, what did I get?

I got to walk around being a victim. I got to walk around saying, this happened to me. I got to walk around with that. And ultimately, I mean, my book is at, it’s rescue me. Like the name of the book, rescue me. And it’s me, right? It’s me, but there’s a lot more. It’s really, if you’re a surfer, and you know any of these big legend surfers, you might actually know part of the book, which is, I’ll give you a name of a surfer. And I apologize when I say his name incorrectly, but the book is dedicated to him, which is Eddie Aika. Do you know who he is? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, and so my book is dedicated to my dad,

Mary, who got the gold medal in my event. And it’s about, you know, our encounter in that relationship is in there, and Eddie Aika. And you’re just going to have to read the book to find out why I would dedicate my book to him. I like it. I like that cliffhanger there. That’s good. I mean, I love the, is it a 20 for 20? I think it’s a 20 for 20 ESPN docker on Eddie Aika. And I’ve watched it twice, maybe three times. And it’s, yeah, he’s just a legend in, I guess, the water community from, yeah, all aspects. So yeah, those are the listening. We’ll put the book on our show notes and Katherine, where else can people grab the book and find out more about what you’re doing and get in touch if they’d like to?

We certainly can get in touch on Katherinestar.com. So that’s Katherine with a K, K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, last name, star, S-T-A-R-R. And the book is also available at Amazon in Australia. So you should be able to just get it there, as well as pretty much any bookstore. And it’s Rescue Me, a powerful memoir by an Olympian. And you should be able to find it online.

And I hope you enjoy it and be inspired. And it’s a real, it’s a journey. It’s a journey. And I’ll take you on, it’s interesting. And I hope you feel inspired at the end of it. Well, I’m glad that Julie introduced us, because I’ve really enjoyed this chat and learned a lot. And by the sounds of it, the work that you’re doing is hugely important and hugely valuable for swimmers and coaches. So yeah, I think it’s just a great thing that you’re doing. So I appreciate you jumping on the podcast and sharing. Some of your story, and I highly recommend going grab the book of Catherine’s there. So Catherine, thank you for being on the podcast. Oh, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure. And I appreciate you having me on. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.