The Coin Flip, the Medal, and Why PBs Matter More Than Podiums
Part 4 of 4 | The Swimmer’s Mind Three Olympics. A coin flip that changed his career. A national championship won by going from fifty-second to first in a single day. Gary Hall Sr. has lived swimming from every angle — as athlete, physician, coach, and now technology builder. In the final part of our […]
Part 4 of 4 | The Swimmer’s Mind
Three Olympics. A coin flip that changed his career. A national championship won by going from fifty-second to first in a single day. Gary Hall Sr. has lived swimming from every angle — as athlete, physician, coach, and now technology builder. In the final part of our conversation — with questions from young swimmer Idhant S. Chaturvedi of Basavanagudi Aquatic Centre, Bengaluru — Hall Sr. talks about motivation, mental toughness, the Spitz-Phelps debate, and what the sport still gets badly wrong about its own athletes.
You qualified for the Olympics at seventeen. What drove you there?
A diver from our swimming team went to the 1960 Olympic Games, won the gold medal, and came back. I got to hold that medal in my hand. That was the moment. I said: I want to earn one of these. I want to win one of these someday. And it never left me.
What enabled it to happen was changing environments. I was training with a coach who was okay, but he wasn’t training me appropriately. I switched to a different team, a different coach — and within a year I was on the Olympic team. The right environment matters. It always matters.
Talent or consistency — what makes a swimmer successful?
A talented swimmer. But a talented swimmer who doesn’t work hard will not be successful — you need both.
A swimmer without natural talent is going to struggle, because they won’t learn the way the talented swimmer does — either through their own innate motor skills or through coaching. Some swimmers, however hard you work with them, are just not very teachable. The talented swimmer, especially when young, will win pretty much every time. But as you get older, if that talent doesn’t come with hard work, it runs out. I’ve experienced that myself.
What is your most memorable race — not necessarily your most successful one?
The race that probably impacted my career the most wasn’t at the Olympics. I was sixteen. I’d barely made the qualifying standards for the national championships — by a tenth of a second in two events, the two-hundred butterfly and the four-hundred IM. I was fifty-first out of fifty-two swimmers in one event and fifty-fourth out of fifty-five in the other. My coach couldn’t afford to travel with me. He sent me with my parents.
When I got there, a coach who barely knew me looked at the schedule and said: these two events are back to back. You can’t swim both. Pick one. I had no idea. I said, you choose. He said: let’s flip a coin. Heads, you swim the four-hundred IM. Tails, the two-hundred fly.
It came up heads. Next morning, heat one of the four-hundred IM. He told me: if you can drop a couple of seconds, you might just make the C finals. I went in — and dropped seven seconds. Qualified first for the finals. In the finals I was the youngest swimmer in the pool, all the others were collegiate swimmers, and I dropped another two seconds and won.
I went from fifty-second to first in one day. That was one of those swims where you never know where it came from. I still don’t know, to this day, why it happened. But it did. That’s the race I remember.
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Mark Spitz or Michael Phelps — who is the more complete swimmer?
Both were phenomenal. Both were the best in the world in their era. It’s hard to compare across generations — the training, the suits, the science were all different.
But Phelps was more all-around. Spitz was an extraordinary butterfly and freestyle swimmer who could have been a great IM swimmer if he’d trained for it — his breaststroke just wasn’t at the level Phelps brought. Phelps was dominant in all four strokes. He could have been world-class in the two-hundred breaststroke if he’d wanted to train for it.
Michael Phelps is the greatest swimmer. His records have all been broken, but not by much. What he did, and the length of time he sustained it — that was remarkable. I don’t argue much against that.
Was it harder to be an elite swimmer in the 1970s, or is it harder today?
The challenge of getting to the elite level was as hard then as it is now. That won’t change. It’s always going to be a small percentage of people who can get there.
But here’s what I think is genuinely worse today: elite swimmers don’t earn enough. I wish they made more, because swimmers who could stay in the sport longer are leaving it. The most popular sports at the Olympics are swimming, track and field, and gymnastics. And those three sports have been the worst at marketing themselves so their athletes can earn a living. I can only think of one swimmer in history who can retire on what swimming made him — and that’s Phelps, and not from prize money, from endorsements afterward.
That is a failure of the sport’s governing bodies. It’s changing, but not fast enough.
Should a swimmer measure success by their PBs or their medals?
PBs. Every time.
We get hung up too much on winning or losing, on the colour of a medal, on place in the pool. What matters is: did you set a goal, work hard, and achieve it? If you did, you won — regardless of what place you finished. That’s the lesson swimming teaches you about life. You’re not going to be successful in life if you don’t set goals, work hard, and have a plan. If you follow the plan, usually you will get there.
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Did you get nervous before races? How important is mental training?
Mental training is critical. You have to be mentally tough on the blocks. Some people have that naturally. Others have to work for it. But at a high level, everyone needs it — there’s no getting around it.
My advice to young swimmers? Have fun. That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard — you can do both. But enjoy it. The swimmers who last, the ones who get to the highest levels, are the ones who genuinely love being in the water.
Love to win, or hate to lose?
Both.
This concludes SwimmingDrive’s four-part interview with Gary Hall Sr. Parts 1 to 3 are available on SwimmingDrive.com. The Race Club’s TRAC IQ sensor system is scheduled for launch later in 2025. More at theraceclub.com
Slam Book questions in Part 4 were asked by Idhant S. Chaturvedi, competitive swimmer, Basavanagudi Aquatic Centre, Bengaluru.
Part 4 of 4 | The Swimmer’s Mind
