Mat Lock:
Felicity, welcome to The Unleashing Potential Podcast. It is a pleasure to have you here.
Felicity Lemke:
Thank you for having me.
Mat Lock:
Not at all. Today we’re going to talk all about your journey as a professional athlete that led you to winning two gold medals at the Olympics, and you were a two times world record holder, I believe.
Felicity Lemke:
Yes. Actually three individual world records, but sorry to correct you in the first minute but yes, three individual world records in short course, so the 25-metre swimming pool.
Mat Lock:
Yes. What an amazing history. I think if we just kick-off, if you could just take a couple of minutes just to talk us through who you are, what you do, where you’re from, and then we’ll dive into, no pun intended, your swimming career.
Felicity Lemke:
Sure. I’m Felicity Lemke, married for now 10 years. But when I was swimming I was Felicity Galvez and the gym that I own now is Galvanised Fitness and a pun on my swimming maiden surname, so Galvez. And yes, I was a professional athlete as a swimmer for 10 years. I went to two Olympic games, 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing. Beijing was where I came away with two super gold medals and I’ve got them here.
Mat Lock:
Ah, let’s have a look at them. I know you were a little reluctant in fairness, but we want to see them because they’re awesome and you worked hard for them.
Felicity Lemke:
That’s them there. So both in relays and as a heat swimmer, so it was one of these, and if you don’t mind me going into it, so one of these kinds of special moments where Australia was the only country at that Olympics in the swimming space that decided to take eight swimmers for the four by two and the four by one medley relay.
They swam a fresh four in the heats and a fresh four in the finals. Now the reason they did that was that for the first time ever, they swapped the heats and the finals times around. They had the heats in the night and the finals in the mornings. Total shift on what we were used to doing and what our bodies were used to doing and getting ready for. Everybody trains better at night time. If you’re going to go and do heavy lifts, you’re probably going to do them much better at night than you would in the morning.
Felicity Lemke:
And the same thing goes for racing as an athlete. Australian swimming thought, well, the best way to do this was to have fresh athletes for our heats so that we could qualify through as one of the favourites to go into the finals because it was tough. Everyone’s there with their best swimmers on the day. I was part of the heat swimmers for both the four by one medley relay and the four by two freestyle relay where we came away with a win and obviously, heat swimmers are valued just as much as the final swimmers and we got those gold medals as well. So it’s pretty cool.
Mat Lock:
Yes, that’s incredibly cool. I’m fortunate enough to have had the backstory before now when we’ve caught up and yes, I look forward to sharing that, but yes, absolutely. Congratulations to all of you. It’s an amazing achievement.
Felicity Lemke:
Yes, thank you.
Mat Lock:
I guess by diving straight to the Olympics and the gold medals, it overlooks a huge amount of work and training, and that must have been your life for many years to get to that point. It doesn’t happen by accident.
Felicity Lemke:
No, absolutely not. That was my job. I had a little gig on the side just working at the AIS where I was swimming, just to make a bit of money on the side as well, but it was two hours in the pool in the morning, two hours in the pool at night. Then in between that, we had an hour, an hour and a half of weights and then you’re trying to get your massage and physiotherapy done. Eating, because you can eat a huge amount of food as an athlete and then just trying to rest so that you can then prepare yourself for that afternoon session again. Pretty intense, yes.
Mat Lock:
Yes, absolutely. How many days a week would that be your regime?
Felicity Lemke:
So trained every day, Monday through to Friday and then we did big sessions on Saturday mornings, so we had Sundays off.
Mat Lock:
Literally off or active recovery?
Felicity Lemke:
No, everything you didn’t have to do anything. Yes.
Mat Lock:
That’s a heavy load. Just out of interest, not to dive into the details too much, but what caloric intake were you consuming and what would you have to eat?
Felicity Lemke:
I was one of those lucky people and I guess I still am now, where I can eat whatever I want and I don’t really have to watch my intake and calories. I didn’t ever watch calories and I still don’t watch calories, to the point where I was probably one of those athletes that had to make sure I was eating enough to keep the weight on. So I’d be doing threshold sets in the pool and then my coach would get me out. He’d tell me to smash down a power bar or something like that and a fruit tub and then keep swimming just because I would just lose weight.
Felicity Lemke:
Before Beijing Olympics, I was 58 kilos and my coach said if I dropped underneath that he wasn’t going to let me go. So I just had to work really hard on eating lots of food to try and maintain that 58 plus weight category otherwise…
Not that it mattered when it’s swimming, but you can be too lean and with a sport where everything’s about being buoyant, you want a little bit of fat on your body to be able to help with that buoyancy. So yes, it was something I had to think about. Just eating, not worrying about what I was eating.
Mat Lock:
Absolutely. And you’re right, you are lucky in that regard. Obviously a massive training load, but as you say, it was your job. That’s what you did full-time and I’m guessing that you also had loads of endorsements and a great salary from all of the programs that the government would run and so on, or was it actually a little bit harder than that? Was it making ends meet where possible and kind of limping along?
Felicity Lemke:
Yes, look, swimming, unless you were the Ian Thorpes and the Grant Hacketts and the Leisel Joneses, sponsorship wasn’t a big thing for the other 40 swimmers on the team every year. I was lucky in the fact that I had a scholarship at the AIS, so they supported us, they gave us a certain amount of money every year to help with either rent, or you could live on-site and then everything was kind of looked after for you. But as for making really good money and retiring and living on heaps, not so much.
For me anyway, but I’d always enter myself in some of the meets that you could go over and win great prize money just to be able to pocket some of that and put it away as savings.
Felicity Lemke:
So not a sport that I would tell people, “If you want to make a lot of money, go and do it.” Maybe do tennis or golf or something more amazing. But yes, swimming for me wasn’t about making money and I never started it because of that. I did it because I loved it. Walking away with a little bit in my back pocket was enough because winning those medals and all the memories and the world records that I broke was enough.
Mat Lock:
Priceless, in fact. Yes, literally priceless. But I think most sports are that way. There are very few sports, it’s really only the very pointy end of the stick that is earning major money. I guess soccer, football probably. At the end of the day, most sports are that way inclined and you knew that going into it. So money was never your motivation, right?
Felicity Lemke:
No, not at all, yes.
Mat Lock:
For sure. Was it very much a solo endeavor or was there… I mean obviously you won the medal as part of a team, but you also had world records as a solo swimmer. So would you describe the whole journey as a solo endeavor or was it a team effort?
Felicity Lemke:
It’s one of those funny ones. As a swimmer, you train in a squad, you’d know that with your triathlon training. I’m sure a lot of the times with your swimming stuff, you’re training with a squad. So you never really feel like you’re on your own until you get to the point where you sit down with your coach and go, “All right, what are my goals for this year? What do I want to personally achieve?” And then as a squad, you train and do it all together. But obviously the pressure is on you as an individual.
Felicity Lemke:
If you want to make the Olympic team, you’ve got to qualify individually or do the best race you can individually that then hopefully qualifies you not just for an individual event like I did for 2004 Olympics, but then hopefully your spot for one of those relays because they’re a pretty special thing to be part of. It’s one of those things that yes, it’s an individual sport, but because you get to train as a squad and you’re doing that training together and then you go away as a team, it almost doesn’t feel like it’s an individual sport. But at the end of the day, you stand behind those blocks and no one else has got your back other than yourself. So you definitely do feel like it is an individual sport when you’re standing there.
Mat Lock:
Yes. That’s an incredible if not surreal moment I can imagine. Talk us through the qualification process because certainly when we chatted about it before, it sounds really quite unforgiving. You have to bring your best game to that particular moment on that day. But yes, talk us through how that works.
Felicity Lemke:
Yes, well every year we have Australian titles, so our trials for whatever meet it is for that year. So whether it’s an Olympic year, we have that. We usually used to have it in April, and then obviously August is when the Olympics normally lands. Then the same thing every other year, whether there was World Championships or Commonwealth Games or, there was always one Olympic trial. One trial for it. With my events, I used to swim the 50, 100 and 200 butterfly, sometimes throw in the hundred freestyle and 200 freestyle, each of those at the long course meets would be a heat swim in the morning, in the afternoon or night and do a semi-final. Then the top eight summers go through to the final the next night. But then that next day you may have another event. You may have another heat some of some other event, and then you may have a semi-final and the final of another event on the same night.
Felicity Lemke:
So you could be backing up two to three times, and then if you’re swimming in a relay because you’re part of a club, you could have up to three to four swims each night as well. If you that meet, and a lot of athletes would know the whole taper sickness. So you train really hard and you put everything on the line and then you start tapering and you build down the kilometres or whatever, your strength work or whatever you’re doing in your specific sport. Then you get to the point where you’ve got minimal training in that week before your race meet, and your body can just go into a bit of a hole. There’s a thing that’s called taper sickness, and that’s that really fine line of just making sure that you’re resting enough, you’re eating the right stuff, you’re having all your supplements so that you’re keeping your body healthy, but not getting sick. Because we literally had one shot at it and if you are sick, that’s just unlucky. You’ll have had the best prep and it doesn’t matter.
Mat Lock:
Brutal.
Felicity Lemke:
Yes.
Mat Lock:
But it is the same for everyone, so I guess it is what it is. But nonetheless.
Felicity Lemke:
And look at the Olympics and World Championships, it’s not like they go, “Oh look, we’ll throw another meet on because Felicity was sick.” You have one shot and that’s it. It’s probably the best way to do it. As hard as it is, it’s no better way to prepare for something than doing it how it’s going to be in real life.
Mat Lock:
Yes, no, absolutely. Talk us through the first time you went to the Olympics because it’s something that the majority of athletes in the world will never do. Whatever sport they’re in. Was it as awesome as we’d like to imagine?
Felicity Lemke:
Yes, I think it’s amazing. I don’t think there are many opportunities where so many amazing athletes from all different sports and all different countries around the world can all come together into one place at the one time and all have their eyes set on the same prize. Those elusive gold, silver, and bronze medals. There’s only a handful of them to be handed out to so many athletes. To be able to sit down at these epically long dining tables in the food hall and sit with Roger Federer and Nadal and amazing people. And you’re just sitting there eating because that’s what you do. Then just walking around the village and you see these basketballers, they’re just these gigantic people. All different shapes and sizes and you’ve got little gymnasts that are amazing in what they do. And then you look next to them and they’ve got this Chinese basketballer and he’s like triple the size of these gymnasts. It’s just amazing to see, you’ve got your weightlifters and they’re so big. Just to be all in that one space at the one time was pretty amazing.
Mat Lock:
Yes, absolutely. Did you get star struck at all? Did you get to meet any of your heroes?
Felicity Lemke:
Oh look, I love tennis. I think I’ve said tennis about five times since we spoke. Yes, like when Nadal and Roger Federer were there and we’re literally sitting having dinner at the same table. It’s cool. You don’t really say anything or I didn’t, you’re just too scared. You just ask for the salt to be passed down…
Mat Lock:
Maybe they were having the same thought about you!
Felicity Lemke:
No doubt. There are times where you’re like, “Wow that’s so and so.” And you just all pretend to look away and not notice them, because you don’t really want to make that eye contact because it is scary.
Mat Lock:
Yes, sure. Yes, of course, then I guess it comes to the big day when you have to actually compete. Is that like a regular day in terms of the routine that you would go through in terms of eating, warm-up, and so on, or was it all a bit special?
Felicity Lemke:
It is a little bit different. When I was swimming, we did try to replicate events and races so that your body gets used to that whole routine of this is when we have to get up, this is what we need to do pre-warm-up. Then we go and eat and you have to eat a certain time before racing so that you don’t feel too sick. Then there’s the whole travel to the pool, do your warm-up at the pool, get your race suit on. Because that’s like a whole event in itself, which we’ve spoken about before.
Mat Lock:
We’ve got a video that we’re going to share later.
Felicity Lemke:
It was just part of making it as normal as possible so that when it becomes race day, you’ve got enough nerves, you’ve got enough uncertainty going on with racing people you’ve never raced, and possibly missing the bus because if they’re full and you have to wait for the next one and maybe being late to warm up. You almost have to go in with a really, whatever happens, happens attitude. If you go in with an attitude like that, you’re going to deal with it the best way you can because so much of it is unpredictable. A suit ripping. That was just part of what happened. So you take three into the change room, be ready for two to break, and hope that that third one doesn’t so that you’re ready to go out and race. It’s just another thing. It’s weird. Yes.
Mat Lock:
Yes. Actually speaking of the suits, we had some fun. You hosted us, we stayed at your home with your family a couple of months ago, and because Ned wanted to see them all, you were kind enough to get them out and were showing us how they worked. The technology that goes into those is incredible, isn’t it?
Felicity Lemke:
Yes, absolutely.
Mat Lock:
Yours were even a special order, where were they coming from?
Felicity Lemke:
Japan.
Mat Lock:
Japan.
Felicity Lemke:
I was 10 to 12 kilos lighter than I am now. The swimming suits that were made by Speedo in Australia just weren’t small enough to fit my frame. So they had to order special size ones from Japan to bring them out for me and a couple of other girls on the team, just because you need them to be as tight as anything to be able to hold everything in so that you didn’t have any drag so that when you dived in, there weren’t big bubbles.
Felicity Lemke:
This photo that I feel like you’re going to share with everyone, I’m kind of like holding my chest [inaudible 00:17:36] so that everybody knows. What you do is you grab water and you push it all onto your body and then you flatten out the suit so that when you dive in, there’s no gap between your body and the suit. It kind of sticks to it and then it doesn’t let the air bubbles go in the suit, which makes it [inaudible 00:17:56] drag and then super uncomfortable. The last thing you need to feel is a bubble floating around in your belly when you’re swimming.
Mat Lock:
Yes, no, sure enough. Well, I wasn’t going to use that photo, but now I’m going to, and I’m pretty sure when I sent it to you earlier and asked what you were doing, your comment was that that’s how professional athletes warm-up and that’s why I wouldn’t know that. I believe your second comment was I was warming my chest up for a gold medal, which was perfect.
Felicity Lemke:
Everyone’s like, “Oh, she’s cocky.”
Mat Lock:
Well, maybe it was your second. You’d already got the first one. Those suits are incredible. When we were at your house you did the whole pour water onto it, it was just crazy. It repelled the water even before it came into contact with it, it looked like. Incredible. Yes, amazing technology. So in the interest of time, and I’m conscious of your time, was it euphoric, that moment when you realised that you’d got your first gold, you were part of the team and you’d got the first gold. How was that moment?
Felicity Lemke:
Do you know, it’s funny, I just got invited to Queensland. Obviously, because of the girls… The Olympics was meant to happen to this year, so they invited the four by two freestyle relay girls to Queensland because they had a staging camp for the prospective four by two freestyle relay girls for this year, now it’s next year. As almost like a mentorship program for them to talk to us and delve into how we dealt with it and what we felt and how we prepared and what were the kind of things [inaudible 00:19:39] to make it difficult. We touched on this and it hasn’t been years since I’ve spoken about how it felt or really dove into it since I guess I retired.
Felicity Lemke:
I don’t feel like I was super happy for myself. It was more those four girls because that feeling of when you’re behind the blocks and you’re doing it not just for yourself but for the four other girls in the heats, and that was myself and the three other girls. You just want to produce the best swim you possibly can because it isn’t just about you. It’s about those three other girls. And then for us, it was the three other girls in our heat and then the four other girls that were hopefully going to qualify for that final. For me we did our job, we qualified those girls for the final, and then when they touched the wall and that four by two we won, and we weren’t meant to. We were the underdogs. We were in lane seven, they thought America was going to take it and they should have, but we just put four exceptional swims together on the day and did it.
Felicity Lemke:
For me it was knowing what those girls have felt for the past eight minutes or just under, knowing that they touched the wall and they won, and they broke a world record at the same time. Just that elation of knowing that they’ve done it and yes, we helped them get there, but it was just that sense of relief that that’s what they did and knowing that feeling that they would be feeling, I actually felt that, but it wasn’t like, “Yes, I got the medal.” It was more that we did it. We did it as a team and we’ve represented our country in the best way possible.
Mat Lock:
Absolutely. She said taking out a world record at the same time.
Felicity Lemke:
Yes.
Mat Lock:
That’s spectacular, and what an absolutely amazing journey. I guess just to touch on very briefly, I guess the Olympics as we now know, have been shifted to next year, to 2021 on the back of COVID-19. Can you imagine the impact of that, how it must feel for all of the athletes affected by that necessary decision?
Felicity Lemke:
Look, I have talked about this a little bit because I’ve had a few people ask me that same question, and I think it’s affected, everyone. We’re all in the same boat. It’s not like it’s unfair for some countries and fair for others. I think there’s a certain period of time, and this happened for me as I’m sure it’s happened for everybody else in the last few weeks. We’ve gone through a huge change in our lives. I had a day where I had a massive meltdown and I cried and I lost it, and then I gathered everything together, pulled all my shit together because I think.
Mat Lock:
Yes, absolutely.
Felicity Lemke:
Then just thought, “Well, you know what, there’s no point whinging and moaning about it. Just get on with it and make the best you can of it.” You know what, if you were going into trials, which they were going to go into in the next few months and you hadn’t had the best prep, well then you’ve just won yourself another year of prep. Great. If you were going in with the best prep, you just go, “Well, I’m in the best shape I’m in now. Just maintain it.” And that’s not hard to do. It’s just about resetting those goals and I’ve had to readjust my whole business model with my gym, and thanks to you helping me with Zoom, I’m now discovering that I’m now pushing myself out of my comfort zone and my clients are loving it and I’m like secretly loving it too. It’s kind of special. I still get to sit down and have dinner with my family because I’m Zooming from my garage and I finish that and I come up and I have dinner.
Felicity Lemke:
There are little highlights and little golden nuggets that come out of this. And I think it’s the attitude that you take and the positive way you look at stuff, is what is going to make or break you at the end of the day. So everyone’s Olympics has been postponed. It’s not just Australia, it’s not just that individual athlete. Everyone is in the same boat. So you’ve just got to go, “Righto, we’re all in this together. See what you can do. Ships in the night.” Whilst other people might be whinging and moaning about it, be one of the ships in the night that just keep moving, and then you just take control. I just think it’s an opportunity more than anything.
Mat Lock:
Yes, absolutely. I was chatting with [inaudible 00:24:03] earlier, and we came to the conclusion, I referenced Mike Riley [inaudible 00:24:10] basically said that on race day in his case he always briefs athletes. He said, “There’s only one thing you can control and that’s your attitude. So be nice to everyone. Stay positive and know that you have got control of your attitude if nothing else.” I think that’s applicable here because there’s so much uncertainty around the whole COVID-19 topic. However, there are things absolutely in our control and the more we focus on those and take control of them, the better off we’ll be.
Felicity Lemke:
Absolutely, yes.
Mat Lock:
Very good. So Felicity, if anyone wanted to reach out and get in touch with you, what would be the best way that they could do that?
Felicity Lemke:
Well, if they wanted to get in touch with me, they can look up Instagram. So swim fit chick is me. And then there’s also Galvanised Fitness on Instagram as well. Otherwise, search websites, Galvanised Fitness is my gym website as well.
Mat Lock:
Absolutely. And do you have a Wikipedia page as well? You’re welcome.
Mat Lock:
I’ll put all of those links and so on down in the show notes as well. But Felicity, thank you ever so much for your time. Always a pleasure, you know that. And look forward to speaking to you in the next episode.
Felicity Lemke:
Awesome. Thank you.
