IT was the fearlessness of youth.
At just 15, Hayley Lewis won five gold medals at the Auckland Commonwealth Games, swimming her way into Australian folklore and the nation’s heart.
Lewis won the 200m and 400m freestyle, 200m butterfly, 400m individual medley and 4x200m freestyle relay but remained charmingly unaffected, telling commentators at the end of the meet how much she was looking forward to heading back to Brisbane for the GPS schools carnival the following week.
Clubmate Lisa Curry, who trained alongside Lewis with legendary coach Joe King, was a senior member of the Auckland Games team, making a comeback to international competition eight years after bagging her own medal haul at the Brisbane Commonwealth Games.
Curry said Lewis’s apparent winning ease belied the amount of work she had done behind the scenes to prepare for her first international competition.
“She was a really hard worker, I always remember that.
“I was doing sprints and I’d made a comeback and I’d go down and train and she’d be doing ten times the amount that I was,” said Curry, who won three gold and a silver in Auckland.
Lewis’s natural competitive instinct served her well in Auckland where she seemed to be oblivious to the magnitude of her achievements.
“You know when you’re young and you don’t think too much about things, you don’t over-analyse,” Curry said.
“She did a super job at those Games and I know that our coach Joe King was very proud of us, it was a very special time.”
A shy teen, Lewis later told News Corp it had been difficult to come to grips with the attention.
“I remember thinking, I just want to go home, go back to school and be normal,” she said.
“As soon as I got home, the phone started ringing off the hook.
“So many people and companies asked me to do ads, speak at engagements and offered me lots of money.
“But there was no way I’d do it; I was just a kid and way too shy.”
Curry had a great appreciation of what Lewis was achieving.
As a 20-year-old at the 1982 Brisbane Games, Curry won three gold medals — and could have had five if the Australian women weren’t among the many teams disqualified in the relays as swimmers came to grips with the electronic touch pads being used for the first time.
She did not see Lewis’s achievements as a reflection of her own but recognised that fearlessness that her young teammate brought to the meet.
“Hayley was a good racer, she was a good trainer and deserved all her success,” Curry said.
Her performances planted the seed for other racers though.
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Susie O’Neill, was just a year older than Lewis when she made her debut as a 16-year-old in Auckland, winning a gold in the freestyle sprint relay.
But she eventually beat the record shard by Lewis and track athlete Decima Norman when she won six gold at the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur.
