Kevin O'Halloran
Encyclopedia
Kevin O'Halloran was an Australian freestyle
swimmer of the 1950s, who won a gold medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay at the 1956 Summer Olympics
in Melbourne
. The first Western Australian to win Olympic gold, O'Halloran learnt to swim in his home town of Katanning. He moved to Perth
to attend secondary schooling at Guildford Grammar School
, where he began swimming passionately. Competitive swimming was not well developed in Western Australia; races were held in muddy river pools, so in late 1955, O'Halloran moved to the east coast to support his attempt to qualify for the Olympics. His new coach, Frank Guthrie
, overhauled his training regimen, and within a year, O'Halloran had reduced his times by approximately 10%. He gained Olympic selection in the relay and the 400 m freestyle. O'Halloran led off the Australian quartet on the way to a new world record, before placing sixth in the 400 m. Thereafter, O'Halloran's career was beset by ear problems, and he retired in 1958 after failing to qualify for the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
. In 1976, O'Halloran died after tripping and accidentally shooting himself.
Katanning was one of the few country towns in Western Australia that had a public swimming pool. Along with his siblings, O'Halloran learned to swim there, often defeating local boys who were four years his senior. At the age of eight, he was taught to swim competitively by his teacher at Katanning State Primary School, who was an age group champion in her youth. The boom in wool prices at the time of the Korean War
inflated his family's income, allowing them to send O'Halloran to Guildford Grammar School
in Perth
, the state's capital city. At the age of 14, he won five events in the school championships, and led the school to its first state championship in 29 years. He also competed for his school in Australian rules football
and rowing
.
O'Halloran attracted the attention of the leading Western Australian coach Don Gravenall, but his schoolwork limited him to a few weeks of intense training over Christmas. In 1952, at the age of 15, O'Halloran began to make his mark at the state level. He played a major role in Guildford's win at the interschool championships, placing second in the individual points tally. He won the 100 m freestyle, 50 m breaststroke and 400 m freestyle.
Competitive swimming was slow to develop in Western Australia and O'Halloran's state debut came in 1952, only the second time the Western Australian Championships had been held. He won the junior 110 yd freestyle and butterfly and the 220 yd freestyle and was second in the open 110 yd freestyle, in a muddy pool on the Swan River
in the Perth suburb of Crawley
. The arena was such that the bottom could not be seen and jellyfish
lurked in the area, sometimes climbing onto the swimmers' bodies. When O'Halloran returned to his home, he often trained in a muddy waterhole.
title to the successful defence of his freestyle crowns. In his final year at Guildford, O'Halloran was the School Captain, led the swimming and shooting team, and was a member of the rowing eights in the Head of the River
. O'Halloran made his national debut at the 1955 Australian Championships in Adelaide
; he finished fifth in the 110 yd freestyle behind future Olympians Jon Henricks
and John Devitt
.
Upon the recommendation of his parents, O'Halloran moved to Sydney in late 1955 to train with Frank Guthrie
in an attempt to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics
in Melbourne
, Australia. O'Halloran boarded with a host family and worked in a wool store to pay his expenses. O'Halloran's initiation into Guthrie's training program was difficult. After seeing O'Halloran's freestyle technique for the first time, Guthrie asked him "Can you swim any other stroke? If you are going to swim for me you'll have to learn all over again." O'Halloran refined his style and increased his workload to around 10 km a day, something that was normal for competitive swimmers in the eastern states, but uncommon in Western Australia. In one month, he cut 17 s off his personal best time in the 440 yd freestyle, reducing it to 4 min 55 s. At the 1956 New South Wales Championships, he finished third in the 220 yd freestyle behind Gary Chapman
and Devitt; his time of 2 min 12.6 s was 10 s faster than the times he had recorded in Western Australia. He came fourth in both the 110 yd and 440 yd; his time in the latter event was more than 30 s faster than his best time in Western Australia, and in the former event he breached the 60 s barrier for the first time. At the Australian Championships, he came third in the 440 yd freestyle in a time of 4 min 37.8 s behind Murray Rose
and Murray Garretty. He did this despite suffering from ear trouble, making him the fifth fastest swimmer in the world for the calendar year, which earned him an individual berth in the 400 m event at the Olympics. O'Halloran came fourth in the 220 yd in a time of 2 min 9.2 s to earn a berth on the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay squad. With Rose, Henricks and Chapman regarded as certain selections for the final quartet, O'Halloran was expected to battle for the fourth relay position. At the end of the trials, Guthrie claimed that O'Halloran was "the find of the recently held Australian Championships and the future swimmer for Australia. I am confident that we did not see Kevin's best times this season."
, and qualified fifth fastest behind Japan and the United States. Australia led from the start and reached the midpoint of the race with a lead of 4.5 s. Hamilton swam a very slow third leg of 2 min 15.4 s and conceded 8.8 s to the British.
Australia's final quartet was much stronger, with Rose winning the 400 m freestyle, and Henricks and Devitt winning the gold and silver medals respectively in the 100 m freestyle. Devitt had forced his way into the team with his heat swim of 2 min 7.5 s, which was the second fastest among all of the swimmers in the heats. With four of the five fastest individual swimmers in the calendar year for the event, Australia was heavily favoured to win the relay; Sports Illustrated
predicting a world record and a victory margin of around 14 metres.
O'Halloran's inclusion at the expense of Chapman was the subject of controversy, because Chapman had won bronze in the 100 m event and was the national 220 yd freestyle champion. O'Halloran's selection also broke up the team of Devitt, Rose, Chapman and Henricks, which had won the relay for New South Wales at the Australian Championships. O'Halloran led off and put Australia in the lead with an Olympic record time of 2 min 6.8 s, opening a gap of 0.7 s over the Soviet Union and 1.2 s over the United States. The fourth-placed Italians were already a full three seconds in arrears. Australia never relinquished the lead and steadily increased it, as Devitt, Rose and Henricks set the three fastest splits in the race, quicker than all the non-Australian swimmers. O'Halloran's split was the fifth fastest in the race; the Soviet anchor swimmer was the only non-Australian to swim faster, and only by 0.1 s despite having the benefit of a flying start. This resulted in Australia winning gold in a world record time of 8 min 23.6 s, almost eight seconds ahead of the second-place Americans and 13 ahead of the Soviets. The win made O'Halloran the first Western Australian to win any Olympic medal.
In his only individual event, O'Halloran qualified for the 400 m final, having won his heat in a time of 4 min 36.8 s, 0.5 s ahead of Japan's Koji Nonoshita. However, his heat was relatively slow, meaning that he was the sixth fastest qualifier. Swimming from lane seven, O'Halloran cut almost 4 s off his personal best to lose the bronze medal to the United States' George Breen
by 0.4 s, in a race won by Rose. O'Halloran reduced Breen's margin by 1.3 s in the last 100 m, but it was not enough as he finished in a time of 4 min 32.9 s. O'Halloran returned to Perth after the Olympics to be welcomed by a motorcade and a civic reception. He was named as one of the five Western Australian Sportspeople of the Year in recognition of his winning performance. Despite his achievements, the state government ignored calls for Western Australia to build an Olympic standard swimming pool, until constructing one for the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
in Perth.
in Cardiff
and retired after the long car journey back across the Nullarbor. Upon arriving in Kojonup, O'Halloran was reported to have said, "I've had enough". O'Halloran then worked full-time on the family property.
In 1976, his body was discovered next to a rifle, near a fence on the property; he had tripped as he climbed through the fence, and accidentally shot himself. O'Halloran had never married. The 50 m pool at Kojonup was named the Kevin O'Halloran Memorial Pool in his honour, and he was posthumously inducted into the Western Australian Hall of Champions.
Freestyle swimming
Freestyle is an unregulated swimming style used in swimming competitions according to the rules of FINA. The front crawl stroke is almost universally used during a freestyle race, as this style is generally the fastest...
swimmer of the 1950s, who won a gold medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay at the 1956 Summer Olympics
1956 Summer Olympics
The 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, which could not be held in Australia due to quarantine regulations...
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. The first Western Australian to win Olympic gold, O'Halloran learnt to swim in his home town of Katanning. He moved to Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
to attend secondary schooling at Guildford Grammar School
Guildford Grammar School
Guildford Grammar School, informally known as Guildford Grammar, Guildford or GGS, is an independent, day and boarding school for boys situated in Guildford, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia....
, where he began swimming passionately. Competitive swimming was not well developed in Western Australia; races were held in muddy river pools, so in late 1955, O'Halloran moved to the east coast to support his attempt to qualify for the Olympics. His new coach, Frank Guthrie
Frank Guthrie
Frank Edward Huntingdon Guthrie was an England born South African international rugby union half-back. Although born in Notting Hill, London, Guthrie was educated at Diocesan College in Cape Town, where he also played provincial rugby for Western Province...
, overhauled his training regimen, and within a year, O'Halloran had reduced his times by approximately 10%. He gained Olympic selection in the relay and the 400 m freestyle. O'Halloran led off the Australian quartet on the way to a new world record, before placing sixth in the 400 m. Thereafter, O'Halloran's career was beset by ear problems, and he retired in 1958 after failing to qualify for the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
The 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Cardiff, capital of Wales from 18–26 July 1958.Thirty-five nations sent a total of 1,130 athletes and 228 officials to the Cardiff Games and 23 countries and dependencies won medals, including, for the first time, Singapore, Ghana, Kenya...
. In 1976, O'Halloran died after tripping and accidentally shooting himself.
Early years
Born in Katanning, O'Halloran grew up on his family's 9000 acres (36.4 km²) sheep property at Kojonup—40 km (24.9 mi) to the west of his birthplace—on a property established by his grandfather in 1900. He had two brothers and a sister. After his father enlisted during the Second World War, his mother could no longer run the farm and raise the children by herself, so the family moved to Katanning for seven years.Katanning was one of the few country towns in Western Australia that had a public swimming pool. Along with his siblings, O'Halloran learned to swim there, often defeating local boys who were four years his senior. At the age of eight, he was taught to swim competitively by his teacher at Katanning State Primary School, who was an age group champion in her youth. The boom in wool prices at the time of the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
inflated his family's income, allowing them to send O'Halloran to Guildford Grammar School
Guildford Grammar School
Guildford Grammar School, informally known as Guildford Grammar, Guildford or GGS, is an independent, day and boarding school for boys situated in Guildford, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia....
in Perth
Perth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, the state's capital city. At the age of 14, he won five events in the school championships, and led the school to its first state championship in 29 years. He also competed for his school in Australian rules football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
and rowing
Sport rowing
Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...
.
O'Halloran attracted the attention of the leading Western Australian coach Don Gravenall, but his schoolwork limited him to a few weeks of intense training over Christmas. In 1952, at the age of 15, O'Halloran began to make his mark at the state level. He played a major role in Guildford's win at the interschool championships, placing second in the individual points tally. He won the 100 m freestyle, 50 m breaststroke and 400 m freestyle.
Competitive swimming was slow to develop in Western Australia and O'Halloran's state debut came in 1952, only the second time the Western Australian Championships had been held. He won the junior 110 yd freestyle and butterfly and the 220 yd freestyle and was second in the open 110 yd freestyle, in a muddy pool on the Swan River
Swan River (Western Australia)
The Swan River estuary flows through the city of Perth, in the south west of Western Australia. Its lower reaches are relatively wide and deep, with few constrictions, while the upper reaches are usually quite narrow and shallow....
in the Perth suburb of Crawley
Crawley, Western Australia
Crawley is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located within the City of Subiaco.The earlier name of the locality was Crawley Park.It is home to the University of Western Australia, the state's oldest and most prestigious university...
. The arena was such that the bottom could not be seen and jellyfish
Jellyfish
Jellyfish are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria. Medusa is another word for jellyfish, and refers to any free-swimming jellyfish stages in the phylum Cnidaria...
lurked in the area, sometimes climbing onto the swimmers' bodies. When O'Halloran returned to his home, he often trained in a muddy waterhole.
Swimming career
In 1953, O'Halloran placed second in the 110 yd and 440 yd freestyle events at the Western Australian Championships in the open division and won the 110 yd breaststroke and the 110 and 220 yd freestyle in the junior division. In the process, he cut six seconds from the state record in the 440 yd event. He was selected for the Western Australian team for the Australian Championships, but his parents and headmaster decided that his schooling was more important, much to Gravenall's chagrin. In 1954, O'Halloran was the state champion in the 110 yd and 220 yd freestyle, and in 1955 he added the 440 yd individual medleyMedley swimming
Medley is a combination of four different swimming styles into one race. This race is either swum by one swimmer as individual medley or by four swimmers as a medley relay...
title to the successful defence of his freestyle crowns. In his final year at Guildford, O'Halloran was the School Captain, led the swimming and shooting team, and was a member of the rowing eights in the Head of the River
Head of the River (Western Australia)
The Head of the River rowing regatta is an annual rowing event held on the Champion Lakes in Western Australia. There are two separate events; a boys regatta , and a girls regatta ....
. O'Halloran made his national debut at the 1955 Australian Championships in Adelaide
Adelaide
Adelaide is the capital city of South Australia and the fifth-largest city in Australia. Adelaide has an estimated population of more than 1.2 million...
; he finished fifth in the 110 yd freestyle behind future Olympians Jon Henricks
Jon Henricks
John Malcolm Henricks started his swimming career as a distance swimmer, scoring his first real successes in 1952 when he came in 3rd in the Australian 1500 meters, 2nd in the 800, and won the 400 meters. The distance work proved too arduous, perhaps due to a prolonged ear infection that kept...
and John Devitt
John Devitt
John Thomas Devitt was an Australian sprint freestyle swimmer of the 1960s, who won a gold medal in the 100 m freestyle at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. He won in controversial circumstances, being awarded the gold medal despite the timekeepers recording a slower time than the silver medallist...
.
Upon the recommendation of his parents, O'Halloran moved to Sydney in late 1955 to train with Frank Guthrie
Frank Guthrie
Frank Edward Huntingdon Guthrie was an England born South African international rugby union half-back. Although born in Notting Hill, London, Guthrie was educated at Diocesan College in Cape Town, where he also played provincial rugby for Western Province...
in an attempt to qualify for the 1956 Summer Olympics
1956 Summer Olympics
The 1956 Melbourne Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XVI Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, with the exception of the equestrian events, which could not be held in Australia due to quarantine regulations...
in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia. O'Halloran boarded with a host family and worked in a wool store to pay his expenses. O'Halloran's initiation into Guthrie's training program was difficult. After seeing O'Halloran's freestyle technique for the first time, Guthrie asked him "Can you swim any other stroke? If you are going to swim for me you'll have to learn all over again." O'Halloran refined his style and increased his workload to around 10 km a day, something that was normal for competitive swimmers in the eastern states, but uncommon in Western Australia. In one month, he cut 17 s off his personal best time in the 440 yd freestyle, reducing it to 4 min 55 s. At the 1956 New South Wales Championships, he finished third in the 220 yd freestyle behind Gary Chapman
Gary Chapman (swimmer)
Gary Arthur Chapman was an Australian freestyle swimmer of the 1950s who won a bronze medal in the 100m freestyle at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics...
and Devitt; his time of 2 min 12.6 s was 10 s faster than the times he had recorded in Western Australia. He came fourth in both the 110 yd and 440 yd; his time in the latter event was more than 30 s faster than his best time in Western Australia, and in the former event he breached the 60 s barrier for the first time. At the Australian Championships, he came third in the 440 yd freestyle in a time of 4 min 37.8 s behind Murray Rose
Murray Rose
Iain Murray Rose AM was born on 6 January 1939 in Nairn, Scotland, but he moved to Australia with his family at an early age after World War II. He took up swimming as a boy and was an Olympic Games champion at age 17....
and Murray Garretty. He did this despite suffering from ear trouble, making him the fifth fastest swimmer in the world for the calendar year, which earned him an individual berth in the 400 m event at the Olympics. O'Halloran came fourth in the 220 yd in a time of 2 min 9.2 s to earn a berth on the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay squad. With Rose, Henricks and Chapman regarded as certain selections for the final quartet, O'Halloran was expected to battle for the fourth relay position. At the end of the trials, Guthrie claimed that O'Halloran was "the find of the recently held Australian Championships and the future swimmer for Australia. I am confident that we did not see Kevin's best times this season."
1956 Melbourne Olympics
Having arrived in Melbourne, O'Halloran was rested—along with Rose and Henricks—in the heats of the relay. Devitt, Chapman, Graham Hamilton and Garretty finished third in their heat behind Great Britain and the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, and qualified fifth fastest behind Japan and the United States. Australia led from the start and reached the midpoint of the race with a lead of 4.5 s. Hamilton swam a very slow third leg of 2 min 15.4 s and conceded 8.8 s to the British.
Australia's final quartet was much stronger, with Rose winning the 400 m freestyle, and Henricks and Devitt winning the gold and silver medals respectively in the 100 m freestyle. Devitt had forced his way into the team with his heat swim of 2 min 7.5 s, which was the second fastest among all of the swimmers in the heats. With four of the five fastest individual swimmers in the calendar year for the event, Australia was heavily favoured to win the relay; Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated is an American sports media company owned by media conglomerate Time Warner. Its self titled magazine has over 3.5 million subscribers and is read by 23 million adults each week, including over 18 million men. It was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the...
predicting a world record and a victory margin of around 14 metres.
O'Halloran's inclusion at the expense of Chapman was the subject of controversy, because Chapman had won bronze in the 100 m event and was the national 220 yd freestyle champion. O'Halloran's selection also broke up the team of Devitt, Rose, Chapman and Henricks, which had won the relay for New South Wales at the Australian Championships. O'Halloran led off and put Australia in the lead with an Olympic record time of 2 min 6.8 s, opening a gap of 0.7 s over the Soviet Union and 1.2 s over the United States. The fourth-placed Italians were already a full three seconds in arrears. Australia never relinquished the lead and steadily increased it, as Devitt, Rose and Henricks set the three fastest splits in the race, quicker than all the non-Australian swimmers. O'Halloran's split was the fifth fastest in the race; the Soviet anchor swimmer was the only non-Australian to swim faster, and only by 0.1 s despite having the benefit of a flying start. This resulted in Australia winning gold in a world record time of 8 min 23.6 s, almost eight seconds ahead of the second-place Americans and 13 ahead of the Soviets. The win made O'Halloran the first Western Australian to win any Olympic medal.
In his only individual event, O'Halloran qualified for the 400 m final, having won his heat in a time of 4 min 36.8 s, 0.5 s ahead of Japan's Koji Nonoshita. However, his heat was relatively slow, meaning that he was the sixth fastest qualifier. Swimming from lane seven, O'Halloran cut almost 4 s off his personal best to lose the bronze medal to the United States' George Breen
George Breen
George Breen is a retired freestyle swimmer from the United States, who has won four Olympic medals in his career. Breen twice broke the world record in the 1500 m freestyle....
by 0.4 s, in a race won by Rose. O'Halloran reduced Breen's margin by 1.3 s in the last 100 m, but it was not enough as he finished in a time of 4 min 32.9 s. O'Halloran returned to Perth after the Olympics to be welcomed by a motorcade and a civic reception. He was named as one of the five Western Australian Sportspeople of the Year in recognition of his winning performance. Despite his achievements, the state government ignored calls for Western Australia to build an Olympic standard swimming pool, until constructing one for the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
The 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Perth, Western Australia, Australia from 22 November-1 December 1962. Athletic events were held at Perry Lakes Stadium in the suburb of Floreat and swimming events at Beatty Park in North Perth....
in Perth.
Later years
In 1958, O'Halloran's parents traveled across the continent to watch him swim at the Australian Championships in Sydney, but a recurring ear infection hindered his performances. He missed selection for the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games
The 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Cardiff, capital of Wales from 18–26 July 1958.Thirty-five nations sent a total of 1,130 athletes and 228 officials to the Cardiff Games and 23 countries and dependencies won medals, including, for the first time, Singapore, Ghana, Kenya...
in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
and retired after the long car journey back across the Nullarbor. Upon arriving in Kojonup, O'Halloran was reported to have said, "I've had enough". O'Halloran then worked full-time on the family property.
In 1976, his body was discovered next to a rifle, near a fence on the property; he had tripped as he climbed through the fence, and accidentally shot himself. O'Halloran had never married. The 50 m pool at Kojonup was named the Kevin O'Halloran Memorial Pool in his honour, and he was posthumously inducted into the Western Australian Hall of Champions.