Coaching royalty’s southern sojourn

Graeme Laing has coached Olympians and runs a busy swim school in the North Island.

But the son of Duncan Laing, coach of double Olympic freestyle gold winner Danyon Loader, still finds time to travel south to teach children in a remote southern community how to swim.

In January it will be 22 years that Laing has trekked south in his summer break to coach at Blackmount pool in western Southland.

Laing takes between 60 and 80 children aged four to 10 for two lessons a day for five days at the community-owned pool.

He’s been described by a Blackmount parent as a “horse whisperer” for his knack for taking children afraid to put their heads under the water at the start of lessons and having them swim a pool width by the end of a week.

Families travel from Tuatapere, Te Anau and other parts of Northern Southland so their children can get lessons with the swim coach.

Laing runs the Laing Swim School in Matamata in Waikato where he has about 60 swimmers in his swim squad and 300 in his learn-to-swim programme.

Over his three-week Christmas and the New Year break he will also teach children to swim at Ranfurly in Central Otago and Tapanui in west Otago.

At other times he ventures south to coach in other rural towns including Te Anau where for the past 13 years he has run a weekend coaching clinic.

Laing says his trip south at Christmas is an opportunity to spend time with his mum Betty in Dunedin where he was raised.

“It is a bit of a holiday for me as well so it works out pretty good because we do it around Christmas when I have some time off,” says Laing.

Family firm

Laing is part of New Zealand’s swim-coaching royalty.

His father Duncan ran a swim school at Moana Pool in Dunedin for more than 40 years where he coached Loader, winner of a silver medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 and two golds at the 1996 Atlanta games.

Laing senior, who died in 2008, also coached Philip Rush, the world record holder for the fastest two- and three-way swims of the English Channel.

Laing junior has coached New Zealand swimmers including Matthew Stanley and Lauren Boyle and was assistant coach of the New Zealand swimming team at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

He is a former national age group champion in freestyle and butterfly and has won the nationals in freestyle.

In the early 1980s he was a New Zealand representative in both surf lifesaving and water polo.

Laing also played rugby for Otago.

His annual treks to Blackmount, a farming community at the foot of the Tākatimu Mountains, began after a request from a Southland mum.

Vicky Reid would take her children to Dunedin for swim lessons in the school holidays.

“They would come and do lessons with Dad and me at Moana Pool,” says Laing.

Reid asked Laing if he would consider travelling south because it would be easier to host him than take a group of children to Dunedin.

Trudy Slee, who was on the Blackmount pool committee, says Reid, a friend, asked her, “What do you think about this guy Graeme, would you close the pool for a week so he could run lessons?”

After the first week they knew they were on to something good, says Slee.

“When we realised we had this gem we would do anything to get him back the following year – it was amazing,” she says.

He taught 45 swimmers in the first year and in subsequent years numbers had to be capped and there were waiting lists.

Horse whisperer

Laing’s visits south are special and important Slee says 

“It sends shivers when you think of the number of kids he would have taught to swim,” she says, guessing at a total of about 600 children over two decades at Blackmount pool.

His ability to get kids who start out petrified of water to relax, float and begin swimming prompted one parent to compare him to a horse whisperer.

Slee and her husband Richard host Laing for the week at Wairaki Station near Blackmount, repaying him with generous catering, rounds of golf, jet-boat rides and rabbit shooting.

Laing has taught the couple’s four children to swim.

Laing and Slee made a pact after the first couple of years that Laing would stop coaching at Blackmount when Sarah, Slee’s youngest, met a certain milestone.

“We came to an arrangement that when Sarah was able to swim a pool length I would stop,” says Laing.

“But I think Sarah is about 18 now so it sort of carried on,” he says.

Slee says it’s a “really neat story” that Laing said yes at the outset and coaches still.

“He is such a big softy – ‘Oh, okay I will come back another year’ – and now it is just set in concrete that he is coming. So it is lovely,” she says.

Local adults have also benefitted from free lessons.

Laing finds the teaching rewarding and some of those he has taught at Blackmount have gone on to compete for their province and nationally.

The most successful has been Amie Pratt, 19, whom Laing taught to swim at age five.

Pratt has won medals at nationals, swum in Fiji’s national championships and represented New Zealand at a state championship meet in Canberra.

Laing says if it wasn’t for the need to close the pool during the colder months or the distance to a main centre more of his Blackmount learners could have prospered.

“A lot of them, if they had moved to town or to where there is lots of training going on, could easily have gone on and swum really well,” he says.

Important life skill

“There are two ways I look at swimming – as a life skill and as a sport.

“If you decide to carry on and do training it becomes a sport but when you are learning to swim it is a life skill and some people get lost with that.

“In New Zealand it’s vital that kids who can’t get into the main pools learn to swim.

“You can’t go 10 minutes without either hitting a lake, river or pool,” he says.

Slee agrees, saying Blackmount is surrounded by water.

“We have the Wairaurāhiri River, the Waiau and lakes Monowai, Manapouri and Te Anau.

“It’s just an absolute necessity, isn’t it?” says Slee.

Laing has coached for 40 years and as his father did he teaches all ages and abilities.

When he was a pupil in Dunedin at Otago Boys High School he would cross the road to Moana Pool and join in “the family business”.

“I would either help Dad or take a couple of lessons and then it slowly progressed from there.”

It was Danyon Loader’s success that propelled Laing into a coaching career.

With his father busy with Loader in the build-up to the 1996 Olympics, Graeme stepped up.

“That changed everything for me. I had to take all the lessons so Dad could get away all the time.

“I wouldn’t have changed anything,” he says, even though it took him away from rugby.

“It was enjoyable playing rugby but it was also rewarding for the kids and was rewarding for the family with Danyon winning Olympic gold,” says Laing.

The Blackmount pool is community-owned and is on a former school site.

When a dwindling roll closed the 103-year-old Blackmount school in 2014, the community bought the land including a tennis court and school buildings from the Crown.

“It is now our community centre where we have local events,” says Slee.

“It’s pretty special.”

A group of local men decided the community needed a pool and funds were raised for a deposit by doing up and selling holiday homes.

Further funding came from the Ministry of Education, the Community Trust of Southland and other sources, says Slee.

She says Laing tells parents at the end of the week-long lessons: “You guys are so lucky to have this amazing pool.

“You’ve had your lessons this week – all you have to do now is spend some time with your kids at the pool.”

Community grants over the years have kept the lessons cheap by city standards.

For the past few years support from the Syd Slee Charitable Trust has covered the cost of pool hire and grants from Meridian Energy and Clifden Rural Women have subsidised the lessons.

That backing keeps the lessons going.

“I will just keep doing it until they don’t want it anymore,” says Laing.

Made with the support of the Public Interest Journalism Fund