Champion's Mojo for Masters Swimmers
The award-winning podcast for Masters swimmers, adult athletes, and health and wellness seekers striving for personal excellence. Join your host, world-record-setting Masters swimmer, former NCAA Division I swim coach, best-selling author and health coach Kelly Palace, as she dives into inspiring stories, expert insights, and proven strategies to help you unlock your champion mindset. A podcast that champions you!
Champion's Mojo for Masters Swimmers
The Secret to Olympic & Masters Legend Rick Colella's Lifelong Success, EP 281
Ready for an extraordinary tale of athletic longevity? At 73 years old Rick Colella's swimming journey spans from Olympic medals to over 50 Masters World records, proving that athletic excellence knows no age limits.
Colella's remarkable career began with a fourth-place finish at the 1972 Munich Olympics, followed by a bronze medal in Montreal in 1976. But what happened after his Olympic glory makes his story truly exceptional. While most elite swimmers hang up their goggles after reaching competitive peaks, Colella never fully left the water. This consistent connection with swimming—even during his decades-long Boeing career—has become his secret weapon for sustained excellence into his 70s.
Now competing in the 70-74 age group with Puget Sound Masters, Colella has rewritten the record books with over 120 national records and more than 50 world records. His training approach combines old-school discipline with modern technique refinements. Despite his Olympic pedigree, Colella humbly embraced coaching feedback that completely transformed his stroke mechanics later in life. "Your breaststroke timing is terrible," his coach bluntly told him—feedback that helped him adapt to modern techniques and continue breaking records.
What drives someone to maintain such dedication for decades? Colella's answer is refreshingly simple: "I just love swimming. I guess I'm not even sure I recognize how much I like it, except that I must, because I never stopped doing it." This passion extends beyond personal achievement. After their son's diagnosis with FSHD muscular dystrophy, Rick and his wife Terry founded a research nonprofit, Friends of FSHD, that now raises nearly $1 million annually—connections he credits largely to his swimming network. The organization is all-volunteer. We have no paid staff and our sponsors cover 100% of our operating and fundraising expenses. This means that 100% of donations to Friends goes directly to fund research. Rick Colella has emerged as a legendary figure in American swimming through his extraordinary Olympic career and record-breaking achievements in Masters swimming at age 70+.
• Bronze medalist in the 1976 Montreal Olympics after finishing fourth in Munich in 1972
• Set more than 120 Masters national records and over 50 world records
• Trains six days a week with Puget Sound Masters at age 70+
• Never fully stopped swimming after his Olympic career, maintaining consistency throughout his life
• Found working with a coach after years of self-directed training revealed technique flaws that needed correction
• Discovered that mental preparation and attitude significantly impact performance, even decades after Olympic competition
• Co-founded Friends of FSHD Research with his wife after their son's muscular dystrophy diagnosis
• Organization has grown from raising $180,000 in first year to nearly $1 million annually
• Emphasizes consistency as the key to swimming success at any age
• Enjoys the intergenerational aspects of Masters swimming and the supportive community
Whether you're seeking inspiration for your own athletic journey or curious about the mindset of champions, Colella's story demonstrates how passion, consistency, and community create a foundation for lifelong achievement. What might you accomplish if you never stopped doing what you love?
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Hello friends, welcome to the Champions Mojo podcast, where we celebrate the extraordinary stories of adult athletes who inspire us with their passion, comebacks and stories we can relate to and learn from. Today's guest is one of the most iconic figures in American swimming when you combine USA swimming and master swimming. Yes, it's Rick Colella, born and raised in Seattle, washington, who has competed in two Olympic Games for the USA, finishing fourth in the 200-meter breaststroke in Munich in 1972 and winning bronze in Montreal in 1976. Rick currently swims for the Puget Sound Masters in the 70 to 74 age group.
Speaker 1:After stepping away from elite competition, rick returned to the sport decades later through master swimming and he's been rewriting the record books ever since. He's set more than 120 Masters records, masters National records and over 50 world records. He swims pretty much everything freestyle, im and breaststroke events and recently his last meet. He did set six national records in all different events. Rick trains six days a week and is a passionate ambassador for swimming as a sport for life, crediting it for both fitness and friendship. Off the pool deck. Off the pool deck, he and his wife, terry co-founded friends of fsh research, a non-profit funding critical research in finding a cure for a form of muscular dystrophy, which is inspired by their son brian's diagnosis. Rick's life is a powerful example of grit, longevity and giving back, and today we get to dive in to his incredible story. Rick, welcome to Champions Mojo.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, Kelly.
Speaker 1:Yes, oh, it's so nice to have you. I want to start off by asking is it as easy for you as it looks, or do you have to work hard in practice and in the meet to pull off as fast as you swim? I just don't think people realize how fast you're swimming for someone in their 70s.
Speaker 2:Well. So that's interesting. When you started talking about that and you're saying how easy I look and they all say it looks easy, I'm thinking, boy, I don't think it's easy, I think it's hard and I think it's um, always, I always feel like I'm working hard. Uh, you know, in meets and races, and I don't feel like I mean, I see other people who I think look easy and I wish I could look like them. So maybe we all look better than we think we do. I don't know, but I think that if you're working hard, it's going to be hard. There's no way around it. And so I find that in workouts and stuff I'm working hard every day. I'm also feeling like it's harder and harder as I get older, but I keep going just because I think it's great fun, and I always am glad when the workout's over that I did it. But when I start off, sometimes I think this is just so hard. I can't keep doing this, but I do. So I don't feel like it's easy and I do feel like I'm working.
Speaker 1:I think someone was an Olympian and they've done this all their lives and they just get in there and it's just easy. So it's nice to know. So when you're working hard like that, you're training six days a week with a group, or are you swimming with kids, or how are you keeping yourself so fit?
Speaker 2:So our team. So I swim on Puget Sound Masters as a regional team at nationals and that was of meets, but local meets as someone like washington masters. We have a team and so, like washington masters, I don't know how many members we have right now, but we have a coach and the coach provides the workouts, and we have three options a day. We have a 5 15 am workout, a 6 7 30 am workout and 11 45 am workout, and so I go at 7 30 because I don't have to get up at 5 15 anymore and I like getting it done in the morning though. So there's probably, you know, today I think we had 12 people there that workout.
Speaker 2:We have four lanes in the pool and varying abilities, but I'm really fortunate that we have a lot of good swimmers for me to swim with and against in workouts. There's a lot of younger ones who are a lot faster than me, and there's some that are just beginners, and that's one of the things that I think is so great about Masters is that there I am as an ex-Lithian but really old, with people who are young, but some of them never swam before and just trying swimming, never swam before and just trying swimming, and some were high school or you know, maybe summer league swimmers, um, maybe usa swimmers when they were in junior high or high school, and then they quit.
Speaker 2:Now they're coming back because they think it would be good exercise for them and so they're really starting off, you know, out of shape, but they're working their way back and so we just have such a wide variety of people and it's just fun to be with all of them and it's really fun to have a workout group to train with. For many years I trained on my own, so to speak. I trained with a group of people. We kind of met at pool and we made up our own workouts and we did it together and that was. We thought it was fun and we thought we were doing good, until they decided to hire a coach for the master's team.
Speaker 2:And when they hired the coach, one of the biggest things we found out is that we'd gotten really sloppy. I mean, the coach said do you want help with your strokes? Cause you know, I know you're a big star, right, you know, can I actually help you? I said, no, I would love help with my strokes, because I noticed she kind of helped others and never said much to me, and so I told her, no, I'd be happy to hear the criticism. And she said, okay, well, your breaststroke timing is terrible and your freestyle is awful and your butterfly sucks and your backstroke? It can't even make me want to vomit or something like that.
Speaker 2:I was like, oh great, but you know, it made a huge difference to have somebody standing there watching you, and also it's so much better to me to have somebody to tell me what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's drill down a little bit on the fact that an Olympian can have stroke technique issues and need work, but did you notice a difference in?
Speaker 2:I don't want to say injuries exactly, but pains that come up, shoulder issues, for example. You know, wearing the new butterfly correctly was a huge help to preventing shoulder injuries and I think that's any stroke could be that way also. If you look back and most people probably couldn't look back this far, even remember but if you go back to the 70s and look at breaststroke, it's a whole different stroke and we were flat. Our head could not go underwater. The water couldn't even break over your head in the early part of my career and so you're very flat in swimming like this of my career, and so you're very flat in swimming like James. And when you look at breath through now you know your head can go underwater.
Speaker 2:There's dolphin kick on the underwater pole and the timing has changed. So we were taught to pull and kick together. You pulled as your legs came up, you kicked as your hands went forward. Well, now you pull separate from the kick and I think that was a hard thing for me to learn. I mean, that's an interesting story because the day that she told the coach told me this she goes. What I want you to do is I want you to just push off and do breaststroke. I want you to pull and then stop and count to two, and then kick and count to two, so you completely separate the pull and the kick. And I thought, well, that sounds easy, right, I could not do it. I could not stop my legs from moving when my arms moved. It took me, you know, a week of just staying after workout, drilling that over and over, until I could actually do it and I was surprised my legs just moved.
Speaker 2:I didn't intend for them to, but they just went after you know 40 some years of doing it one way. It was really hard to switch. So that was a huge advantage to have somebody looking at that and telling you that and really love the coach. And the other thing for me with workouts I mean maybe I'm just lazy, but if I go do my own workout I do this thing where I think, okay, I'll do 10 100s. So I do a 1 100 and I think you know I think I'll do 10, 75s after this first one. And then I think, and I'll do eight and I'll do 50s, and you know pretty soon I'm not doing anything. I can talk myself out of it because it's so hard. But if the coach says, do 10-100, I just do it.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I feel like that's so true. Just even a coach that's just watching, like I know a lot of Masters coaches won't actually correct people. They think they're going to insult them or something. I think coaches are so valuable in master swimming. We just don't realize, and to hear you say that you are able to correct your stroke at this age, that's just phenomenal. I'd love to ask you about how it's been for you, rick, to at some point. You've been swimming masters for a long time now decades and I'm sure you were just the beast leader of the workout, and so I'm sure you have had that experience where you've just gone from being this dominant force in a workout to having people beat you. How does that feel?
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. I noticed that in the last few years especially, we had a kind of a new group of 20-somethings join the team and they're now maybe 30, late 20s, early 30s, and they were college swimmers. They're fast and especially if they go fast. I mean what's interesting is sometimes if they were sprinters and stuff. If we do a more distant set I can still eventually keep up with them, but in the sprint stuff they just leave me in the dust. It's incredible to watch them. So I feel a little bit like I'm sometimes disappointed that I'm no longer in that good of shape, but I also feel honored to be on the team with them and the feedback I get from them is that they're honored to be on the team with me.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a great thing about the master's program is that people from late 20s to in their 70s are friends and, I guess, join each other's company, glad they can be there. I mean, none of us are in anybody's way and that kind of thing. You know, like you might get on an age group team, you might have more rivalry or something. It's not that kind of competition in masters. So, um, I just and and I there's always something I can learn from them.
Speaker 2:I mean I would right now I don't work out with them because they all have to go to work in the morning, because they're young and they have to go to the earlier workout. So the thing I miss about not being with them is they kind of inspire me watching them. You know one guy's really good backstroker. I mean I think he really helped my backstroke just to have him there to watch and see how a good backstroker does it, and you know. But there's other people like that in the workout I do some in that are inspiring and good to have around. So I feel more like I should not regret or rue the days when I used to be the fastest guy in the workout and just enjoy the fact that I've got these people coming along that are an inspiration, a help to me and keep me going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, beautifully said. And does it ever occur to you how much you probably inspire them as well?
Speaker 2:Well, they've said stuff which almost surprises me in a way that wow, they actually they don't think I'm just the old guy in the way.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you are inspiring people before they even realize you're an Olympian. Like who is this fast guy? That's over 70. I want to touch a little bit on your career with Boeing and when you retired and how you worked your swimming into that career.
Speaker 2:After the 76 Olympics I basically retired from competitive swimming at that level and I started working, actually in Boeing, in that December. That December and um, when I first um started working, I found ways to go swim at lunchtime. So I still kept swimming and I did other things too. I did some running and I would run at lunch and I'd sometimes alternate run a couple of days a week, swim a couple of days a week, but, um, I always found a way to still do something. And then after work I would meet up with people and go jogging or we did some canoeing in the winter, cross-country skiing and stuff. I always kept my foot in the pool, I guess you could say over those years.
Speaker 2:And then as time went on, it got harder to do things like running for me. I started getting sore hips and sore knees and I'd take time off and from running and always ended up coming back and so swimming just seemed to be a better sport for me and uh and I. So I was doing the lunchtime swimming and stuff. And it gets hard when you're working to necessarily go at lunch, so I'd have to, and in the evening it was really hard, especially after we started having children and they're, you know there's. My wife is waiting for me to come home from work, not for me to go home and go out swimming, and so I had kind of thought I'm not going to ever go in the morning again. I was tired of that. But it turns out that you don't go in the morning, you don't go at all. So so I switched to going in the mornings around 1990. And actually my first master's meet was in 1977. The master's nationals were in Spokane and I went to that meet.
Speaker 1:So I yeah, tell us about, tell us about that.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I won my races, but it was. It was really mostly a fun experience and I don't know quite why I didn't stick with going to meets at that point, but I didn't for until 1990. And then the Goodwill games were here in Seattle and they built the pool in federal way where the nationals are going to be this year and that pool, the first meet in that pool of the master's meet. So we all entered and went to that so we can swim in this brand new pool and it was kind of a tune up for before the Goodwill games and all that.
Speaker 2:And maybe not the only one, but one of the first meets they had there, and so we all went to get a chance to swim there. So that was when I backed to a master's meet in 1990. And then I'm not sure, it was probably quite a while again before I went to another. I mean, I might've gone to a few here and there, but not regularly. But I retired from Boeing in 2013. But by then I'd started going to the Masters meets pretty regularly and enjoying the camaraderie and seeing everybody and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Then when I retired, I didn't have to worry about eating and swimming because of a meeting or something like that, so it really worked out.
Speaker 1:When you said you kept your foot in the pool. You went to your first meet in 1977. You were swimming at lunch, you were kind of running. You just never took a giant break from swimming.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Never in your entire life.
Speaker 2:No, I would say that in the late 70s and 80s I would swim probably a couple times a week at least still, and maybe more, and dabbled in other things, but swimming was always something I just kept doing.
Speaker 1:Rick, I truly think that we have found the key to your success. You're just that example of if you just stay in touch with the water a little bit, you don't lose that feel, you don't lose that fitness that you only get from being in the water. So, wow, so why would you just keep swimming? You're the only person that I truly know that's in their seventies that's almost never stopped swimming.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's a good story in a way, because I never have stopped. So the first kind of I would say post-Olympic workout that I did after my races were over, I did that in the Olympic pool in Montreal. I went and swam A workout, probably not very hard, but I went swimming right after my race was done. The next day, or after the swimming competition was over, I went over to the pool and went to work out Me and some other people not by myself, there were others like me. I just love swimming. I guess I'm not even sure I even recognize how much I like it, except that I must, because I never stopped doing it.
Speaker 2:And one day I was in one of the guys that I swam with. I still swim with him and he went to the University of Washington and he's kept swimming all these years and he and I were in a. He was one of the group that kind of did our own workouts. In fact he was one of the ones who made up the workouts most of the time and we would swim every day in the mornings. This is starting in the 1990 timeframe and there were about five or six of us who gathered every day.
Speaker 2:And one day somebody had said something to me about how I don't know how you do that swimming it's just back and forth, back and forth. It seems so boring. And I said something about this in the workout or in the locker room. I said somebody had said swimming is really boring. And Doug looked at me and said boring.
Speaker 2:I've never thought of swimming as boring. And I said, doug, that's why you and I are here every day for the last 30 years and they're not because we don't find it boring. I think if you've done it as long as I've done it, boy it's oh, I still just don't find it boring. So that's why I like and stick with it. And I know a lot of swimmers I mean, there are swimmers on the Olympic team with me who were like as soon as my race is over, I'm never putting on a swimsuit again, I'm never going to the pool, and some of them didn't. But I think my sister, who was also an Olympian and she got a bronze medal in Munich in 1972. And she loved meats but she didn't like workouts and she didn't want to keep swimming because she didn't like workouts. And I just feel like I like workouts better than meats. Now is she your younger or older?
Speaker 1:Older, so was she a big, inspirational part of you getting into swimming.
Speaker 2:Well, we all started at the same time. I was 8 and she was 10, and we started in summer league and at the end of the first summer of summer league the coach said I have a friend who does a year-round team if you'd like to try out there. And so we went and tried out and joined that team. So we were the same age when we started but she, being a girl and being older, achieved success through her and that was a big inspiration to me. I wanted to do what she was doing going to national meets or going to the big meets and stuff. And then we had another boy on our team man boy. He was 15, and he broke the world record in the 1500 at the national at 15 years old, and that was a huge inspiration for me.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just dreamed of being like she was, Well you did that and you've not been able to get Lynn into master swimming at all. So she did. She did do a little bit. I mean, I think she did that meet in 1990 because we all did and she did some meets back then but she never liked working out. But then lately, about two years ago, she decided maybe she should get back into it because her big thing is playing soccer and she loves soccer. But she was worried that at 80 years old 75 to 80, someday soccer may be over for her.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:So she decided to go back to swimming and so she joined the team, joined our team and she started swimming and she actually went to the meets and she liked the team. Joined our team and she started swimming and she actually went to the meets and she liked the meet, but she still didn't like going to the workouts much and then her shoulders started bothering her and they told her take eight weeks off and probably again, and she was like, oh, I'm just not going to do that. So she's just stuck with soccer so far. But she's a year and a half, two years, older than me, so she's 75 and she's playing soccer still, though I had something to drop off at her house this morning on my way from workout and I stopped there and she wasn't home, and but I got a text from her. She said I was at soccer, so she's still doing it gosh and soccer's such a tough sport.
Speaker 1:That is contact and oh hard on the knees and the hips.
Speaker 2:Good for her, yeah and she plays with younger people not young people, necessarily, but people in their 50s and 60s who are going to say, well, you don't want an 80-year-old on our team. Well, I can imagine. Maybe you want her.
Speaker 1:Probably not a whole lot of 75 and ups playing soccer so she's got to be. That is so inspirational. Oh my gosh, that is crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it's great that she does it. I just wandered to get back to swimming because I thought it was a better long-term sport for her although long-term at our age isn't all that long.
Speaker 1:You have this amazing joie de vivre that you have for swimming for life. I just cannot believe that you worked out the day after the Olympics Like what were you training for? Who knows? Just life, but I love it so have you had any health issues that have kept you out of the pool for even short amounts of time?
Speaker 2:I fell a couple of years ago and broke three ribs and that put me out for eight weeks. That was tough because not out of the pool, but I'll do something else. I couldn't even move, I couldn't even, couldn't even go to bed, I couldn't lay down. I had to sit up in a chair 24 hours a day for a few weeks and so that was probably the longest I'd been out of anything for an injury.
Speaker 2:And when we traveled and stuff, I'm not. I'm not that it's funny. You'd think I might be more obsessed, but I'm not really. I mean, if we go on a two-week trip and I don't swim, it's fine. I just pick it up when I come back and I'm not like I don't have to search for pools when I'm traveling and sometimes I like to, but it kind of depends. Sometimes it doesn't work out and it's always fine with me. So I'm not obsessed in that way like I've got to work out every day, but I do. When I get back then I start back in, but those are usually a week or two then gone very much more. So I think the broken rib is the longest I was out.
Speaker 2:I would caution anybody who's been out of the water. The hardest thing is that first day is back. It just feels so awkward, it doesn't feel good, but it'll get better, you keep going. You just got to keep going. You can't say, well, it feels so terrible after being out for three weeks or four weeks or a month. I'm not going to do it, just keep showing up and eventually you'll be back. And that's probably one of the things that I've learned over the years is that there's time mostly hopefully, to come back and if it takes two or three weeks before you feel good again, it's going to take two or three weeks, but two or three weeks will go by. So don't panic.
Speaker 1:I think that's good advice and I think it is much easier to take two weeks off on a vacation if you know you're always going to be back. It's way easier to come back from three weeks off when you've been swimming for 20 years or 10 years. But if you take two years off it's a totally different feeling than if you take two years off and come back. So even three weeks, four weeks for a vacation is very different. In fact, there is a trend in master swimming where people swim at the bottom of their age group and then they take two or three years off at the top of their age group because you're always faster.
Speaker 2:I think you mentioned before and I said I hadn't been to any meets in the last couple of years and I did when I was 70, 71, I did meets and nationals and and the local meets here and then let's see. So last year I didn't do meets but I was thinking, well, it doesn't really matter because I'm not in the bottom eight group and I already did those events when I was younger and did those records.
Speaker 1:So do you actually set goals Now you're moving into, you're at the top of your age group now, 70 to 74. Are you going to swim in Seattle at nationals in your bike.
Speaker 2:I plan to. Yes, I've not entered yet, but I do plan to.
Speaker 1:Let's zip ahead to when you're going to be eligible for 75-year-old.
Speaker 2:January 1 of 2026. So in six months. You're right, so?
Speaker 1:in six months six months from now you're going to be able to swim in a short course meters. Meet in January and set 20 world records. Do you set goals like that?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. I mean, when I looked at the I don't want this to sound wrong, but when I turned 70, I looked at the records I thought, oh, I could do those and so I should enter the meets and some of those different events and shoot for the record. So I had the goal to kind of make those records. I don't. I'm thinking the same thought towards the 75 is that if I'm still let me, I'm still able to do it. You just never know. I'm hoping that's the case. It's not that far out. But yeah, I'll be able to break some more records. So I do look to that as a goal to keep in good enough shape to do that and make it not hurt too bad.
Speaker 2:But I don't specifically set time goals for myself, I would just look at the record. So I want to break that and I did set in when I was turning 70. I did look at the records in backstroke, which is not my best stroke, and realized that I could probably do those records too if I worked at it. So I did work specifically on backstroke for a while in order to get the records and the backstroke events in the, the I'm sure course yards and actually a couple since been broken, but that was kind of fun to set a goal like that in the stroke that I knew that I would be a challenge. More to make the record versus the breaststroke was not a huge challenge for me, but I still want to do a time decent to what I've done before and not too much slower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is actually a piece of advice that some of the other Olympians that I've interviewed that are masters say they tell their other Olympian friends hey, come to masters and swim an off event, and then you're not comparing yourself to what you went to the Olympics in. I think that's really a cool thing to do. So that's how you set your goals. Have you seen a decline in your times significantly every five years?
Speaker 2:No, I don't feel. I feel like you know it's funny because when we got the coach back when I was in my 60s, I saw my times improve from what I'd done in my 50s, but now that's not the case. I just have to face the fact that there's no way I'm going to be the same speed I was in my 60s and my 70s and 80s. My coach is a big master swimmer One of my coaches from A-Drip Swimming and USA Swimming and he always said just hit you at 82. That's when it just hit him. I always just laugh about that because I was just thinking really, bob, you made it to 82. This is now you see a decline, so hopefully I can be as good as he was.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, everybody's got their number. Like I talked to different people like oh, I've heard when you hit us, then it's all downhill from there. But, it's really not, because, without a doubt, the record book is slower and slower and slower, so it's just the way that it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that the records, though, and the swimming, it's a inspiration, it's a challenge, it's a reason to keep going in the meets and to be able to do, whether you break records or not, being able to just continue to swim in the meets and have fun is inspiration to keep going on a daily basis so that you can do that. And I think you kind of brought that up a little bit with when you talked about other people who had comebacks after the large break sign and had that. One of the big things that I think is important with swimming and this is whether you're 10 years old or 80 years old is consistency. If you're consistent, I think you look.
Speaker 2:I look back at swimmers who were have tons of talent when they were 12 and 13 and 14, but just didn't have the work ethic or the desire and they never quite made it. And then there's people who had no talent in the water but they were the hardest workers, they were at every workout, never missed, and they were pretty successful. And then there's people I always said Michael Phelps is the perfect example of someone with amazing talent and amazing work ethic. It's a deadly combination. Look what he was able to do. I mean, it's just extraordinary. Somebody like that comes along and he has both the talent, the feel for the water, everything, and works really hard. And look where it got him.
Speaker 1:An amazing coach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, an amazing coach, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But Mark Spitz was that way. He was very hardworking when he was younger and had amazing talent in the pool and he was like just different than everybody else. I remember a story in the 72 Olympic training camp where he decided to do three 200s, butterfly in the workout and descending, and so he goes the first two pretty fast and he goes the last one faster than anybody else in the whole world can swim a 200 fly. And I just thought, if you can do that in a workout, how can anybody beat you?
Speaker 1:Wow, where was that?
Speaker 2:That was actually at West Point in the 72 Olympic training camp before the Olympics, before Munich, after the trials. Just impressive to watch somebody who could do that.
Speaker 1:Any other spit stories, since you were on the team with him?
Speaker 2:My good Mark spit story is that I actually did beat him one time myself. We were together in Japan and we went bowling and I beat him in bowling and I still have the score sheet to prove it.
Speaker 1:How did competitive Mark Spitz take that one?
Speaker 2:I think he replayed another game and he beat me, but I don't remember that one.
Speaker 1:Well, you could beat him in breaststroke, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could beat him in breaststroke. Yeah, that's cool he sometimes swam the IM and he was so good in everything else. Even then he did pretty good. That's cool.
Speaker 1:Rick, All right. So you obviously set goals. You're consistently working hard. You've never gotten out of shape swimming-wise. How does mindset play in your success?
Speaker 2:Well, I have a great story about that. How does mindset play in your success? Well, I have a great story about that. It goes back to 1975 when I not mastered swimming, but in UFA swimming, au swimming. Back then we had a training camp before the world championships and at that training camp they brought in a person to talk to us about attitude and mental preparation for races, and one of the reasons they did that is that that was when these German women who had just come on a couple years before, and our women's team was pretty demoralized and they were trying to get them to not just think about being crushed by these Germans. But you know, maybe they could actually have a chance being crushed by these Germans, but maybe they could actually have a chance.
Speaker 2:And so we had these sessions, meditation, therapy, discussion about mindset and mental attitude, and then we went off to the meet and then we came back and the Nationals were after all that, and so I was at the Nationals and I got a cold, really bad cold, at nationals and I slammed 100 breaststroke in the prelims and I qualified seventh for the finals and I was like seated first and I I was my biggest competition john hankin wasn't there and so I was expected to win and I was like barely made the finals and I was really depressed with that and feeling down. And I talked to the guy who'd done these seminars was there, and so I was talking to him between the prelims and finals, probably at the finals or the warmup, and he starts telling me all this stuff about how you know, well, are you? Yeah, you're sick, you have this cold, but are you out of shape? I mean, did you get out of shape in the last day or two by getting a cold? What's changed? You know why are you?
Speaker 2:And he was just like put this out of your mind and and just swim. You know, yeah, you can have a cool, but don't let that turn your mental attitude into that. I can't do this, yeah and uh, so I, I took the advice of him and I and all this stuff and I had never been very much into mental thing. I just you know more like what I felt like and did I do the training and I just said, okay, I'm just going to swim, I don't, I swim like I would normally swim, don't worry about it, don't think about it. And I won.
Speaker 2:From lane one I got first place and I was like, wow, that really worked. I really opened my eyes to how much the mental, how much of your performance can be mental as well as physical. I mean, you have to do the training, obviously, but when it comes down to the race, your mental preparation for that race can have a huge difference, and it was like I did my best time. I won the race and everybody was like, where did he come from? We thought he was out of it because he barely made the final. So learn, then, that your mental attitude makes a huge difference, and how you prepare and set yourself up for racing or for even going to your workout.
Speaker 2:It's just if your mind is right you can do what you do and of course you want to have the background, the consistency from all the training. But when you've done it, uh, your mind can make a big difference in the last, the last push.
Speaker 1:And have you applied that all through your master's career?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I mean I. I always remember that and think about how I'm feeling. Just try and get ready for the race and don't let it happen, more than than worry about it and think about it.
Speaker 1:Do you get nervous?
Speaker 2:still yes, that's yeah, that's the thing that bothers me most about going to meets is they're so nerve wracking and so nervous I mean I even think about it. You mentioned I'm going to go to the national in Seattle and I started thinking about that and I get nervous and it mean I even think about it. You mentioned I'm going to go to the National in Seattle and I started thinking about that. I get nervous and it's I also know and tell myself that if I didn't get nervous there'd be something wrong. I don't think you can swim like I've swam and do those things and not get nervous before a race. It's built into you part of being a competitor and I think everybody would feel that way and I've had a lot of swimmers say I get so nervous I know you probably don't get nervous at all and I say no, I get nervous just like you do. We're all in the same boat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I truly believe. If you're not very nervous, you don't have the adrenaline you need to swim fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you're not nervous, well, I mean, I guess there could be a situation where you just don't care in what you're doing, you know it doesn't matter. But I mean I just I know I'm going to be nervous before every race, no matter what, and so I just accept that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:And so I just accept that. Oh, I love it. I love it. What other rituals or routines do you have?
Speaker 2:that you think play a role in your success? I think it's the consistency of going to workouts and participating at the pool and I've done some dry land things and stuff at times. Do you do dry land? Not not too much. I mean, sometimes in the mornings before workout I do push-ups, sit-ups. I do a couple things for shoulder issues. The swimmer magazine had a thing about shoulder like two issues ago and I have followed some of those exercises before workout just to keep my shoulders. I had another fall in my backyard and my shoulder kind of hurt from that and it's been surprisingly okay for swimming. But I keep doing these exercises and trying to keep the muscles strong. I read somewhere that everybody, by the time you get my age, has damaged strong.
Speaker 1:I read somewhere that everybody by the time you get my age has damaged. I like to put this out there for listeners who might listen to this episode but not another one on the Champions Mojo website. If you go to championsmojocom to the resources tab, there'sa tab in there called shoulder health and I would love for you to tell Lynn about this and certainly you can use it. So I found this book by Dr John Kirsch, an orthopedic surgeon who's done over a thousand surgeries on swimmer and tennis shoulders and basically all you do is hang. You don't do pull-ups, you just hang from a bar like that and it literally remodels your shoulders. Literally it remodels your shoulders, dr Kirsch says is if people did the same amount of physical therapy that they do after a shoulder surgery before a shoulder surgery, they probably wouldn't need the shoulder surgery.
Speaker 2:There's an article about that in Solar Magazine a few years back. That said the studies show that the outcomes from surgery versus PT and no surgery are the same.
Speaker 1:But I know, you know, my friend Zena Courtney, who's from the Northwest, out there and she's doing awesome. She just turned 65 and she's set in a whole bunch of records and she was having shoulder issues and she's been doing this hanging routine and she's been able to swim great and she was having real shoulder issues. She swam at Stanford and has done a lot of yardage, like our shoulders have. So I'm just putting that out there. I put this into about every 20th show, but I want you to hear it and I want the listeners to hear it and I want you to tell Lynn because it's so easy I would love to see Lynn in a swim meet and maybe at 80, she won't be able to play soccer anymore.
Speaker 2:I mean that would be great. You know, there's other people on our team who always have shoulder problems and they're gone for a while and they come back and their shoulder is still a problem, and I think that maybe I should point them to this.
Speaker 1:I want to ask about your nonprofit work and what you and your wife are doing and what kind of got you into that?
Speaker 2:Okay, so my son was diagnosed with FSHD muscular dystrophy, which is a shortened name for fascioscapular neuromuscular dystrophy. I mean, it was devastating to us to have him have this condition, and so it's a type of muscular dystrophy that's a slow degeneration of muscles over their lifetime. It doesn't directly affect lifespan, except that if the muscles deteriorate so much it can cause problems, like if you got pneumonia and you can't clear your lungs and things like that. So we looked at donating money to different places and we found that there weren't very many groups doing anything about research for this condition and there was only one group in the US that was even directly related to this condition. It's a rare form, affects somewhere between 500,000 million people worldwide and in the US maybe a couple hundred thousand. It's not as rare as some things, but it's not very common and it's one of the major forms of muscular dystrophy, of which there are nine different major forms and plus sub forms of all those different ones.
Speaker 2:So he was diagnosed in 2004 and we thought, well, we should do something to help him and we thought we could raise money for research.
Speaker 2:So we formed our own organization and started an annual auction fundraiser event, which are very popular here in our area, and so first year, I think, we raised about $180,000 and we thought that was great and we funded a couple of research projects for 50,000 per year and hoping that we'd get enough the next year to keep those going.
Speaker 2:And anyway, we just kept going. We're now in our 21st year and our event last year raised $960,000 and funded $1.3 million in research this past year, and things have changed dramatically since we started. There are now more organizations raising money for this condition. There's also a big organization in Canada that is putting a lot of money into it, and there's pharmaceuticals involved research going on in the private sector and there's clinical trials being run and conducted. My son was a part of one of them a couple of years ago and it ended sort of unsuccessfully, but not without good feedback for the industry, and there's new ones coming along and he's doing really well, and so we're hopeful that something will pop up out of all this that will actually help him before too long.
Speaker 1:That is wonderful. Yeah Well, that is incredible work, and I'm so glad to hear that Brian is doing well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's doing good. It's been a very rewarding thing for us to do. It keeps us very busy. Yesterday I was putting together all the summary. Our fiscal year ends on May 31st, so now it's time to pull everything together and get with the tax man. My wife and I always say is that we started doing it for Brian, but now we do it for Brian and George and Chris and Brad and all the other people we've met through this that we've never would have had contact with and never know anything about if we hadn't done this. So it opened up a whole new thing for us and the support from our my Master Swim team, from old swimming friends and from new friends connected with somehow with swimming, who connected me with somebody else and brought in sponsors. If I hadn't been a swimmer and had those connections, I don't think it would have ever taken off like it did.
Speaker 2:So, swimming again is is been a huge part of that.
Speaker 1:Another testimony to swimming. So if you're raising a million dollars and more for research, do you take a nap? You go to swimming and then you work on this and work in the yard.
Speaker 2:What does a day in the life look like. Well, I get up in the morning and go swimming, I go after swimming, I go to coffee with the group and we sit around for an hour or so talking. I don't know how we always have so much to talk about, but we do. Then I come home and then I'll work in the yard or I'll work on something to do with the organization. I think working on a nonprofit is one of the things that does keep me working.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to share?
Speaker 2:I'm really lucky Our team. We have four Olympians on our team.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's myself, lynn when Lynn was swimming Charlotte Davis, and then there's Camille Wright Thompson, who was on the US team in 76 with me and we swim together every day and have since 1992. It's really fun, charlotte and I. She started in summer league the same time I did. She's your age of my sister, so she was 10, I was 8. We started swimming together in 1960 when she was 10 and I was 8, and we still swim together. I just love that and we're all one happy family. It's great.
Speaker 1:That is. That's probably a big part of your love of just going to practice and not finding it boring. All right, we are going to do the sprinter round here. It's just a few fun little questions, nothing too hard, and it just helps our listeners get to know you a little bit better. Breaststroker freestyle. What's your true love right now?
Speaker 2:Freestyle.
Speaker 1:Favorite post-meat treat.
Speaker 2:Oh, ice cream, Ice cream, I love it, I love ice cream Swimmer you admired most growing up. I mean Steve Krause on our team. He's the person I mentioned who did the world record. I just admired him and wanted to be like him.
Speaker 1:What's one thing that might surprise you that people don't know about you?
Speaker 2:Well, my favorite movies are rom-com movies.
Speaker 1:Do you know how self-secure you have to be to say that Rick Hardest swimming event in the pool?
Speaker 2:400 IM.
Speaker 1:What do you feel when you are swimming? What word comes to mind when you're swimming?
Speaker 2:I think at home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. That's my word, and very few people say that. All right, Rick, this has been so fabulous. Really really appreciate your time. Thank you so much and good luck in Seattle at the meet. Don't get too nervous.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, I will.
Speaker 1:I won't be there, but I look forward to seeing you on the pool deck soon and really appreciate you.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
