Fina World Cup series: A golden shine to brush off swimmer's woes

The run-up to London 2012 was hard but Cameron van der Burgh tells Ahmed Rizvi how he used it as inspiration to set a world record.

Cameron van der Burgh overcame a friend's tragic death to break the world record in the men's 100m breaststroke in London.

Earlier this year, as Cameron van der Burgh celebrated his 24th birthday with family and friends on May 25, burglars broke into his Pretoria home and made off with, among other things, many of his medals from different championships.

"It was a bit unfortunate," Van der Burgh said yesterday. "They stole about 50-60 per cent of my medals - a whole bunch of World Cup medals and a few World Championship medals."

Van der Burgh felt "violated" at the time, but he did not allow the burglary to take away his focus from the upcoming Olympics.

But that was not the only distraction in his journey to the London Games.

In April the Norwegian swimmer Alex Dale Oen, a good friend of Van den Burgh, had died of a heart attack at the age of 26 and the news was a major shock for the South African.

During a visit to London shortly before his death, Oen had made a video of himself next to the Olympic pool.

"Here I am at the Olympic final, in lane 4, and next to me in lane 5 is Cameron van der Burgh and in lane 6, Kosuke Kitajima," he said in the video.

Ironically, Van der Burgh found himself in lane 4 in the 100-metre breaststroke final at the Olympics and he raced away to the gold medal in a world record time of 58.46 seconds.

He had taken a photograph of Alex with him to London and wanted to carry it with him to the podium, but was not allowed by the officials.

"In a year leading into the Olympics, that was a lot of setbacks," Van der Burgh said, ahead of his first competition since the Olympics, the opening leg of the World Cup in Dubai.

"The year was really tough. People broke in and stole my medals. I have had coaches that have come and left. One of my best mates, Alex, died.

"These things that were happening to me, I used them at the Olympics as motivation to perform.

"Obviously you know that the Olympics come once every four years, so you try to make the four years count and when I got to the final, I knew that this was my time to make all the sacrifices and setbacks fine and set them straight.

"Obviously losing the medals was a great shame, but to replace it with an Olympic gold medal was probably the best solution."

The gold medal has also brought greater recognition. At times, though, Van der Burgh has been left overwhelmed by the adulation.

"I'm using the World Cup to get away from the media commitments and the chaos and all that's back there [in South Africa]," he said.

"Swimming was never seen as a professional sport in South Africa, but when we landed at the airport there was something like 10,000 people there at the airport. That's unseen and unheard of.

"The whole country just went absolutely crazy. A lot of people were comparing, when Chad [le Clos] and I won, as a moment when [Nelson] Mandela was released, and it was like euphoria in South Africa.

"To be back home, you are just walking everywhere in the streets and people are stopping you. Something that took me 10 minutes is taking me 30 minutes because everybody is asking for photos.

"It's so gratifying just to see the support from the nation. It's nice to be appreciated for what you do."

Given the current euphoria at home, it is possible the burglars who stole Van der Burgh's medals might have a change of heart and return them one day.

Van der Burgh, however, is not banking on that and has made sure his Olympic medal is stored up in a safe place.

"I don't know what they [the burglars] are going to do with it, but we have made sure the Olympic gold medal is locked away in a bank and it's very safe," he said. "People are not going to get to that one."

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