KEVIN Hallett is as humbled today as the first time someone gave him a shilling in John Street to help him along his Olympic journey.
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You can’t call it an Olympic dream because it never was a dream of a young man who just loved to swim along side his mates competitively in the pool.
“I didn’t even know what the Olympics were really but when I was selected and needed five hundred pounds ($1,124) to compete in London, people were very generous and I am still very humbled and overwhelmed by that support,” Mr Hallett said on the eve of the 2012 London Olympics.
Mr Hallett’s inclusion in the Olympic team to contest the 1948 games in London was a shock.
He finished in second place in the 220 yards breaststroke and third in the 330 yards medley at the national championships.
Back then, only first place swimmers qualified. When he received a letter in the mail soon after those national championships to say he was in the team, Mr Hallett was in shock and at first the cost seemed prohibitive.
“I was earning 17 and six a week and that wasn’t going to get me anywhere but I never anticipated the support I was going to get, the townspeople, the district all over gave me 20 cents, $10, shillings in the street and it all added up,” Mr Hallett said.
“I often wonder how I ever got that opportunity.”
It wasn’t only the monetary support that spurred the Olympian’s efforts but the support of his mates in the pool.
Mr Hallett was swimming for Singleton at a time when Ken Sever, Ashleigh Grainger and Ray Allen were also among the country’s best.
The Singleton squad was powerful and fast. They travelled by train to interdistrict carnivals and showed their might. Singleton was the only club in New South Wales to have four swimmers selected to contest the Australian titles.
“It was fun, a social thing and we spurred each other on,” he said.
The Olympics Mr Hallett experienced in London was a far cry from what is experienced by Olympic swimmers today.
The swimming team trained in Melbourne at the Richmond 50 m indoor pool and was accommodated at the YMCA for six weeks leading into the games.
On June 25, 1948, the Australian Olympic Team departed from Sydney Airport in an aeroplane known as a ‘Constellation’. The plane had a range of 3635 kms and it was necessary to land at Darwin to re-fuel, overnight at Singapore, re-fuel at Calcutta, overnight at Karachi, overnight at Cairo and re-fuel at Tripoli. The team arrived in London after four days.
They stayed in dormitories with 15 to 20 other athletes at the Richmond RAF Base on bunks and trained at the Battersea Baths moving closer to Wembley Stadium prior to the swimming events.
His swim at the Olympics was restricted by injury. Suffering with tenosynovitis in both shoulders, Mr Hallett was lucky to finish his race.
After the games the swimming team gave exhibitions at Bootle near Liverpool and in Ireland. He competed in a match race over 100 metres against the Irish Champion where he set a new Irish record for the 100-metre breaststroke, a race that clearly indicated his world standing.
A year later Mr Hallett was selected in the Australian team to contest the Empire Games in Auckland in February 1950.
He competed in the 200 metre breaststroke but was disqualified for incorrect kick.
“There you go, injured and disqualified, that’s my swimming record,” Mr Hallett said smiling.
Mr Hallett is Singleton’s only born and bred Olympian and every Olympic year, attention is turned towards this quiet, humble man.
While the memories of some Olympians might be world-breaking achievements on the track or in the pool, Mr Hallett’s fondest memories lie with the generous acts of kindness this district showed to him as a boy, something he has never forgotten.
A display of Mr Hallett’s Olympic memorabilia is now on exhibition at Singleton Library and will be in place throughout the duration of the London Olympic Games.
