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From a small, hostile town, he had taught her to “dream bigger”, shown her that the world was so much larger and broader than anything she had ever imagined, and awakened the desire to go explore it. He transcribed the Arabic into the morning’s session, only to be met with much confusion at what this swimming drill called Distance Per Heart Attack involved. He called Gary Francis, who also wasn’t there. Who do you want to be there with you? We don’t always get what we want. When he died, I did not want to do it at all. When he died, he was half way through a blog post for this website about his recent struggles which had landed him in the North Shore Hospital. On Monday, the day before he died, he kicked Mum and I out of the hospital after a few hours to go buy a racing suit, because how (he said) could I swim it in my old training togs?

In a predictably all-male squad, Eyad and his brother Yamen stood out. We had stumbled around in the bush out the back of Tiniroto for so many years; he wanted me to walk back to Te Reinga in the sunshine. I am now three hours away from Singapore on a flight back to the UK. Three times per week, every week, he drove to a dialysis clinic on Auckland’s North Shore from his home in Henderson, happy to make the journey around the Waitemata Harbour because he was coaching a swimmer at the AUT Millennium institute a few hundred metres from where he received treatment. He visited Dad in hospital every day until we got caught sneaking in three visitors when we were only allowed two. When Mum and I drove over the Auckland Harbour Bridge after a phone call from the hospital, telling us that things had taken a marked turn for the worse, I realised that in the afternoon sun, I could see the whitewashed tower block of the hospital from the road, youtube shorts and I knew. He worried about Fara in the Virgin Islands, remained in awe of Terenzo in Auckland and owed his life to Brian in Napier, a triathlete and a GP, who saved his life twenty-two years ago and bought us two more decades of his company.

He annoyed people to litigious levels, and yet none of this was ever done to further his own lot in life. As was his way, he outlived his life expectancy given his age and diagnosis by about twelve months. I regret that he didn’t see me walk out of the dark onto the poolside on Auckland’s North Shore, safe and dry, after a night lost in the rain. Even though my parents soon moved to the UK, they sought out Arch Jelley as Mum’s coach. Nothing pissed him off more than knowing that officials had flown business class to some competition on the national body’s dime while athletes had had to pay their own way in coach. Especially as a coach, his determination was entirely about the athletes. He called Swimming New Zealand CEO Steve Johns, who was on holiday. We all wanted to round out the week with Dad watching the nationals live stream on YouTube (and what a brilliantly professional job Swimming New Zealand did of that too). She also made it out of the Tiniroto bush, stewarding a private jet.

He saw my mother playing basketball and informed her that while she was terrible at the game, she was the best runner on the court. My mother went from university basketball to a world ranking of seventh in the 1000 metres. I am glad he kept my mother awake on the University Tournament train and I am glad she stopped when she thought, ‘Is that David Wright? I am glad I got to experience so many of the things he wished for me. My dad used this analogy whenever, as he would also say, the going got tough. He and Dad had a wonderful time setting up the website and its rudimentary analytics package, watching the work IP addresses of Dad’s detractors appear as daily readers. They may have falsely accused her of misbehaviour and profanity, just as they did me, but Dad’s influence lives on in her life, twenty years later. Bekki is four years younger than me, so was a thirteen year old when we were dealing with the mire of politics and abuse we suffered in that town.  A rt ic le has ᠎been c re at ed ​with the he᠎lp of GSA  C​ontent G en er ator Demoversion.

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