Ian O'Brien

Australian swimmer
the New Zealand cricketer

Ian Lovett O'Brien (born 3 March 1947) is an Australian breaststroke swimmer of the 1960s who won the 200 metre breaststroke at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in world record time. He won five Commonwealth Games gold medals and claimed a total of nine individual and six relay titles at the Australian Championships, before retiring at the age of 21 due to financial pressures. After showing promise at an early age, O'Brien was sent to Sydney to train under renowned coach Forbes Carlile and his breaststroke assistant Terry Gathercole. He competed in his first national championships in 1962 at the age of 15, winning the 220 yard breaststroke to gain selection for the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth, where he won both the 110 and breaststroke and the 4 × 110 yd medley relay. He won both breaststroke events at the 1963 Australian Championships, repeating the feat for the next three years. In 1964, O'Brien went to the Tokyo Olympics and came from third at the 150 m mark to win the gold medal. He added a bronze in the medley relay. O'Brien successfully defended both his breaststroke titles at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica before retiring to support his family. Swimming officials persuaded him to make a comeback for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, as Australia did not have a breaststroker, and after a crash diet, he finished sixth in the 100 m event but failed to reach the final in the 200 m event. He then retired and went into the television industry.

O'Brien grew up in the rural town of Wellington, 360 kilometres (225 miles) from Sydney. Neither of his parents were skilled swimmers. His father Roy knew only one swimming stroke—the breaststroke—and his mother Thelma did not take her first swimming lesson until she was 55. O'Brien's sister Ann was a talented swimmer in her childhood years, but she preferred horseback riding. After winning all the breaststroke events at the country championships, O'Brien was taken by his father to the Ryde pool in Sydney in 1960, to be coached by Forbes Carlile and his assistant, retired world record breaking breaststroker Terry Gathercole. Carlile was regarded as the leading swimming coach in Australia at the time. At age 13, O'Brien was already a large teenager, weighing in at 82.6 kg. He only trained with Gathercole during holidays, when his father could take him to Sydney; Jim Wilkins, a Catholic priest in Bathurst, supervised him according to Gathercole's program while he was in the countryside. In 1963, O'Brien captured the breaststroke double at the Australian Championships, setting personal bests in both events, and was a member of the New South Wales team that won the medley relay. His performances earned him selection for an overseas tour to Europe with the Australian team, competing in the Soviet Union, Germany and England before visiting Japan and Hong Kong.

Arriving in Tokyo, O'Brien was nominated in the 200 m event and the medley relay; the 100 m event was yet to be included in the Olympic program. The favourites for the 200 m breaststroke were Chet Jastremski of the United States—the world record holder—and Georgy Prokopenko of the Soviet Union. During the final training sessions in Tokyo, Talbot organised time trials for the Australians, which were held in front of opposition swimmers in an attempt to intimidate them. O'Brien posted a time of 2 min 33 s, which Talbot felt had a negative psychological effect on O'Brien's opponents. reducing the previous Olympic mark by 5.8 s, an indication of how much the world record had fallen in the preceding four years. However, in the next heat, Egon Henninger of Germany immediately lowered the mark, and by the end of the heats, O'Brien was the fourth fastest qualifier for the semifinals, with both Prokopenko and Jastremski posting faster times. O'Brien lowered Henninger's Olympic record by winning the second semifinal in a time of 2 min 28.7 s, after Jastremski had won the first semifinal in a time that was 3.4 s slower than O'Brien. Australia progressed further to finish third behind the United States and Germany in a time of 4 min 2.3 s, missing the silver by 0.7 s.

O'Brien completed a hat trick of breaststroke doubles at the 1965 Australian Championships, but in a year with no international competition, he swam much slower times of 1 min 11.1 s and 2 min 38.6 s respectively. He completed a fourth consecutive medley relay win with New South Wales. At the 1966 Australian Championships, his times were again slower, at 1 min 11.8 s and 2 min 41.6 s respectively, more than 4% slower than his personal bests, but it was still enough to retain his titles and qualify for the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica. Critics had written him off, because just six weeks before the competition, he was 16 kg overweight. O'Brien went on to finish sixth in a time of 1 min 8.6 s. O'Brien admitted that his training had been insufficient for Olympic standards, noting that "I needed to put on another thousand kilometres in training".

At age 21, O'Brien retired after the 1968 Olympics, so he could concentrate solely on making a living. In 2000, he received an Australian Sports Medal.