You don’t need to have ever visited Paris to know that one building dominates the skyline like no other. The Eiffel Tower, a giant, 330-metre-tall, iron monument to France’s pre-War industrial might, could tower over Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s uniformly beautiful Parisian architecture like a brutal exclamation point of the rise of mechanisation over European romanticism. Instead, throughout its 135 years, the Eiffel Tower has been a focal point for the entire city — its latticework an art form in its own right, its lights a beacon of the French national mood. The Eiffel Tower symbolises Paris and dominates its vista.
With the Olympics back in town, the Eiffel Tower has regained its spot as the focal point for the entire world. For athletes everywhere, this is how their Olympic dream has manifested itself. Through the tedium of all those hours of painstaking training. Through the countless small triumphs and momentary doubts. The Eiffel Tower — eternal symbol of the City of Light — stands as a beacon, guiding the world’s athletes into its impressive orbit.
For the last few months, there has been another Eiffel Tower hidden in suburban Brisbane, sitting at the end of an open-air 50m pool at St Peters Western Swim Club, offering a tangible symbol of what is at stake for a cohort of Australia’s best hopes of gold at this year’s Games.
Dean Boxall and his collection of athletes — including today’s medal winners Ariarne Titmus, Shayna Jack, Mollie O’Callaghan, and Elijah Winnington — trained with that model Eiffel Tower’s reflection glinting on the surface of the water every day. There was more than just a teasing symbolism to its presence. Swimming away from the changing rooms, Olympic champions and hopefuls alike motored towards the replica of Paris’s most iconic structure, only to turn and race back away from it, on repeat.
Paris would always be there, though. The Olympics, however, would not. St Peters Western’s Eiffel Tower was not just about the symbolism of the impending Games though. When Boxall placed this version of the Eiffel Tower at the end of his pool, he hid some little secrets within it, things the squad as a whole decided to keep close to their chests.
You don’t need to have seen Titmus streak towards defending her Olympic 400m crown to know that St Peters Western Swim Club is home to some of Australia’s best swimmers of recent years. Of the 41 swimmers named to compete for Australia in the pool in Paris, nearly a quarter train under Boxall and his team. To have 10 swimmers — Titmus, Jaclyn Barclay, Jack Cartwright, Jenna Forrester, Jack, Jamie Perkins, Kai Taylor, O’Callaghan, Winnington, and Brianna Throssell — all reach the Games is a staggering achievement for one club.
Multiple world record holder and Olympic champion Titmus already has Olympic gold medals in her locker, as does Throssell. But they, as well as the other eight, all went to Paris with a genuine chance of achieving their dreams of winning Olympic gold and bringing back a real piece of the Eiffel Tower with them in their luggage in the form of a hexagon of iron embedded into medals they hope to win.
At the last Games in Tokyo, Boxall coached six swimmers where, amidst the ethereal atmosphere of the COVID Games, they combined to bring home 10 medals between them. Those Tokyo Games may well be remembered for the exuberant reaction Boxall had to watching Titmus slay Katie Ledecky in the 400m freestyle — among other things — but to focus on that single joyous outpouring of emotion would do the master coach an enormous disservice.
It’s that attention to detail that marks Boxall and his swimmers out. During the lead-up to this Games, Boxall’s plan to place the Eiffel Tower at the end of his pool was not just as a gimmick or even just a visual reminder of what his swimmers were aiming for. It played a crucial role. Within the body of the sculpture, his swimmers could post little notes when they achieved a 9/10 session. The intensity that Boxall demands means there are no 10/10 sessions, one of Boxall’s swimmers told ABC Sport. Perfection of that sort simply doesn’t exist. Each session during the week is color-coded, and it is that color which determines what post-it note is used. At the end of the training block, in the lead-up to the Australian Trials, that box was cracked open, revealing a very visual reminder to those swimmers of the effort that had gone in. St Peters Western had a total of 42 swimmers competing in 20 of the 28 finals during Trials, coming away with seven victories.
Those 10 that made the team can refer back to one of the other hidden secrets in Boxall’s Eiffel Tower, a small window with a big message inside that resonates so strongly with a man charged with creating memories so impossible that it’s almost impossible to imagine. “Ça commence par un rêve: It starts with a dream”. On Saturday night local time in Paris, it was le “rêve est maintenant”. “The dream is now”. And Titmus, once again, has realized hers.