Out of the deep end

She was Cathy White in the 1982 Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles and in the 1986 Commonwealths in Edinburgh, upon which recent columns ruefully have reflected.

“It was awful,” recalls Daphne White, her mum. “The swimmers couldn’t even get into the pool to practise until eight o’clock. There were people in Next uniforms which didn’t fit properly. She was the sixth fastest backstroke swimmer in the world and it didn’t seem to matter for anything. When you think what they have today, it was terrible.

“Maybe it’s me being a bit naughty, but I think they’ve pulled out all the stops this time because of the independence thing. It looks lovely, though, doesn’t it?”

“It was brilliant,” says Cathy, now 49. “When you’re an athlete you don’t focus on outside things.

I had a comfortable bed, the food was great, I didn’t even realise that it was raining most of the time.

“Don’t ever underestimate the respect in which the Commonwealth Games are held.”

She was a Barnard Castle girl, both her parents swimming teachers, but not what might be termed a duckling to water. The future Olympian was nine before she took off the inflatable armbands.

“She was always in the pool but really just playing,” says her mum, still in Barney. “From the day that she took them off, forever thereafter our weekends and spare time were spoken for.”

Within a sink-or-swim week she’d joined the club at Bishop Auckland.

A week after that she was in the medley team.

“My dad warned me that as part of the initiation I’d be thrown into the deep end, 12ft 6ins. I just said OK; I was ready.”

Inflatably disbanded, the water baby was about to earn her wings.

AT first she was trained by her dad, Ralph, swimming coach at Barnard Castle School.

As expectations increased, she joined South Tyneside Swimming Club where chief coach Paddy Hayes was an old Royal Navy colleague of her father’s.

In Brisbane, barely 17, she won silver in the medley relay.

Anticipating yet greater things, Barnard Castle launched an appeal to help send her to Los Angeles.

“They had coffee mornings, quizzes, everything,” recalls Daphne. “In the end they raised over £6,000, an awful lot of money in those days.

“Cathy was 100 per cent amateur. We had to set up a special bank account, even provide petrol receipts. It was a right palaver but it meant that she could have best steak three times a week, that sort of thing.”

“It was lovely, the people around Barney were fantastic but in a way it just increased the pressure,” says Cathy.

“The Olympic qualifiers were more daunting than the Games themselves because I wasn’t just doing it for me and my family, I was doing it for the people of Barnard Castle. I’d have been devastated if I hadn’t qualified.”

She did, 100m and 200m backstroke. In the latter she smashed her personal best – “the swim of a lifetime” – but was just the ninth fastest. The first eight made the final.

“It was shattering at the time,” she says. “I could have spent the rest of my life saying that I’d been an Olympic finalist.”

“She still did marvellously,”

says her mum. “Olympic, European and Commonwealth Games swimmer still looks pretty good on your CV, doesn’t it?”

In Edinburgh she’d talked of fashion modelling – “swimming opened lots of doors but they were peripheral” – but failed to make a final.

Still she eyed the 1988 Olympics in Seoul but gave up competitive swimming in 1987 when – Soeul searching, as it were – another medal seemed further away than ever.

“Paddy Hayes always talked about swimmers needing fire in their bellies – that was his phrase – but for me the spark had gone “I’d struggled for a year before that. Physically I was tired and mentally I was starting to doubt my own ability. You can never do that as an athlete. I’ve never regretted it; it was the right time.”

SHE became promotions manager for a sportswear company, met and married St Mirren footballer Derek Hyslop who worked for the same firm, is now business development manager for a construction company at Haydock, a couple of miles up the road from Newton-le-Willows.

She’s friendly, attractive and articulate, swims little but enjoys cycling. “Just 20 or 30k,” she says. “I’ve killed myself enough in the past.”

It was last Thursday lunchtime, memories overflowing from the previous evening’s opening ceremony.

“None of the competitors thinks of the Commonwealth Games as somehow second division – not us, not the Canadians, not the Australians,” she says over a pub latte.

“It all came back when they played the National Anthem. Swimmers are different in that they don’t compete in the main stadium, don’t normally meet that wall of noise.

“The anthem gets it all going, really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. You just walk out there and you think ‘Yes!’ It was even more so in Los Angeles, that was just phenomenal.”

She’d taken her younger daughter, Abi, to the swimming at the London Olympics. “She looked at the swimmers and said ‘Mum, did you really do that?’ and then started to fill up, so I did, too.

“You’re a young girl in a scrap of Lycra, a swimming hat and a pair of goggles, standing on a box and being watched by millions and millions of people throughout the world. That’s how it was. That’s how no doubt it all still is. I’m still very proud to have done it.”

HER marriage broke up ten years ago, leaving Cathy and young daughters Charlotte and Abigail in the family home in Warrington. The resolve and the determination of her teenage years were needed in abundance “We became the Three Musketeers. I wanted to maintain our lifestyle but the girls had to help me, and that’s what we did. We became a mini- Team Hyslop and we did it. The girls have been absolutely great.

They drive me insane, but I love them to bits.”

Charlotte has just graduated in nursing, Abi starts a wildlife conservation degree in September. The musketeers were joined four years ago by a shiatsu (“Mind, he is a little one”) named Ralphy after her late father.

Cathy’s off back to work, vows that the Games will be on television as soon as she gets home, hopes after that to spend time in her beloved, stressbusting garden.

Regrets? “How could I have?

I’ve travelled the world, represented my country for six years, still keep in touch with so many lovely people and hopefully made Barnard Castle quite proud, too.”

She drives me back to Newtonle- Willows – smiling, as per.