They are six swimmers from three countries heading to the Olympic Games after being trained by a coach with Canadian roots.
The group sometimes calls itself Team Worldwide and includes Olympic and world champion medallists. Even coach Tom Rushton isn’t sure how they managed to come together.
“I question that myself,” said Rushton, who grew up in Tsawwassen, B.C. “It’s kind of an eclectic group. We have things that connect us in swimming. It’s really interesting just watching the different cultures and how people react.”
The swimmers Rushton will coach in Paris includes Siobhan Haughey, a double silver medallist at the Tokyo Games, and Camille Cheng from Hong Kong; Anastasia Gorbenko, a world championship silver medallist, David Gerchik and Daris Golovaty from Israel; and Kregor Zirk an Estonian who has broken around 300 age group and senior records in his country.
This will be Rushton’s second Olympics as a coach. At the Tokyo 2020 Games, swimmers he worked with over the years won 17 medals for various countries, including six gold.
“One of the things I really like about what I do is it get to experience it from different cultures and perspectives,” said Rushton. “All these (athletes) come at the Olympic Games in a different way with different expectations. That’s pretty interesting for me.”
Like he did in Tokyo, Rushton will have an Estonian accreditation in Paris.
“They’ve been very good to me,” he said. “There’s little politicking around accreditations.”
“Estonia keeps my life simple. It also allows the other countries I work with who have more athletes to take more of their domestic coaches.”
Rushton followed a different path into coaching.
He was born in England to parents who both were Olympic swimmers and coaches. His father moved to Canada when Rushton was young and worked with Tom Johnson to establish what is now Swimming Canada’s High Performance Centre – Vancouver.
Rushton swam for the Winskill Dolphins Swim Club in Tsawwassen, then after high school attended Kenyon College, a NCAA Division III private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio.
While at Kenyon he won six career NCAA individual titles and five career NCAA relay championships and is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.
He graduated with a degree in art history but realized he missed swimming.
“I was working some random jobs and kind of realized I was missing that competitiveness in the job,” said Rushton.
He began working with some master’s teams and summer league swimmers. One of his first jobs was with the same club he swam for in Tsawwassen.
“I realized I did enjoy coaching,” he said. “Swimming and coaching have always been something in my family. I just decided to pursue it a little bit more. One thing led to another and I’m still doing it.”
Rushton has coached in Vancouver and Montreal, where he worked with Canadian Olympian Mary-Sophie Harvey.
In 2017 Rushton was appointed head coach of Energy Standard of the International Swimming League where he met Haughey. Over the years the number of swimmers he coached began to grow.
Most of the athletes Rushton coaches are over 30. Many speak two or three languages and have finished an undergraduate degree.
“They’re generally pretty smart,” he said. “I kind of have to sometimes outwit them or trick them into doing something because otherwise they will reason their way around some things.”
The group is tightly knit, travelling and eating together. The international background does create some interesting dynamics.
“Age is a big factor because they’re all very worldly,” he said. “There are definitely things we are very sensitive about.”
As much as they try to avoid it, politics does affect the group.
Rushton was in Israel two days before the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.
When Gorbenko won a silver medal in the 400-metre individual medley at the World Aquatic Championships in Doha, Qatar, in February, there were boos from the crowd.
“It’s an interesting situation for us to manage,” said Rushton. “Generally, we don’t talk a lot about those very sensitive political topics.”
Haughey is a huge celebrity in Hong Kong.
“She’s very aware that everything she says and does is going to be immediately judged,” said Rushton. “Hong Kong is a very small country. Gossip travels very quickly.”
The expectations placed on the swimmers varies by their countries.
“There’s expectations put on them from their country which are sometimes unrealistic or unfounded,” said Rushton. “Managing how their country is going to react to their performance is a very important thing that we have to think about.”
Rushton has also experienced personal changes over the years. He’s gone from being single and happy to live out of a suitcase to being married, having a house in the Czech Republic, and expecting his first child in September.
There probably will be changes to the group following the Olympics.
“It will be an evolution,” Rushton said. “I don’t know what that means yet and I don’t think any of the swimmers really know what that means for them either.”
Rushton has made a successful career by saying yes when offered an opportunity. That’s the message he’s going to pass onto his swimmers.
“As we go through the next few months there will be opportunities that occur for them,” he said. “Maybe that’s going and doing something else, maybe it’s continuing to swim.”
“We’ll see where we end up.”