An Olympic Games can be a whirlwind of expectations, anxiety, anticipation and excitement for an athlete.
Vlastimil Cerny believes one of the most important jobs for a coach is to create some quiet during this storm of emotions.
“It’s all about keeping the athletes calm,” said Cerny, who will be part of Swimming Canada’s coaching staff at the Paris Olympics. “Just learning how to do that with each one of the athletes because they are all unique, every one of them is different.
“Being able to keep them not even focused but tuning out the noise.”
To bestow calm, a coach must keep their composure.
“As coaches we are leaders,” said the 61-year-old who has spent over 30 years as head coach of the University of Manitoba Bison’s swim program. “The way we respond to situations leads the athletes.”
“If you blow up, there’s a good chance that the athlete will blow up with you.”
Cerny said how to convey the proper message was a lesson he learned from Ben Titley, the former head coach of the High Performance Centre – Ontario, during the Tokyo Games.
Every swimmer is an individual, which means they respond differently.
“You need all kinds of things in your arsenal,” said Cerny. “You have to be an ass sometimes, you have to be really empathetic sometimes, you have to be understanding sometimes. You have to push in a way that matters to the athlete, and you have to find a way how to push in a holistic way.
“Coaches are asking athletes to go beyond what they believe they can do. Learning how to do that is critical. The communication behind that is probably the biggest lesson I learned. You need to learn to communicate.”
Paris will be the third Olympics for Cerny as a coach for Canada.
“It’s very special obviously,” he said. “It never gets old.”
Cerny was born in Vyskov and grew up in Ostrava, a city in the northeast part of the former Czechoslovakia. He spent three years with the Czech national team and swam at the 1981 European championships before deciding to defect as a 19-year-old.
He spent a year in West Germany before coming to Canada in 1983 when a family offered to sponsor him.
Cerny swam for Canada from 1983 to 1989, specializing in butterfly and freestyle. He won silver medals at the Commonwealth and Pan Pacific Games and represented Canada at the Seoul 1988 Olympics. He held national records in both Canada and the Czech Republic.
He also was one of the pallbearers at Victor Davis' funeral.
Cerny swam competitively until he was 30. He started coaching full time as an assistant with Calgary’s Cascade Swim Club then joined the University of Manitoba in 1993.
As a coach, Cerny guided Rhiannon Leier and Michelle Lischinksy to spots on past Olympic teams. He has coached Kelsey Wog, who will be competing at her second Games in Paris, since she was 10 years old.
A long-time partnership between an athlete and coach can be like a marriage.
“It’s a relationship that you have to work on sometimes,” said Cerny. “You fight sometimes, you grow together.“
Growth and accepting change are important for a coach.
“I’m different from the athlete I was in 1988,” he said. “It’s part of my philosophy that I need to grow.
“I don’t believe I have all the answers and I’m perfect. With athletes you learn and grow.”
Besides Wog, Cerny will coach Brooklyn Douthwright, of Riverview, N.B., and Regan Rathwell, of Ashton, Ont., two first-time Olympians who compete at the University of Tennessee.
Ashley Jahn, who coaches the two Canadians at Tennessee, will attend a Swimming Canada staging camp in France prior to the Games. It will give Cerny some time to get to know the two swimmers.
“You try to get as much information as you possibility can about the individuals,” he said. “Each of them seems to be very different from Kelsey and very different from each other. They have (followed) different paths. That’s the beauty of the Olympics. Nobody gets there the same way. Everybody has a journey.
“With Kelsey it’s easier because I know her, I know how to communicate with her. Learning about Brooklyn and Regan, and have them communicate with me openly and feely, is just going to help them perform better.”
Cerny believes Paris might be his last Olympics as a coach.
“To get to this level as a coach, you have to have a gifted and talented athlete,” he said. “The smaller population provinces are a little bit disadvantaged from that perspective.”
Cerny plans to continue coaching and has no regrets he chose to live in Winnipeg.
“I still love coaching,” he said. “I have the university to look after and I’m not looking to retire anytime soon.
“If I really wanted to go after the international scene I would not have stayed in Winnipeg. I would have gone somewhere else. I’ve accepted the reality of coaching in Winnipeg. I’m happy with my wife and the family.”