Later today I'll be recording a podcast with Susan O'Brien Williams. Williams has the Masters World Record in the 50m Fly, LCM for the 29.82 she swam back in 2016. She has also worked as a coach, most recently for Nations Capital Swim Club (NCAP)
Susan grew up swimming for Rick Curl at NCAP's precursor, the Curl-Burke Swim Club. She was an age group star and it was her results that Curl staked his early reputation on. She qualified for Olympic trials as a 13 year old in 1980, and won a National Championship in 1984. She went on to a storied career at the University of North Carolina.
She never quite broke through to the Olympic level, but she did represent the US internationally at Pan-Pacs, where she won a bronze medal in 1987.
I met Susan almost a year ago. She was looking for a way to change the way she trained to incorporate more race pace training. In the end, we never quite got the coaching off the ground, but we stayed in touch.
Williams called me a couple weeks ago, as she'd been following this blog. She had stayed close to Curl, even though she had been a teammate of Kelly Davies Currin and known about Curl's molestation of her.
On this podcast we're going to talk through a lot of twists and turns. I've previously expressed anger at the amount of people that sat in support of Rick Curl at his sentencing. Williams was one of those people, and even spoke with Curl from jail.
We're going to talk about what it's like to be one of those people who "stand by their coach" when they are accused of doing horrendous things, and how her reflections on her own time swimming for Curl changed over time.
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