“Gilli”

This article was written by Matthew Burgess and was originally published on www.unicafemedia.com

4:50am. The alarm clock sounds. Pitch black and a chilly six degrees outside. He rolls out of bed, grabs a banana and fixes himself a Sustagen. Seeking refuge from the cold he traipses to his car and blasts the heating on full power. Bliss.

5:10am. He tunes into Triple J and embarks on the 30 minute drive to the Brisbane Aquatic Centre.

5:45am. Stretching begins.

6:00am. He’s standing on the blocks, body screaming at him not to take the plunge into the freezing abyss. But his ambition overpowers him and he dives in. The black line stares up at him, but he refuses to look. He refuses to let it torment him. Concentrating on technique and his competition, he wills himself through 7km of short recovery reps and countless laps.

8:00am. Training is over and it’s too late to make his 9:00am university class. Nothing left to do but head home, eat, sleep, study and mentally prepare himself to do exactly the same thing just seven and half hours later.

It is just another day for 20 year-old Australian breaststroker Jared Gilliland, something he has been doing for nearly a decade. A full-time athlete and a full-time student with one thing on his mind.

Rio 2016.

Something that does not help Jared is that he suffers from Chilaiditi’s syndrome, which effects only 0.25% of the population. It’s a rare condition in which a portion of the colon is abnormally located in between the liver and the diaphragm. Some days the resulting stomach pain prevents him from walking, let alone swimming. But perhaps the biggest problem is the fact that it hinders his ability to put on weight.

Looking at Jared, it’s hard to think that he is one of the very best swimmers in Australia. Sure, he’s tall, standing 6'3'’, and his wingspan is enormous, but he weighs a very modest 76kg. For the most part, he is dwarfed by his competition.

“My freestyle kick is like kicking with a knife,” joked Jared. “People have always been shocked when they see me swim. They just can’t get there head around it. They see this skinny guy standing on the blocks and they write me off. They just don’t understand how someone who’s so skinny can actually be good.”

Despite his sense of humour and good spirits, Jared is the first one to admit that swimming has tested him. Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.

He began competitive, twice-a-day training with Brothers Swimming Club at the ripe old age of just 11 years old. The club was based out of the prestigious St Joseph’s Nudgee College, where Jared went to school between 2007 and 2011. But in the summer of 2014 Nudgee College kicked them out. He felt betrayed. He felt cheated by the school he loved so much.

“Brothers was more than just a club to me. I’d been training there my entire life. I’d see these people more than my family. They were my family. We trained together, laughed together, and hurt together. And in one day it was taken from me, just like that.”

The following months weren’t easy for Jared. In particular, one summer afternoon tested him more than any amount of training and races ever could.

Stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Red brake lights lined the Gateway Motorway for as long as the eye could see. A frustrating sight for everyone. Made worse by the oncoming hailstorm, which turned out to be one of the worst in Brisbane’s history. As the relentless and unforgivin gstones struck his car, all Jared could do was wait and think. Powerless. Helpless. Unhappy. Trying to find a new squad for the first time in nearly a decade, and to rub salt into his wounds, his girlfriend had just broken up with him.

Jared was ready to quit swimming, right there and then. The sport he grew up with had chewed him up and spat him out. Life had chewed him up and spat him out. He was done.

But a chat with Brisbane Grammar School swimming coach David Lush, who Jared had grown closer to since his squad had broken up, changed his outlook on swimming, and life.

“He told me I had invested far too much time into this sport just to give up when things got tough. He suggested a new club, with a good group of guys my age. He set me on the right path. Now I’m happy. Now I enjoy uni, well the classes I can actually go to. It takes my mind off swimming.”

But Jared is more than just a swimmer. He’s a Walking Dead enthusiast who wants to make the world a better place. Already a member of Green Peace, with plans to join Sea Shepherd, Jared dreams of saving marine life once he decides to hang up his togs. This vision came to him in a year 12 Biology exam when asked to write about an endangered species. However, it took his girlfriend to leave him to realise it.

“I gave everything to her and got nothing in return. But if I do the same thing for marine wildlife, it will make a difference, they can survive.”

He also plans on becoming a vegetarian once he finishes competitive swimming; the only reason he doesn’t do it now is because calories are too important at the moment.

Jared is currently studying Medical Laboratory Science at Queensland University of Technology, and although he enjoys it, he admits that his grades are suffering due to the sheer amount of training he has to do. Understandably, balancing full-time study and six hours of training a day is certainly no easy task, something Jared’s coach Vince Raleigh will attest to.

“It takes a special person to reach this level,” Vince exclaimed. “Swimming the 400IM [Individual Medley], which is one of the hardest events in swimming, is a testament to Jared’s self-discipline, to his work-ethic, and is really a testament to who he is as a person. All he needs is a belief that he can compete at the very top, which he is more than capable of doing, it’s just a matter of bringing everything together.”

But just as things started to come together, and look up for Jared, swimming dealt him another cruel blow. In April 2015 Jared missed qualifying for the FINA World Championships in Kazan, Russia by just 0.6 of a second.

“People were congratulating me, I mean I was the second best in Australia, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed. It was the worst feeling. Just one good turn. One good turn and I would have been on my wayto Kazan. You can’t help but think ‘why couldn’t Swimming Australia make an exception?’ they did for Christian Sprenger, why couldn’t they do it for me?”

The only consolation for Jared is that it wasn’t Rio. The World Championships was simply a stepping stone. Now his sole purpose in life is to not make the same mistakes again, and qualify for the 2016 Olympic Games.

“Once you become an Olympian no one can take that away from you.”

“Rio is everything for me right now. It’s the only thing I see.”