By Tania Phillips
Ben Armbruster had to swim personal bests at a star-studded Olympic Trials in Brisbane last month to make his Olympic dream come true and the 22-year Stanthorpe swimmer was more than up to the task.
Armbruster, a student at Bond University on the Gold Coast, set the pool alight at Chandler in Brisbane with a slew of personal bests and second places against his more fancied opponents at the Australian trials.
On the final night, in front of family, friends and Stanthorpe swimming coach Gail Smail – the woman who taught him to swim and encouraged him on his swimming journey – he was officially named in the Australian Dolphins team for the Paris Olympics.
He will swim the 50m freestyle, relay and 100m metre butterfly.
“Just the europhoria,” his excited mum Shannon Armbruster said of the feeling of watching her son as he was handed his symbolic ticket to the games.
“Watching that team announcement and seeing him come out, it’s indescribable you can’t put it into words, the emotions that are attached to watching your child become an Olympian – it’s amazing.
“We had friends and family there, Gail and Michael Smail were there too watching it made it even more special just to have her there. We watched him come out with his shirt on and he had his ticket it was awesome.”
For Gail Smail it was a “pinch me” moment, made even more special when he presented her with the medal he won that night. Here she was watching the man she had coached for much of his career before helping him find Chris Mooney, now based on the Gold Coast, to take him to the next stage.
“It was a thrill, it was so good, even just to see him swim his PB in the 100m fly he’s been chipping away at it for a while,” she said.
“He’s getting it down there and he now gets to swim in that event in Paris too. He’s been training really well. His coach has got all of those young boys in his stable on the path to improving their times.
“Watching his heat swim for the butterfly I said oooh he’s going to do a good one tonight because of his stroke counts. I don’t tell him anything about his swimming but I knew he had a bit more left in him for that night. He’s still got a bit more left in him now – so watch this space.
“He’s still got more there and he’s coach Chris Mooney will get it out of him, he’s got more to give but then again it all depends on the situation, of course it could go one way or the other. But I think Ben will get things done. He’s always loved a race even as a young kid – the thrill of the race, he loved it and he still does which is good.”
And if anyone could predict how Armbruster might swim under the pressure of an Olympic competition it would be Gail Smail.
“Ben was four-years old when we started teaching to swim at the swim school and then he started swimming in competitions at five because he was such a little natural,” she said.
“He was on his first team at six and he just went to the local carnivals and did a little bit of training at the pool. He kept coming back each year which was good and he showed potential so we kept him moving along.”
Swimming was a hard sport, an individual sport so both his coach and family made sure he kept enjoying his favourite team sports- soccer and basketball.
“It can be very lonely, a lot of the really big state and national carnivals he would be on his own, his mum and I would be with him,” she said of the young swimmer, one of the few in the Olympic team this time around who has come through a country club and not a big city-based training program.
“It was pretty daunting. His mum did a lot of officiating so the officials became his team, they were on deck for him. And of course there were a few times when he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep doing it especially when he left school and his mates were all out doing uni and going out Friday and Saturday night. They sacrifice a lot, the swimmers, but when they get in a good group they’ve got each other. That’s what they thrive on – it was good to get him into a good stable down there on the Gold Coast at Bond.”
Armbruster’s mum Shannon said there was a video of his Bond teammates congratulating him on the Swimming Australia facebook page.
“That is something special, it makes you cry every single time you watch it,” she said.
However despite his move to the coast and his new team-mates, Armbruster is still very much a Stanthorpe boy, citing his family, the Smails and his home town as his biggest inspiration. It’s clear the community feels the same way with the Stanthorpe Swimming Club giving him $1000 and raising money to help the largely self-funded swimmer enjoy his Paris experience.
