Loud music eased the tension for Jean-Jacques Terblanche before his big race in Atlanta, and it inspired him to win gold, writes Julian Drew
PARALYMPIC champion Jean-Jacques Terblanche is not an athlete who succumbs to big match nerves. As he sat in the call-up room waiting for his 200m individual medley final at the Georgia Tech Aquatics Centre, where Penny Heyns had spun her magic spell a few weeks earlier, he was the image of relaxed composure.
While all around him stared nervously into space or tried to psyche each other out, the youthful Terblanche listened to music with a wide grin on his face, Nine Inch Nails driving through his head — his choice of music, not the latest technique from the land of the Blue Bulls to get sportsmen revved up.
It’s industrial music, not funny music. The grin was for the antics of one his rivals who was doing his best rendition of Fred Deburghgraeve’s giant frog leaps while emitting strange grunting noises. Olympic lOOm breaststroke champion Deburghgraeve might unsettle the opposition with his pre-race ritual but Terblanche merely found this display amusing.
Although by nature Terblanche is not easily ruffled, he takes his swimming very seriously and had engaged the services of a sports psychologist in his build- up to the Paralympics. “I saw him twice before Malta (1994 world championships) and around 10 times before Atlanta,” says Terblanche. “My mum first suggested I go to see a sports psychologist and I thought if it would help then why not.”
Besides visualisation techniques and special exercises to loosen up and stay relaxed he was told to listen to music before the race. “If you are tense you should listen to laid back music to calm you down but I’m so laid back I have to listen to loud, heavy music,” says Terblanche by way of explaining his usual pre-race fare of Iron Maiden, Led Zeppelin or Nine Inch Nails.
Even in his first international competition when he won the world title in Malta as a 14-year-old, Terblanche handled himself like a seasoned campaigner twice his age.
“In Malta this guy sat opposite me and started staring at me, but I wasn’t worried because my sports psychologist told me that’s what they would do. I just stared back at him and it wasn’t 30 seconds before he got up and walked away. He’s never tried that again because he knows it doesn’t work on me.”
Perhaps after the incredible success of the Paralympic team in Atlanta — 28 medals from 41 athletes — the South African public will take our disabled sportsmen and women a little more seriously. But should anyone still doubt them then the punishing preparation behind Terblanche’s triumphs should help to sway them. “Before Malta I was doing between 5 000m and 6 000m a day in the pool but this year I increased that to 8 000m,” he says. In comparison, Penny Heyns does 6 000m in a typical session.
Terblanche did his daily workouts after school, slogging away for close on three hours. “My school work became quite a problem because often I’d be so tired I’d just fall asleep while doing my homework. The opportunity to compete in the Paralympics doesn’t come often though and I decided I must just go for it,” says Terblanche, who will do his matric next year.
Although that tough training regimen carried him to the gold medal and two world records, it didn’t come without its setbacks. In the early part of this year he got breaststrokers knee and couldn’t kick properly in training, and then two months before the Games he injured his shoulder and had to stop training for five months and have cortisone injections. “It was so painful at one stage that I couldn’t even bring my arm over my head to pull a single stroke,” he recalls with a grimace.
Those injuries may have cost Terblanche vital training time at a crucial stage in his programme, but they still could not keep him from achieving his goal. Just as he had in Malta where he set his first world record, Terblanche came from behind on the backstroke leg, the second of the four disciplines in the medley, and hauled Germany’s Holger Kimmig in on his favourite breaststroke leg before setting up a thrilling finish in the freestyle.
Kimmig is faster than the South Atrican in the freestyle and as he turned just a fraction of a second down on Terblanche he must have sensed victory. Terblanche had paced himself to perfection though and pulled steadily clear to win by more than three seconds, eclipsing his world record trom the heats of 2:42.36 to set a new mark of 2:40.83.
“In the heats I felt as though I was stuck in the water and I was really struggling so I was surprised when I broke the world record. In the evening everything was perfect though and I really enjoyed it. My stroke was just right and to break the world record and know that you have done your best is an incredible feeling,” says Terblanche.
While the efforts and achievements of Terblanche and his fellow Paralympians are certainly the equal of any of South Africa’s sports stars, they still receive scant recognition and are often treated as either super heroes for overcoming such circumstances or special cases deserving of sympathy. The truth is that disabled sportsmen, and people with disabilities in general, just want to be treated like everyone else and given the same recognition as their able bodied counterparts.
Terblanche, who lost the use of his lett arm after a car accident when he was two which injured his neck, is fortunate that he has been exposed to less discrimination than most disabled people. “I’m lucky because if I put my hand in my pocket you can’t really see that I’m disabled. I don’t need much help from anyone but if you are in a wheelchair it’s a totally different situation.
“Many people just don’t know how to behave around people with disabilities and although they mean well it can be frustrating when they try to help. I would rather ask for help than have somebody offer it to me,” says Terblanche.
His swimming career started when he was seven and he entered a school inter-house gala and came second in the 50m breaststroke. “I’m still so proud of that silver medal,” he says. A short while later he started training with his friend’s swimming coach, Linda de Jager, and he has been with her ever since.
“I must say she has been a very supportive coach. She never made me feel different from all the others, which is the way I preter it. I think that’s the best thing she could have done for me because I was just like all the other little kids.”.
In standard one he was actually the top-ranked 50m breaststroker in Northern Transvaal and it was only when he was 12 that he discovered there was competition for the disabled. “I entered five events at the national championships in Stellenbosch, competing in the under-14 age group, and I broke four South African records,” he says.
That was the beginning of a career whose rise has been meteoric and which should go on for many years to come. “I’m still young so to stop now would be crazy. My times can only get faster and I’m going to carry on competing at the world championships and Paralympics,” says the young man from Afrikaans High School in Pretoria who wants to go to hotel school in Geneva after matriculating and spending a year working and travelling in England.
ENDS