Lauries Legacy
When Laurie Dormer started coaching, breastroke was swum underwater, butterfly had not been invented and it was only two years since London hosted the Olympics. Fifty-five years on, he retired from mainstream coaching to start new ventures as Total Aquatics.
Swimming Times Article 2005
If there was a competition for recruitment drives, Southall SC inMiddlesex would surely have been the world champions. In response to 9000 leaflets distributed to local children, no less than 800 kids and their parents turned up for a taster session in 1964.
‘There was a huge queue outside the pool – there were so many that the session couldn’t go ahead,’ recalls Laurie Dormer, one of the club’s founders more than a decade earlier. ‘Instead we organised the children into batches of 200 and each group filed in to be enrolled as members. The club’s membership soared from 400 to 1200 in one evening – and we put another 500 on a waiting list!’ It was the latest in a catalogue of successes, both in and out of the pool, for a club which had begun as a lifesaving group in 1950. Laurie, who has just retired after a 55-year coaching career, the last 21 years as head coach of Bournemouth Dolphins, remembers those early days in Southall. ‘We called it the Southall School of Swimming.
Our badge was a torch based on the one on the old school road signs,’ he said. ‘We had an outdoor pool which was open from May to September. It was so cold that we used to enter the pool with a running dive and immediately get out on the other side to avoid being frozen to death. When I took my bronze lifesaving award, the temperature was 56F and the examiner stood on two cork floats because the stone was too cold.’ Galas in the 40-yard Southall pool were held without lane ropes and with a scaffolding pole denoting the finish. But the club quickly concluded there was little future in summer-only swimming. ‘So we started swimming with the public at Ealing,’ says Laurie. ‘Imagine 20 or 30 swimmers descending on a public session – it was far from satisfactory.’
This was in the days when Olympic breaststrokers were swimming underwater and butterfly had yet to be invented. Soon the club was renting pool time at Ealing and Acton and, three times a week, running a bus shuttle service for 150 swimmers. By 1955 the club was more focused on competition and hadchanged its name to Southall SC. It also had a water polo section. Laurie recalls that the first youngster he identified for future success was a 14-year-old named Geoff Stokes, whose parents kept a fish and chip shop. ‘During my lunch hour, I would pick him up from school and drive to Heston pool for extra training,’ he said. ‘It’s incredible now to see him winnning masters events in the 65-69 age group.’
Laurie’s first county champion was John Burt, who went on to become national junior backstroke champion in 1962. His first international was junior breaststroke champion Jimmy Faben, whose representation on an ASA team was closely followed by backstroke champion Liz Cook’s selection for England. Susan Phillips was a Welsh international. In 1966 national breaststroke champion Malcolm Tucker swam in the Commonwealth Games and it’s one of Laurie’s few regrets that he turned down an offer from the swimmer’s parents to fund him to accompany their son to Jamaica.
Laurie is nothing if not an innovator. Throughout his career he has been first in the queue to use the latest training methods and technology. At Southall, national chief coach Bert Kinnear and his team were brought in to run ‘Mini Loughborough’ courses, based on an annual event at Loughborough for the country’s top swimmers. These grew in the 1960s into an eight-day ‘camp’ at Butlins Hotel, Cliftonville – the forerunner of Laurie’s swim weeks which to this day attract up to 1500 people to venues in Britain and Malta. In 1964, Southall became only the fourth club in the country to use a radio device enabling the coach to talk directly to a swimmer, training with an earpiece. Southall also pioneered club-university partnerships and its talent identification programme with London University’s department of movement and studies was featured on the television programme Tomorrow’s World.
The programme involved the early testing of power, stroke, body fat, mobility, lung capacity, reaction times and other relevant attributes. As the son of the Mayor of Southall George Dormer, Laurie has always been at home in politics, and his swimming clubs have often benefited. Southall’s campaign for an indoor pool was dynamic to say the least. ‘It started in 1954 and we regularly carried out surveys in the schools to find out how many children could swim. We then used these statistics to beat the local council over the head. Southall was surrounded by gravel pits, canals and other waterways and we did learn-to-swim campaigns.’ One survey revealed that 99.69 per cent of under 8s, 86.8 per cent of under 12s and 61.8 per cent of under 16s were non-swimmers. Using George Dormer’s copy of the electoral role, the club delivered leaflets to 12,500 homes, then made follow-up calls and obtained 11,000 signatures on a petition. When the council refused to accept the argument on the grounds that the public were not consulted on the financial implications, the exercise was amended and repeated.
The campaign continued for 10 years and at one stage included a plan for the club to build its own pool. That fell through but the club’s efforts eventually led to a new 20m pool in Southall followed later by the Gurnell pool at Ealing – the first 50m pool to open in London for 15 years. By then Laurie had been instrumental in forming the London Borough of Ealing SC, involving the merger of five clubs in a borough with a population of 250,000. He persuaded no less a trio than David Wilkie, Sharron Davies and Duncan Goodhew to captain teams in the opening gala. Laurie was Ealing’s first chief coach before moving to Bournemouth in 1984. ‘At that time Bournemouth Dolphins had 120 members, six hours of pool time a week and four training sessions,’ he said. ‘Within five years membership was up to 300 and a squad system was in place with 20 hours’ training time a week. In 1989 I was appointed as Dolphins’ full-time professsional coach.’
Laurie’s swimmers since then have included internationals Karen Legg, Jamie Wearn, Charlotte Evans and Seth Chappels. In 2005 he attended national championships for the 44th year running.
Administratively, Laurie is the only coach to have served as president of the British Swimming Coaches’ and Teachers’ Association (BSCTA) for four years and is the founder and chairman of both the BSCTA West and the Southern Junior League. ‘When I became president, relations between the ASA and the coaching fraternity were at an all-time low,’ he said. ‘At my first meeting things got so heated that a group of coaches put forward a motion to withdraw coaching services from all national teams until they were consulted and involved. It was very much us and them. I managed to calm it down and proposed that coaches and the ASA should meet at officer level. This was the start of what is now an exceptionally good relationship.’
Laurie’s BSCTA colleagues recognised his immense contribution with a lifetime achievement award at the recent dinner. He was also the first recipient of a similar award in the West. Despite his declared intention to retire, Laurie admits he has not finished with swimming yet. He plans to devote more time to the BSCTA and coach education, and is organising more allembracing training weeks and launching a new Rent-a-Coach service. ‘It’s an emergency coaching service for clubs who are temporarily without a coach or who need help with administrative problems, internal conflict and other issues,’ he said.