The first thing to tell you about Fran Halsall is that she is beautiful. There is no point avoiding this, however much trouble I might get into with my lovely girlfriend, because it is self-evident from the large photo running alongside these words.
When I arrived at the Charlton Lido in southeast London, the venue for yesterday’s photo shoot, Halsall was standing at the edge of the pool in a black cocktail dress and killer heels, her blonde hair flowing about her shoulders like a river of gold. On the instructions of Graham, the photographer, she flicked the hem of her dress, and then tilted her head back to giggle at the frivolity and fun of it all. For a few moments, I was mesmerised.
The second thing to tell you about Halsall, 19, is that she is a mighty good swimmer. She won four medals at the 2008 World Short Course Championships in Manchester, including bronze in the 4 x 100 metres freestyle and silver in the 100 metres freestyle. At the Olympics in Beijing, she swam a British record of 53.81sec that helped the British quartet to set a new national record of 3min 38.18sec in the 4 x 100 metres freestyle. She also won silver in the 100 metres freestyle at the 2009 World Championships in Rome in August.
According to those who know about such things, Halsall is a hot tip for gold in 2012, something that also makes her particularly topical. There are exactly 1,000 days to the opening ceremony from tomorrow and it is on the shoulders of young athletes such as Halsall that the ultimate success or failure of one of the most controversial and expensive sporting events to take place in this country will depend. No pressure there, then.
The third thing to tell you about Halsall — and by far the most important — is that she possesses one of the most fascinating and inimitable of personalities. I knew she was a good swimmer and somebody had told me that she was attractive, but nothing had prepared me for the depth, intricacy, scope and boundless vivacity of this rather astonishing 19-year-old.
For more than half an hour she dazzled us with her high-voltage personality, the power of her ambition to secure gold a thousand days or so hence, the vigour of her many interests. Every question was met full-on, every avenue of conversation was pursued with dynamism, every bit of banter fizzed with verve.
Then, the biggest surprise of all: Halsall told me of her passion for religious philosophy. As my eyebrows reached ever higher, she talked with insight about the religious writings of Plato and Aristotle, queried the coherence of Aquinas’s natural moral law, voiced her concerns about deductive proofs of God’s existence, and confided some of her personal existential concerns. And there was me thinking that swimmers did nothing except push their bodies to hell and back every day.
“Sure, the training is tough, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have time for anything else,” she says, as if a lifestyle encompassing elite sport, epistemology and an obsession with Christian Louboutin shoes (of which more later) is perfectly routine. “I am doing an A level in theology at the moment, which is why I am so interested in the philosophy of religion.
“What I really like about it is the fact there are so many different theories to argue about and discuss — and that there is no single right answer. Take Aquinas. He basically said that you have to follow natural law to get to heaven. I can see where he is coming from, but then you get someone like Hitler. He thought what he was doing was right — in his own mind at least. But does that make it right? The morality of a thing cannot be completely subjective. You know what I mean?”
I probably did know what she meant, but just at that moment I was trying to figure out ways to murder her boyfriend. Jealousy, you see — and certainly not the kind of brute impulse that Aristotle would have approved of.
The boyfriend, by the way, was at the photo shoot: blond, tall, irritatingly handsome and charmingly shy. His name is Alastair Wilson and he is a 25-year-old hockey player who met Halsall at the Olympic Games in 2008.
I ask Halsall how they got together in Beijing. “I can’t tell you the whole story,” she says giggling. “We met in the Village on the last night before we went home. We had like a Team GB party thing and it was all a little embarrassing. There was a lot of alcohol involved. But we drifted apart after we got back and it is only recently that we have started dating properly. He lives in Nottingham, so it is not that far away from me in Loughborough.”
Is it easier to date someone who is involved in sport and so understands the sacrifices you have to make? “Oh, definitely,” she says. “The only problem is that we argue all the time about who does the most training and who works the hardest. But I think he knows deep down that I work a lot harder [giggles]. I mean, the guys in hockey only do one session of training per day.”
Halsall relocated to Loughborough from her home near Liverpool just after the Olympics in Beijing to ratchet up her training regime in preparation for 2012. “I moved there because it’s like an intensive training centre for swimming and the coach there suits me because I have known him since I was 13,” she says. “The squad is really strong. Jo Jackson, who won an Olympic medal, David Davies and Liam Tancock all train there.
“It really helps having other top swimmers alongside me. We push each other to go the extra mile and the competitiveness within the group makes the sessions a lot more fun.
“If someone is doing an extra bit of training that I am not doing, I think, ‘Hang on, I better step up here.’ Training in that kind of environment makes me feel like a proper swimmer now.”
What are the hours like? “I tend to start morning training at 7.45 and get out of the pool at 10. Then I go home, have a nap and some lunch. Then I get ready for training in the afternoon which begins at 3.30, which is stuff like running or biking and then another session in the pool. That session normally finishes about 6.30. We get one day off a week.”
That doesn’t leave much time for philosophy though, does it? “I guess not, but the really good thing is that British swimming has got me a private tutor through UK Sport which provides money to help with studying and other things. I didn’t get a chance to get my A levels finished before I went to Beijing, so that is why I am doing A levels now. In addition to theology I am also doing an A level in sport.”
We talk about her love of clothes. “I love Christian Louboutin shoes,” she says, giggling again. “They are just so pretty and high and girly. I got my first pair for my birthday from mum and dad. The only problem is that they are incredibly expensive, but that makes them kind of special and I am now hooked on them. I have seven or eight pairs now. I have to save up to buy them, though, being a swimmer. We don’t have tons of cash to spare.”
Halsall’s presence at a lido in southeast London is symbolic for all sorts of reasons, but perhaps most importantly because Greenwich Council has put together a significant funding programme to redevelop pools such as this in the build-up to 2012, hoping to harness the power of the Olympics to get more youngsters involved in sport. “It would be great if what we do in 2012 encourages more people to take up swimming,” Halsall says. “That would add a silver lining to everything we achieve.”
Sentiments, one imagines, that Plato would endorse.
ed hardy
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