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Australian Story: Nov 18

Part two of an Australian Story special on Murray Rose airs next week, introduced by Nicole Livingstone.

2013-11-15_1035Part two of a two part Australian Story special, A Feeling For The Water screens on Monday, introduced by Nicole Livingstone.

It opens with Murray Rose’s move to the United States to begin a scholarship at the University of Southern California.

America in the late 1950s was an attractive fit for Rose and his varied interests, including vegetarianism, spirituality and acting.

Already a three times gold medallist in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Rose went on to swim one of his most famous races in the Rome Olympics and perfected his strategy of out-psyching opponents to win gold for a second time in the 400 metres – the only swimmer to win the race twice.

Murray Rose looked set to dominate his events for years to come until his surprise exclusion from the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. The controversial decision to leave him off the team was made on the basis that he hadn’t swum in the Australian Championships earlier that year. Why? Because it clashed with his first acting role in a Hollywood movie, playing an Australian surfer. It’s a decision that still polarises officials 50 years later:

“The organisation, it was just nuts. He was swimming faster than anyone in the world over 1500 metres.” – Dawn Fraser, Olympic Gold medallist.

“Officialdom gone mad. I think they got it wrong.” – John Coates, AOC.

“Australian Swimming stuck to its guns and I think they were right.” – Forbes Carlile, coach.

Undeterred, Rose left competition swimming and built a built a career as an actor and swimming commentator and later as a marketing executive, before running to Australia to work in sponsorship and promotion in the Sydney Olympic games.

The program features insights from Rose’s memoir, “Life is Worth Swimming” which is soon to be published posthumously.

His American-born wife Jodi, a former ballerina with the New York Joffrey Ballet, speaks for the first time about the sometimes unconventional ideas that drove her husband and about his courage when diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Also interviewed are a roll-call of Australian swimming greats including veteran coach Forbes Carlile, and Rose’s contemporaries Dawn Fraser, Jon Henricks, John Devitt and John Konrads, plus younger stars like Kieren Perkins – all themselves Olympic gold medallists.

Monday November 18, 8pm on ABC1

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