His was the typical American immigrant’s story, but with a few interesting twists. Born in 1975 to a Jewish family in the Ukraine, Lenny Krayzelburg's unusual swimming skill brought him to the attention of the country's coaching establishment at a very early age: "I guess it was kind of a combination of my natural talents -- my body position in the water when I'm on my back - and the coaching staff there saw at a pretty early age--around the time I was about eight--that I had some talent in backstroke, and so they really stressed that in the Ukraine. Everything changed when his parents, Oleg and Yelena, decided to leave their home city of Odessa and immigrate to the U.S. with Lenny and his younger sister in 1989.
Adapting to American Swim Training
While attending college near Los Angeles, the head swim coach at the University of Southern California noted Lenny’s strength in the backstroke and recruited him to the USC swim team in 1994. His own original swim training past back in Odessa, however, caused him to be aware of the differences. He puts it all down largely to a matter of intensity: “Especially at a very young age it was very intense, a lot of pressure, tough workouts. Here in America they just develop swimmers a lot slower — and not necessarily just swimmers, in all the sports they develop them a lot slower and basically let a person grow into their body, then they start really putting some work into them. Actually I was already lifting weights at 9 or 10 years old, which is pretty much unheard of in the States and a lot of countries." At the 1998 World Championships, he swept both the 100m and 200m back events, and the following year at the U.S. Nationals went on to break the American record in the 200m backstroke for the seventh time.
By the time of the Sydney Olympics in September 2000, Lenny had established a clear international dominance in his events. He capped it with three gold medal victories — first in the 100 metre backstroke, then in the 200-metre backstroke (swimming an Olympic record in the longer event of 1:56:76—just less than a second off his own world record), and shared in a third gold when he swam the leadoff leg of the 4 x l00m medley relay. Following Lenny in neighboring lanes were two swimmers he knew would provide close competition: American teen Aaron Peirsol, who won silver in the 200-metre, and Australian Matt Welsh, who took the silver in the 100-metre and bronze in the 200-metre. “Both the 100 and 200 were really tough races, you know — against Matt Welsh in the 100 it was a tough race and then again against Matt and Aaron in the 200,” he says, looking back.
Coming Back Strong After Injury
Unable to compete throughout most of 2001 and 2002 due to both knee and rotator cuff surgery, in 2002 Lenny returned after just three months following left knee surgery to win the 100-metre backstroke and placed second in the 200m at the U.S. open. He also finished second in both the l00m and 200m back at the Summer Nationals earlier that year. Then in 2003, he also secured a win in the l00m back and placed second in the 200m back at the U.S. Spring Nationals.
The road to Athens involved an intense training schedule of swimming four hours each day, combined with one hour of weight training. This continued under the supervision of his original Coach, Mark Schubert, at USC - where Lenny had access to the best facilities in the region as a university swim team volunteer coach. The intensity of his own routine at the time was simply the engine he had always relied on in achieving everything already in the pool. Combined with his other emphasis on consistency, it remains his natural resource of strength for the year ahead: "People think that maybe swimming is just going back and forth in a lane, but it really isn’t. There’s a lot of preparation — diet, rest, it’s just a whole package, and I think if you want to be successful then you have to be able to do all those things." In Athens in 2004, he missed out on a medal by just 2/100 of a second, but was there to help the American team grab another Olympic gold in the 4 x 100 m relay, swimming in the preliminary round. A classy Olympic finish to a career that had taken him competitively across two continents.
Hal W. Peat - Hal Peat is an independent journalist on fitness, exercise, health and sports personalities. He has contributed for over 12 years to a ...
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