Our first Canadian swimmer to hold a world championship in 21 years is not a man to be trifled with.
When he makes a promise, be assured it will be kept.
Before leaving for the 2007 world aquatics championships in Melbourne, Australia last March, Brent Hayden visited his stricken grandfather, Perry Anderson, in Maple Ridge, B.C. The situation wasn't good. At 92, Anderson was ailing; slipping in and out of consciousness.
"I told him I was going to try to win a medal for him," Hayden recalled. "When I said that, you could see life in his eyes. He cracked a smile for about five seconds. I knew he knew."
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Days after arriving in Melbourne, Hayden was told his grandfather had died. On the night of the men's 100-metre freestyle final, Hayden walked out to the pool deck thinking of his promise then hit the water determined to make it so.
His time of 48.43 seconds created a first-place tie with Italy's Filippo Magnini and produced Canada's first world-championship gold medal since Victor Davis won the 100-metre breaststroke in 1986.
And now, the 23-year-old water bug from Mission, B.C., has made a new pact, this one with himself: he wants to get faster, not just in the water, where he has one heck of a finishing kick, but on his takeoff from the platform.
With a year to go before the Beijing Summer Games, Hayden is reviewing how far he's come and how fast he can be in his pursuit of an Olympic medal. While he won't be swimming his heart out at this weekend's Summer Nationals in Calgary, he is interested in the following week's competition, an open meet in Paris, where he is expected once again to race against Magnini. Joining the two gold medalists will be Frenchman Alain Bernard, who just last month recorded the second-fastest time in the 100 free with a 48.12 showing. (Magnini has also clocked a 48.12.)
"This will be a chance to measure myself against those guys and to see if I can finish the year strong," Hayden said. "After that I'll be going to Beijing to try out the Olympic pool then do some lung testing."
Hayden has been working with a biomechanical expert in the hopes of improving his race starts and thus lowering his times. Video analysis of his starts showed that when he placed his toes over the edge of the platform for pushing off, he wasn't getting into the water as fast as his competitors.
"I was half a body length behind at 15 metres," Hayden said. "I'm trying to figure out how to get to the 50 wall with everyone."
Demanding the best from himself, and getting it, has made Hayden a beacon for a Canadian swim program that has righted itself after a stunning collapse at the Athens Olympics.
Going into those Olympics there were concerns the Canadian team might not win a medal. Coming out empty-handed, it was clear to all that the sport that gave us Davis, Alex Baumann, Mark Tewksbury, Curtis Myden and Marianne Limpert was in need of a life preserver.
Enter Pierre Lafontaine as Swimming Canada's new chief executive officer.
Lafontaine gave Canadian swimming a sense of freshness and enthusiasm. He made changes, streamlined training programs across the country and encouraged younger swimmers to break provincial records. It wasn't long before results began trickling in at the higher levels, with Canada winning 10 medals (not all came in swimming) at the 2005 world aquatics championships held in Montreal.
Hayden was part of the men's team that won a pair of silver medals in the 4 x 100 and 4 x 200 events.
"A lot of what's happened has to do with how bad we did in Athens," Hayden acknowledged. "It woke up everybody, the whole organization. We realized what we were doing wasn't enough. After failing in Athens, we didn't want to do that in front of our home crowd [at the Montreal worlds].
"We had some success there and we rode off that into the next meet and we've been trying to build on it ever since."
Canada's young swim team at this month's Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro won a total of 17 medals while Edmonton's Annamay Pierse broke a 19-year-old national record by taking a silver medal in the 200 breaststroke. Those results, combined with the promise of Brittany Reimer, Mike Brown and others, are a good indicator Canada is pointed in the right direction as it prepares for the lead-up to Beijing.
As for Hayden, he's vowed to push himself for every extra fraction of a second he can manage, from start to finish. It's a promise he's certain to keep.
