Rick Demont by Emily Mason Following Is the Complete
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STILL KICKING: Rick DeMont By Emily Mason Following is the complete, unabridged article on Rick DeMont. Check out the March issue of Swimming World Magazine for photos of Rick and his family. See, too, if you can answer the trivia question. Living out your days in Tucson, Ariz., isn’t a bad deal. The mountains are beautiful and so is the desert, and 1972 Olympian Rick DeMont has no plans on leaving. He is in his 18th year of being a sprint coach at the University of Arizona, working on developing young talents, most notably Roland Schoeman of South Africa. He also has taken up painting, and the Tucson scenery has been his muse. His artwork is on display in Mo’s Gallery and can be found online under the same name. He’s kept himself busy, but comfortable with work, and started a family, too. DeMont has been with his wife, Carrie, now for nearly eight years. They got married in Tucson up in the mountains that he has painted so many times. He has a 20-year-old daughter named Angela who attends the University of Arizona with plans to graduate in December with a degree in retail and consumer sciences. She tried swimming for a while, but became interested in pursuing a career in fashion and merchandising. The family also has a new 8-month-old addition, a daughter they named Tierra. “It flips your life upside-down, and my wife is working really hard--not out-of-the-home work, but really hard,” he said. His wife used to work at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind but now spends her time at home raising their baby. He says Tierra seems to be everything at once--the perfect baby and the screaming baby all rolled into one. DeMont doesn’t often turn to the pool these days for himself--a shoulder replacement surgery a couple years ago keeps him from logging any other pool time other than coaching. “It’s a pretty big piece of equipment, and I’m not trying to add up revolutions on my shoulder. I’m in no hurry to shorten the 10-to-15-year lifespan the doctors put on it,” DeMont said. Unfortunately, another surgery is inevitable--just how long before he needs another new shoulder is the only unknown. He keeps in shape by bike riding and doing therapy. After years of being the premier distance swimmer in the world, sometimes joints don’t work like they used to. As a 16-year-old, DeMont broke the world record in the 1650, clocking in at 15:52.91. DeMont gained more fame at the 1972 Olympics, first for a gold medal and then being stripped of it. The 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, had many different tones. It was never hard to recall all the gold medals Mark Spitz won, or how last month’s "Still Kicking" subject, Melissa Belote, broke records, but it is also hard to miss the devastating tragedies that also occurred. It was the darkest Olympics ever--Palestinian terrorists killed two Israelis and abducted nine others. The nine hostages were subsequently killed in a melee with German police at the Munich airport. Pictures overtook the media, and the Games were on the backburner--the Olympic glory was not front-page news. DeMont was just 16 years old and was preparing to swim the mile, in which he was favored to win. He was pulled out of the ready room only to be informed he had tested positive for ephedrine, a banned substance found in his asthma medication he had been on since his youth. On his way out of the pool--which he says was a stone’s throw away from the hotel where the two initial murders occurred--he knew something was going on. “You could see armored tanks and vehicles. We didn’t know. I didn’t really know being stuck in my own despair. We walked right under that building,” he said. “It was heavy, it should have been heavy. My own tragedy was insignificant in comparison.” The USOC later recognized DeMont as an Olympic gold medalist, realizing the mistake that had been made. The IOC, however, would hear nothing of it and still does not recognize him. “I’m not pursuing anything. I’m done pursuing. I’ve spent enough time to know it is a waste of energy in my life,” he said, and he knows being acknowledged by the USOC is a “significant thing.” The 1972 Olympics wasn’t the end for DeMont, not by a long shot. He came back in 1973 at the Belgrade World Championships and became the first man to break the 4-minute barrier in the 400 meter free and came home a hero. He won gold and defeated Australian Brad Cooper, who became the Olympic champion by default when DeMont was stripped of gold in 1972. In 1973, he was named the World Swimmer of the Year, and a few years later in 1976, he broke another world record as part of a 4 x 100 free relay. Toward the end of his career, he continued to experiment with sprinting, mostly the 50 free. In 1990, he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and in 1999, he was inducted into the University of Arizona Athletic Hall of Fame. Most recently, he was an Olympic coach for the Republic of South Africa and traveled to Greece to take charge of its team and keep track of three Arizona swimmers: Ryk Neethling, Schoeman and Lyndon Ferns. With the addition of Darian Townsend, the four men won a gold medal in the 400 free relay and broke the world record, leaving teams like the United States and Australia to eat their bubbles. “The spirit of it (the Olympics) is great. To see everything come full circle is awesome. It’s hard to put into words,” DeMont said. All in all, he feels like his life is “about the same as it’s always been.” .