Gold Standard

Olympic gold winning swimmer-turned-motivational speaker Mark Tewksbury faced down depression, homophobia and self doubt, and continues his reinvention into 2021.

Mark Tewksbury came to prominence during the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. His resume includes gold, silver and bronze medals, as well as holding seven world records, and a cover appearance on TIME magazine.

In 1998, Tewksbury became Canada’s first sports hero to openly declare his homosexuality, helping start a global conversation on the taboo subject of gays in sport.

Currently, alongside his advocacy efforts, he works as a speaker, producing spellbinding presentations for corporate, business or youth, drawing on his vast personal experience of leadership against the odds.

How are the lockdowns treating you, Mark?

I’ve enjoyed the life change to be honest. Generally speaking I’m doing excellent. Freedom is my highest value so it's great to feel I still have it during lockdown. I’ve basically set myself a curriculum. I’ve been adapting a book I wrote a number of years ago with Debbie Muir into bitesized chunks, as we needed to go digital eventually to make that transition. It allows us to test our content in this new one-to-one format. We’re looking at 12- week programmes, teaching it, then having people apply it over three-month periods. We see a massive change in people.

What turmoil has the cancellation of Tokyo 2020 caused for athletes?

I’m a director of the Canadian Olympic Committee so I sit around a table and help make the decisions. The IOC committee was very slow in making decisions, but we saw that the world was shutting down and decided early on that – even if there was an Olympics – we wouldn’t send a Canadian team. It was a very big decision, but we just felt it was ethically wrong to put the pressure on athletes to feel that they had to train when our entire society was locked down.

On top of the strains of locking down for a year, there’s the added burden that the Beijing 2022 Winter Games is a year from now, in February 2022. It’s been a huge challenge and we’re seeing disturbing covid case numbers out of Tokyo and a lot of people not wanting a Games there anymore.

The whole cycle is based on four years, so even our sponsorship deals are under threat. People at every level have been hit: you’ve got some skateboarders who are going to be in their very first Olympic Games and then you’ve got people for whom this might be their fifth Olympics.

When did you know swimming was your future?

You know when you see something on TV that sparks a dream? I was an eight-year old kid that joined the swimming club, and by 12 or 14 I thought I might be on a trajectory to be on the national team. And then I was on the trajectory to be winning.

There are always moments that seemed less linear, like a leap frog. I remember at one swimming meet my time was 51st in the world, and then I swam a time that put me fourth. But after that I stabilised there for a while.

Are you glad your athletic career is over?

I’ve been glad it’s over for years! I retired when I was 25, and into my 30s I was still waking up having nightmares that I was still swimming. It was just so all-encompassing, and at such a young age. It’s great to have had that commitment and intensity, but at the same time, it’s so myopic. I wanted to explore so much more.

How did you learn to hyper-focus?

I think you learn to do that when you have to perform under pressure. You have to get your nerves and your thinking under control, otherwise you don’t succeed, so it’s kind of survival of the fittest. But that same rush still manifests itself: I launched a class yesterday for The Corporate Champions programme, and before that launch there’s a moment of anxiety and a pressure on the performance. I love to have to keep using those skills that I learnt in sport and applying them to everyday situations in life.

What does going up to receive a gold medal feel like?

I was just in shock when I won [at the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games], and unlike athletics, you have to step up to get the medal right after an event. There wasn’t really enough time for me to comprehend everything, but I remember seeing my parents in Barcelona that night and that was a beautiful moment, but I still had to swim the next day, so there was a lot going on. It was about a week later when I was in the stadium watching the men’s decathlon when I saw an athlete go up and get a medal and something about that ceremony made me think: 'I got one too!'. And that’s when it hit me.

What was the aftermath? Did you have an existential crisis once you'd achieved exactly what you'd trained for your whole life?

One of my regrets is that I didn’t have an existential crisis and that I never got to say goodbye to my fellow athletes. That was the hardest part. It was 12 years later when I went back in Athens as part of a television analysis team that I realised a lot of the athletes were there, so that was my moment of closure. I think it’s different now though, and we make athletes think beyond their short careers.

After returning home following Barcelona, it really blew up for me. I was on the cover of Time, I had a book deal with Penguin and a clothing deal with Seers. It was a huge thing, but my specialism was being part of a team, so it was a little isolating.

Winning gold was life-changing for me and I’m proudly wearing this Companion of the Order of Canada broach now, which is our version Of Being a Commander of the British Empire (CBE). This was my platform, but I managed to use it to stand up for all sorts of people who would maybe haven’t had their voice heard before. Getting a gold allowed me to focus on the humanitarian work that I was supposed to do.

You later came out as gay in 1998. What was the reaction, and which inspiring events gave you the strength to do this?

I was the first out Olympian in my country in 1998. It felt at the time that I just couldn’t pretend anymore and I would have never guessed but the medal was to start my journey.

You’re not going to believe it, but the moment that inspired me was actually when Tina Turner left Ike with nothing but her stage name. That was the moment that empowered me to make a change in my life. So I moved to Australia where I was just a Political Science student again.

While the progress has been encouraging, in the UK, it’s still unheard of for soccer players to come out. You mentor a lot of closeted athletes. What are the barriers?

In Canada, it is mostly hockey players in a professional leagues that I talk to, but it’s been really interesting for me to watch because when I came out in 1998 I was thinking it would be normal in five-years and that this won’t be an issue, full stop. But it still was, and I was the only out guy for a long time, right up until Sochi. I was getting calls from all around the world to be their 'out' spokesperson, but I was thinking: “This is ridiculous guys, there must be someone else by now?”

Putin did a great thing inadvertently by targeting our community. It forced people who maybe wouldn’t speak out about their sexuality to do so. It opened the floodgates. Countries across the world now have out Olympians, and it’s happening in hockey here now too, with an initiative called You Can Play. However, it hasn’t trickled down to an actual athlete who is currently playing in any league. There’s still a piece missing in the LGBT story of sport. There will eventually be a breakthrough where it truly becomes a non-issue in sport.

What advice to you give athletes struggling with coming out?

With amateur athletes I’m frank, but when there’s a discussion with professional athletes I never actually get to meet them. There’s always an intermediary who’s sent and every single time when it comes to it, they bail out.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

I’m an enthusiastic, energetic, positive person obviously, but I had lots of doubts and negativity as well. I’ve watched films like Chariots of Fire about 100 times. I really respond to that sort of excellence. I really love watching people who are good at what they do.

I always took inspiration from the athletes around me who were winning golds too, and they made me believe. I love listening to music too, like Maya Angelou. I always took inspiration where I can find it.

Are athletes more prone to psychological issues?

There’s all sorts of types in this business. I think about how depressed I was and it wasn’t because of my wiring. It was because of my socialisation. The world was telling me that being gay was bad, and it’s also a very high pressure world where you’re only as good as your last performance.

The climate at the time I was competing was terrifying. I even had a few reporters come up to me and tell me they knew about my sexuality and I would have to beg them not to print anything and promise that I would tell them when I was ready to come out. I was always dancing that dance. When I came out in 1998 it was still early. I remember a lot of sports reporters said: “Why do we have to do this? Your private life is your private life”. But I said: “That’s bullshit. You’re always talking about the hockey players wives or their families. You don’t get a pass to say it’s a non-issue. I’m sorry, but it is.”

How do you pick the charitable causes that you champion and support?

Often you’re introduced to a cause via somebody you know. The Paralympics I’ve been involved with for a long time. I see the power of sport to transform people, so whenever I see that it’s appealing to me. We have this ability to come together as an amazing community. For example, for a long time intellectual disability was put into the background and no one wanted to deal with it.

What’s next for Mark Tewksbury?

I’m running again for the Olympic Committee so I’ll potentially be there for another 4 years. My life was spent travelling a lot. I had an apartment in Toronto and I’ve left the apartment now and I’m grounded here in Calgary. So the future for me is continuing to grow this virtual leadership programme. For sure, you miss the coming together and sitting around a table and having coffee breaks, but what does happen is your individual learning journey is amazing because it’s so focused.

My motivational work has been really cool. I dream to make the experience akin to How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Participants leave with this amazing tool box to handle any challenge thrown at them as a leader. We saw this recently with President Trump. How can a president of the United States just say what he wants and there’s no repercussion? Now we saw the repercussions. It’s an interesting time to be in a field of leadership.