Games memories are golden for Orange’s triple Olympian John Southwood

“Oh, magic! Absolutely magic!” says retired local carpenter John Southwood as to what it felt like to walk into the Olympic stadium representing your country.

Now 81, John got his first taste of the sport of canoeing in the late 1950s and went on to represent Australia at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, 1972 Games in Munich and 1976 Games in Montreal.

And it all began because he decided to tag along with his brother and his mates on a trip to Lake Canobolas.

“Well, that’s a story in itself,” says John, “Joe Runeman, he was a builder, a Dutchman and he had an interest in canoeing when he was a young fella in Holland before the Second World War… he built a mould, got them to run off six fibreglass copies off that mould, put them in Western Stores windows for sale, but nobody took them.

“So he got his son Hank to grab his mates from school to come to the lake and go for a paddle. My brother David was one of his mates and he took me along.”

That experience was enough for both John and his brother to buy one of the boats and it wasn’t too much longer before they decided to look at finding a competition.

While Joe’s boats were supposedly built to racing specifications, the sport had progressed since his childhood in Holland.

“They were pre-war vintage, if you will and we went down there and were the laughing stock of the meet,” John recalls with amusement, “but we had met Australian canoeing.”

Being a carpenter, John acquired plans for river canoes and one for David and himself and they began travelling the state going in river races. 

It was at an event in Sydney Harbour that John first came across Olympic paddlers and he began to take an interest in sprint racing.

John’s next step to the Olympics came in 1966, at an Australian championship, when he approached a Romanian-born coach named Yanel Sandelescu to take him on after admiring the technique of one of his students in the competition.

“And he had a tremendous story,” says John. “He was in the Romanian ballet and he had small shoulders, so they sent him to the kayak camp to build up his shoulders. With his interest in movement from the ballet, he was able to pick up how to paddle very quickly. He got on the international team that went to West Germany and he jumped ship.

“He said, ‘Yeah, I've been watching you. The skinny young bloke from the bush beating all these big surf ski paddlers!’ Anyway, he agreed to coach me.”

But that coaching involved John having to completely change his paddling style. Having learnt on Joe Runeman’s left-hand control paddles, John’s coach insisted he switch to a right-hand control paddle.

“I thought about it for quite a bit, it was a big ask. I had to learn how to paddle all over again and now this is in the winter,” recalls John, telling how he fell the first time he tried to use his new paddle.

I fell in the lake! In the middle of bloody winter! I'd never climbed in a racing kayak in my life, but if I stayed in the water I would have drowned. I had to climb back in and I got back to shore before the water penetrated to the skin as I’d quite a few layers of clothes on,” he says.

“And quite a number of times, I fell in the dirty Cooks River, where we did our training.. but that was one of my secrets because he was able to show me how to paddle properly and all the bad habits were left behind.”

One year on, with his coach's help, John had gone from being the top of the intermediates to winning an Australian title and in contention for a place in the 1968 Olympic squad.

But having been deliberately tipped by a Queensland competitor and former Olympian at a prior competition, John didn’t want to take any chances.

“I put metal tips on the paddles, quite sharp,” laughs John, who took the paddle to show his fellow competitors during their warm-up 

“I said, ‘This is the paddle I'm going to use today’ and the fellow that tipped me up said, ‘Hey John, that's illegal! You can't have metal tips on the paddles! I said, ‘It's illegal to tip a fella out too!’ Anyway, they left me alone and I won my first Australian title.”

Competition at the Mexico City games was tough, says John, who made the semi-finals in the K2 1000 metres, with team-mater Adrian Powell.

Four years later, at Munich, John again made the semi-finals, this time in the K1 1000 metres.

But the Munich Games were overshadowed by the terrible terrorist attack on the Israeli team during the early hours of September 5, which also happened to be the day of John’s first race. 

“The swimmers had been partying, because their competition was finished. They're coming home late and, excited for the competition, I wasn't sleeping too good. And I heard firecrackers through the night,” recalls John, who only realised something was wrong when he found his way back to the Olympic Village blocked by soldiers.

“Two days later, they restarted the games and finished it but it was flat,” says John, who only realised how much the incident had affected him when he attended a memorial for the slain athletes in the lead-up to the Sydney 2000 Games.

“I went to that and  I didn't realise what baggage I'd carried from the games in Munich,” he says.

“When we came back from Munich, nothing was said about what happened overly. But 

I remember when the Montreal games were over. I had a feeling of.. thank goodness nothing happened. So it must have been in the back of my mind.”

John’s best Olympic results came at the Montreal Games in 1976, where he and Adrian Powell again made the semi-finals in the K2 1000 metres and finished eighth in the final of the K2 500 metres with fellow Orange paddler John Sumegi.

Sumegi would go on to win a silver medal at the Moscow Games four years later.

“It felt great! Like I was a part of it” says John, recalling seeing his former teammate on the medal podium. “And at the closing ceremony, he carried the flag!”

For John though, Montreal was the end of his competitive career… Well, not quite.

“They brought in the master's games, and I dabbled in that a little bit, but I found that I hadn't done the training, and my competitive spirit was just too great, and it hurt too much!” he recalls, telling of one particular race against a rival competitor from his youth.

“At about the 300-metre mark, we were neck-and-neck this fella and I, and I decided I had to win. It just hurt too much… I beat him, but it hurt!”