Generally speaking,Boxall has deliberately steered clear of that spot all week. Instead,he hides away up in one of the less-frequented sections of the nosebleeds. In the dark. Free to fly his freak flag in peace.
Ariarne Titmus' coach Dean Boxall has done it again,with his crazy reaction to her setting a new world record at the World Champs.
The obvious complication with this approach is that Boxall had already let said freak flag out of the bag three years ago in Tokyo when his prodigy,Ariarne Titmus,won her first Olympic gold medal by beating America’s long-time global 400m freestyle sovereign Katie Ledecky.
The moment that berserk green-and-gold man in his mid-40s was caught on camera bursting past a metal barricade – and a startled Tokyo Aquatics Centre staffer – ripping off his face mask and dry-humping a handrail,he became the subject of a thousand memes. Australia instantly had a coach as famous as his most famous swimmer,and all and sundry needed to know more about him.
The paradoxical thing is that Boxall,well aware of his outrageous flamboyancy,had chosen to watch the race from the venue’s middle tier and not down with the other coaches precisely because he did not want to cause a scene,particularly in front of Ledecky and her US swim team coach,Greg Meehan.
“Out of respect to my fellow coaches – I know what I’m like – I need to be away from them,” Boxall told Brett Hawke on the Australian former Olympian’s podcast after the Tokyo Games. “I don’t want to sit there with the Australian team and be like this caged animal running around,and I do not want to disrespect Greg,Katie or any coach,so I go to that section. I search the venue where I can go so I’m not in front of people or look poor. And I found that little area.”
Boxall with Ariarne Titmus,Meg Harris and Mollie O’Callaghan during the Tokyo Olympics trials in Adelaide in 2021.Getty
Call it a pesky phenomenon of the modern media age,but Boxall has not been able to escape the spotlight since (a similarly out-of-body celebration after Titmus won 400m gold at last year’s world championships in Fukuoka didn’t help). And as the Dolphins hurtle headfirst towards Paris 2024,Australia’s most eccentric,prolific coach has maintained his celebrity status without even trying.
That is partly because – poolside theatrics aside – he is near-impossible to miss. The texture of his hair lies somewhere between Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and The Cure’s Robert Smith,and the mousy brown of his earlier years has been bleached bright blond.
At the pool that looks like a direct correlation between actual rockstar hair and numerous genuine gold medal prospects. There have been signs he does enjoy the attention at least a little bit,such as his appearance in a for a passionfruit vodka drink,along with various keynote speaking gigs.
But the South Africa-born Queenslander is also notoriously media-shy. Rarely has he given an interview since Tokyo,which has only added to the mystique and made him even more in demand. Every outlet covering the trials in Brisbane this week has requested,via Swimming Australia,to speak with him,and the response is always the same.
Where Australian head coach Rohan Taylor,and other old hands such as Michael Bohl,are always up for a chat about the progress of their swimmers,Boxall does not really entertain the concept of the journalist (except apparently on the occasion he needs a reporter to get under the skin of one of his swimmers).
But then,he is unorthodox – a characteristic widely praised and sometimes despised. It is true that Boxall is not universally liked. He has he “never quite fit the mould” of the Australian swimming hierarchy. Critics say his histrionics overshadow his athletes. The athletes themselves,though,are as good as disciples. Bohl calls him a “unicorn”.
Boxall with his swimmers.Supplied
Bohl,along with former national team head coach Jacco Verhaeren,has always been one of the believers. In 2016,the former head of the St Peters program handed him a 15-year-old Titmus,who had moved up from Tasmania and was talented but raw. Boxall set about becoming “the architect of her mindset”. “Craft it,plan it,orchestrate it,” he told Hawke in 2021.
At the time he saw three challenges. The first was that “she’s got no speed”. Her 200m freestyle time was 16 seconds slower than Ledecky’s,and her 800m 38 seconds adrift. The second was body composition and nutrition. The third was her “social butterfly” personality that made her like a “kite in the wind – she can float off,and I need to bring her back”. By the time Boxall had worked out what made Titmus tick – and then brought home Olympic 400m and 200m golds along with the 800m silver – the country’s other top swimmers were seeking out his methods.
Ariarne Titmus and Mollie O'Callaghan both broke the women's 200m freestyle world record at Australia's Paris 2024 swimming trials.
Boxall oversaw 10 athletes at last year’s world championships and appears on track for a similar number in Paris. The coach who has represented the most Australian swimmers at an Olympics to date is Don Talbot in 1964,according to Nine’s Olympic stats guru David Clark. Gold Coast-based veteran Bohl,who counts Emma McKeon and Kaylee McKeown among his vast contingent,has taken the second-most,with nine at London 2012.
The complex nature of representing elite athletes who race against each other was highlighted best in the women’s 200m freestyle final on Wednesday night. Boxall had five competitors in the eight-person final,and all five finished in the top six to secure relay qualification. Two of those,of course,were Titmus and Mollie O’Callaghan,the 20-year-old who beat 23-year-old Titmus to last year’s world championship gold in world-record time.
The infrastructure around this race was a fascinating psychological examination of one coach getting the best out of two once-in-a-generation swimmers who are both training partners and staunch rivals. Boxall warmed his contingent up in the same lane of the training pool,having already delivered individual messaging tailored to motivate very different personalities to beat the others.
Dean Boxall at last year’s championships in Fukuoka.Getty
O’Callaghan is quieter and more nervous,and took some time to adjust to Boxall’s intensity when she joined him in 2019. She told her sister that Boxall had “crackhead energy”,Sophie O’Callaghan once said in an interview with Hawke. He is more gentle with her,as evidenced by their emotional embrace after she broke her own 200m world record only for Titmus to have swum a quarter of a second faster still.
Titmus,conversely,appeared ready to murder someone in the marshalling area,so pumped up was she to make a statement. Boxall,of course,did his usual thing and held up five fingers towards his quintet of qualifiers just after they touched the wall,and then retreated to the bleachers. “When you’ve got someone like that in your corner you beat everyone,” Titmus told Nine’s coverage after her triumph. ” He has the most passion and pride to be a part of this swim team. I’ve been with Dean since I was 15. I’ve basically grown up alongside him. He’s more than just my coach;he’s my best friend,basically.”
On Thursday night,Boxall remained in his unlit corner,tucked away with St Peters colleagues to watch the men’s 100m final. The first lap was calm. The second was a spasm of shaking fists and jerky movements,up and down the row of seats,screaming as Jac Cartwright and Kai Taylor finished inside the top six.
Two events after that,he did not move a muscle through the entire 8:14.06 it took Titmus to finish the women’s 800m final – four seconds ahead of Lani Pallister. The reason for that became more clear when Titmus was asked post-race if she had had a message for her coach. “I would like to say don’t be too angry with the time,” she said with a grin. “He said to me,‘Don’t be a small cat’,and I think I was a small cat.”
Titmus had been seeking a big PB but fell about half a second short. A couple of minutes later,when she was explaining this to more media in the mixed zone,nobody noticed that Boxall was quietly watching her talk to TV cameras from the stand directly behind until she was about contesting the 100m on Friday.
“The 100 is really fun for me,” she said,at which point Boxall chimed in from above. “Fun? Is it fun?” he queried sarcastically. She doubled over laughing,and so did everybody else. Then he said no to some more interview requests.
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