Roland Schoeman

Born in Pretoria on 7th March 1980, Roland first took an interest in the sport when he was 13 and began to compete three years later. He matriculated at the Willow Ridge School, where he swam under coach Gavin Ross, and then won a scholarship to the University of Arizona. Before moving overseas Roland competed at the 1998 Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, where he finished 6th in both the 50m and 100m freestyle events.  

In the 2000 NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships in Minnesota, Arizona sophomore Roland Schoeman tied the world record in the 50-meter (short-course) freestyle. Schoeman's preliminary time of 21.31 matched Mark Foster's (Great Britain) 1998 mark.

This marked the beginning of a career that would span 4 Olympic Games from Sydney 2000 - to London 2012.

At the Athens Games, he won gold in the relay, silver in the 100m freestyle, and bronze in the 50m freestyle. He also won three gold, a silver, and a bronze FINA World Championship medals, as well as four gold, three silvers, and three bronzes at the Commonwealth Games. He set new South African records in the 100 m Freestyle (48.69 s), 50 m Freestyle (22.04 s), 100 m Butterfly (52.73 s) and 50 m Butterfly (23.65 s) events.

He won a gold medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens in the 4 × 100 m freestyle, a silver medal in the 100 m freestyle event, and a bronze in the 50 m freestyle. Three of the Men's 100-metre Freestyle team were in the team that broke the record and won gold at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. He also claimed golds in the 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly.

Schoeman, who is asthmatic, was voted the African Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World in 2004, 2005 and 2006; and the South African Swimmer of the Year in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. He was elected South African Sports Star of the Year in 2004 In 2007, he received the South African Presidential Award Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, awarded for excellent achievements in the field of swimming.

At the 2005 FINA World Aquatics Championships in Montreal, Canada he won two gold medals [50 m Butterfly (in a world record time of 22.96 s) and Freestyle (21.69 s, the second fastest time in history at the time). He also claimed a silver in 100 m freestyle.

In December 2005, Schoeman turned down a 40 Million Rand (US$5.9 million) contract to swim for Qatar. He stated reasons of national pride for turning down the offer and that hearing the South African national anthem and sharing the joy of his victories with his fellow South Africans is what made winning gold special.

On 12 August 2006, Schoeman broke the short course world record for 50 metres freestyle and became the first man to swim the distance under 21 seconds, with a time of 20.98 seconds. Schoeman lowered the previous mark by 0.12 seconds held for the last two years by Frédérick Bousquet of France. Schoeman was swimming in a specially built 25-metre pool at an invitational meeting in a Hamburg tennis stadium.

At the 2007 FINA World Aquatics Championships in Melbourne Australia, he successfully defended his 50m butterfly title. He also made the final of the 50 m and 100 m freestyle and was part of the 4×100 m freestyle relay team that finished fourth. On 6 September 2008, Roland Schoeman set a new short course meters world record of 20.64 at South African Nationals. Schoeman lost his world record in late 2008 but regained his record.

At the Short Course World Record at South Africa Championships, Schoeman swam a 20.30 seconds of the 50-meter freestyle short course (25 m pool).

In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Schoeman, aged 32, advanced to the final in the Men's 50m freestyle, clocking a 21.80 to finish .46 seconds behind the gold medal winner, Florent Manaudou. Schoeman wanted to swim at the 2016 Olympic Games but withdrew in April 2016.

In 2017 he partnered with Athletes USA to facilitate the granting of athletic scholarships to American Universities. Roland continues to swim. In June 2018 he competed in the 1 Mile Flowers Sea Swim at the Cayman Islands, finishing with a time of 24:05.

Lyndon Ferns Ryk Neethling Roland Schoeman and Darian Townsend in Melbourne for the 2007 Swimming World Cup

https://mg.co.za/article/2014-08-21-the-return-of-the-awesome-foursome/ 

21 August 2014

Last Friday was the 10th anniversary of the 4x100m freestyle relay team’s win in the Athens Olympic pool, one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of South African sport. For Ryk Neethling, the day passed largely uneventfully but, at about 8 pm, finding himself alone in his Franschhoek home, memories began to flood the room.

After an hour of meditation and goosebumps, reliving that balmy Sunday night in Greece, he texted Roland Schoeman. It was at exactly this time 10 years ago that the men had stormed not only to the gold medal but also the world record, beating the Netherlands and the United States into second and third place respectively. His text said simply: “Jy’s ‘n yster nou en was een in die verlede – Ryk,” which, roughly translated, means: “You’re the man now and you were the man back then.”

It is one of the open secrets of South African sport that Neethling and Schoeman were never bosom buddies. They didn’t see eye to eye on Dirk Lange, the martinet German swimming coach and Schoeman’s mentor, and, if there was a disagreement to be had, Neethling and Schoeman would unerringly find it.

With time there has been a general softening. Neethling sought out Schoeman in Glasgow at the Commonwealth Games recently and the Cold War has transformed itself into something closer to a careful truce. There are moments of unease for both parties but listening to Neethling, a man who is far more emotional than one suspects he likes to appear, suggests he’s happy just to be heard.

It says much for the two that they were able to put aside their itch all those years ago and hunt for gold. At the World Championships in Barcelona in 2003, the same South African team finished eighth in the same event. They swam then in a different order but the experience in Catalonia confirmed that the team had reached the proverbial bend in the river.

‘No more complaining’
“We were the only team other than the winners to go into a huddle after that race,” said Neethling this week. “We said after that that there was to be no more complaining. No complaining about Swimming SA, about our swimsuits, about whatever we could find to complain about. And there were to be no excuses, no excuses about anything.”

In the months preceding Athens, Neethling was kept afloat by $250 a month from four generous Tucson benefactors. He was studying at the University of Arizona and to say that there was no small change in his wallet is an understatement. His teammates were in similar positions of hardship, but they continued to train, to plot, to scheme; they would wake each other up with middle-of-the-night text messages from halfway across the world. There was a feeling of camaraderie, brotherhood and the tightening of expectation.

They were inadvertently helped three days before the final when the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee threatened to send the uppity four home. If their collective anger towards the authorities had blunted since Barcelona, it was now as sharp as ever. “We sort of said, ‘Let’s use this to fuel us’; we talked about it. That kind of mind-set isn’t sustainable, we knew that. In the short term, it powered us,” said Neethling.

When it came to the final, Schoeman swam the first leg in the fourth fastest time ever recorded. Despite Michael Phelps swimming for the USA and Pieter van den Hoogenband swimming for the Netherlands, Schoeman’s trailblazing opening set the South Africans up nicely. They led from start to finish and the victory defined their lives.

Best of all, after going their respective ways, there are signs afoot that the “Awesome Foursome” is coming back together, quietly testing the water in ways that would have been inconceivable five years ago.

On the 23rd of July 2001, at the FINA World Championships held in Fukuoka, Japan, Roland tied for third place in the 50m freestyle, winning a bronze medal. I found out yesterday that in 2001 at the World Championships in Fukuoka, I became the first South African man to win a world championship medal. Grateful to have won a few more world championship medals after that and helped pave the way for the younger crop after me.

Two Decades After First Fukuoka Worlds, Roland Schoeman Still ‘Smelling the Roses’

02 August 2023

https://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/two-decades-after-first-fukuoka-worlds-roland-schoeman-still-smelling-the-roses/ 

Roland Schoeman wasn’t yet 21, but his veteran coach knew an adjustment was in order.

It was 2001, and the promising South African sprinter had shifted for a summer to train with coach Mike Bottom and his fellow sprint star Anthony Ervin. Beyond the sets and the hard work in the pool, Schoeman got one piece of information from Bottom that 22 years later continues to resonate. 

“One thing that Mike said was, ‘smell the roses,’” Schoeman said. “I’d been very, very serious in my life for a huge amount of time, and that was really the first opportunity that I had to kind of enjoy the moment, enjoy the experience.”

That experience was a FINA World Championships in Fukuoka. More than two decades later, just past his 43rd birthday, Schoeman was back in Japan, still swimming, still enjoying the journey, still smelling those roses.

Schoeman was the oldest participant in the 2023 World Aquatics Championships, less than a year after he decided to return to swimming. (Born in 1980, he was one of only 10 swimmers at Worlds born in that decade and three years older than the next oldest participant, 39-year-old Marc Dansou of Benin.)

Still based in Arizona, where he attended college in Tucson, and an American citizen, Schoeman felt short in his bid to qualify for a fifth Olympics in 2016. He was banned for a doping violation in July of 2019, though he’s since been exonerated of that for proof of a contaminated substance, a multiyear order that required appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Once that was resolved, Schoeman returned to Masters Swimming and found he was having fun and still moving quite well. So he got to wondering …

“By virtue of the fact that I was swimming better and better and better and going times that I hadn’t gone in a significant amount of time, it was really based on that,” he said. “We were like, why don’t I go swim trials? If I qualify, I qualify. If I don’t qualify, I don’t qualify. It was purely based on that. As we trained and got faster and faster, the idea of being able to come and be here was more and more at the forefront of my belief and what I wanted.”

Schoeman’s improvement earned him another Worlds, swimming the 50 free in Fukuoka. He was slightly quicker than his seed time, going 22.87 to tie for 50th place. It’s a far cry from his best of 21.67, set first at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 and matched five years later at Worlds in Barcelona. He’s still chasing the 22.18 that got him bronze in Fukuoka 22 years ago and the 22.02 that earned bronze at the Athens Olympics. But his Fukuoka swim is more than a starting point.

He hadn’t planned on returning to elite competition when he got back into the pool, just as a way to exercise. But when the comeback became something he wanted, he drew upon his extensive network of friends for advice. Brent Hayden, who made a similar comeback to reach the Tokyo Olympics in his late 30s, is a close friend and advisor. Schoeman also picked the brain of Dara Torres, who made comebacks an art well into her 40s.

The three-time Olympic medalist and former World Record holder in the 50 butterfly has dipped into the lessons of his past. His standout memory from the Fukuoka Words in 2001 was getting silly to lighten the mood before events, coming out in a gi before one event and mugging for the cameras. He’s utilizing the same in-the-moment joy now, relishing being pushed by the competitive environment of major meets.

“Having trained on my own as long as I have, it’s difficult when you stand up and you’re doing your own thing,” Schoeman said. “You don’t have a benchmark. It’s just a different atmosphere, a different vibe, a different energy. So to be in a position once again to be able to be up on the blocks, race against others but also continue to evolve and grow and learn more about myself, it’s just this duality which is really, really cool.”

Roland Schoeman is striving for the Paris Games. He envisions training trips abroad, perhaps in Australia, to incorporate new elements to his repertoire. He’s got the Olympic A cut in the 50 (21.96 seconds) circled.

In Fukuoka, he was particularly excited about the chance to bridge the gap between South African swimming eras, including on a youthful mixed 400 free relay Saturday, even for a program whose big names on the men’s side largely stayed home this summer.

Schoeman thinks he can contribute among them, and he’s eager to see where the next year takes him.

“Today, being able to be a part of the relay, that’s really special, because I never had this opportunity with these kids on the team,” he said. “That’s a really great experience.”