From butterfly swimmer to medical expert, Kiwi Olympic veteran Dr Dave Gerrard says the games have been transformed over the six decades he’s been involved.
The 79-year-old has become synonymous with New Zealand Olympic teams and sports medicine — having led a career as an athlete, turned medical expert, turned sporting official.
Gerrard competed in Tokyo’s 1964 games and now oversees athlete health in Paris 2024, explaining the set-up 60 years ago was completely different to today’s games.
“Things were a lot different back then. When I competed, we weren’t even drug tested,” he said.
“The male and female athletes were housed separately — a long way from each other.
“Officials jokingly told us the high barbed wire fence around the women’s compound was one centimetre higher than the world pole vault record, at the time.”
He joked that the record was attempted several times.
Medical school beckoned for a young Gerrard after he won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in swimming in 1966. He followed in the medical footsteps of famous Kiwi Olympians Arthur Porritt and Jack Lovelock in studying at Otago University.
Porritt won bronze 100 years ago, in the sprints in Paris 1924, which the Chariots of Fire movie is based on. Lovelock won gold for the 1500m at Berlin 1936.
The former would go on to be a surgeon to the Royal Family, an International Olympic Committee member for 30 years, and then Governor-General.
Gerrard said: “If I told Porritt today we had break dancing in the Olympic Games, he would say we’re from another planet.”
After finishing his medical exams and helping raise a young family, Gerrard’s Olympics career re-started as a team doctor in the early ’80s.
He was part of the New Zealand medical support team until 1992.
One enduring memory he recounted was from the Los Angeles games in 1984.
As a doctor, he had to lance a boil on the backside of sailor Russell Coutts, who suffered competing in the single-handed Finn class in rough conditions. Coutts would go on to win gold — a day after Gerrard performed what he described as minor surgery.
He was elevated to team chef de mission — the boss of the 1996 team at the Atlanta games. That year’s games became famous for swimmer Danyon Loader’s double gold medals in the 200m and 400m freestyle.
Gerrard already had a close bond with Dunedin-born and bred Loader and his world-renowned coach Duncan Laing.
He was poolside for both of Loader’s victories. However, Gerrard and Laing were removed from the stadium after some overzealous celebrations following Loader’s 400m victory.
“Duncan was so upset because the victory ceremony was taking place, we could hear the national anthem being played … but he couldn’t see Danyon.”
Gerrard recounted Loader blitzing the field in the 200m freestyle, with nobody expecting him to hold on two days later in the 400m race. Nobody except his coach.
In a link to his history, Gerrard watched the great Sir Peter Snell win double gold in Tokyo in 1964 as a teammate and was also on hand to watch Loader’s double gold. They were New Zealand’s last swimming medals of any colour.
The medical professor, who turns 80 next year, has for the last three decades been on the World Aquatics medical panel.
With modern, intricate testing, he’s confident drug cheats are being caught.
“Ever since the fallout from the Lance Armstrong scandal, the testing has become more sensitive — able to detect minute traces of drugs.”
He said blood passports, as well as out-of-competition and whereabouts testing, have also helped to catch cheats.
Overall, Gerrard said money and sponsorship were the other massive changes he’d seen across his 60-year career — as well as the ability of athletes to make a career out of sport.
He told 1News that the flood of money had clearly helped turn athletes into professionals, but that the downside was that money can breed self-entitlement and an eagerness to control sport.
Gerrard said there comes a time for athletes, when they must decide to stop putting their hand out, and instead put their hand up to give back.
He said his favourite games had been Sydney 2000 and London 2012.
Sydney, because of the vibrancy of the games and the volunteers. And London for the legacy venues and infrastructure that’s been left behind.
The answer comes quickly when I ask Gerrard who is the greatest athlete he’s seen compete at his 12 Olympic Games.
“Showing my aquatic bias here, Michael Phelps.”
Gerrard was asked if he thought Phelps had been clean.
“He was subjected to a huge amount of testing — a lot of it out of competition, I have no doubt Phelps was clean.
“He was physiologically so unique, as the old saying goes choose your parents wisely!”
Phelps spent time in Dunedin at the Otago Univerity test flume before his Olympic success in 2008. Gerrard and Phelps’ paths have crossed in recent times at the Olympics and the World Championships.
Gerrard said he always had two pieces of advice for athletes — that there was life after sport and to not forget your roots.
Now, arriving in Paris six decades on, one of Gerrard’s first jobs has been to monitor the quality of the water in the River Seine before next Tuesday’s triathlon.
That might be worth another yarn as the man affectionately known as Doctor Dave gets set to make more Olympic memories.