‘Super dad’ who stole London Games is back

Rio de Janeiro: “I’m famous for being famous,” chuckles Bert le Clos. “Basically I’m the Kim Kardashian of swimming.”

Four years ago this week, the swimming pool in London’s Olympic Park was enveloped in a wonderful, life-affirming wave of emotional energy.

In the water, Chad le Clos had just beaten Michael Phelps in the 200-metre butterfly final. It was the first time the greatest Olympian had lost at that distance in a decade.

It was a sporting moment that made everybody sit up and watch. But our attention was quickly diverted by what was going on up in the stands. There one observer appeared to be rather enjoying the result. A sizeable chap in a goatee was dancing up and down the steps, waving a South African flag, beside himself with delight.

It was Chad’s father, Bert. Clare Balding, the BBC commentator, thought he might make a jolly interviewee. She was not wrong. “Unbelievable,” Bert bellowed, his enthusiasm bubbling out of the screen. “Look at him, that boy is beautiful.” The sheer unaffected warmth of his fatherly celebration became an immediate symbol of the London Games.

The next morning, Bert found himself at the top of the news agenda. He was stopped in the street, asked for his autograph, endlessly congratulated as if it had been him in the pool dethroning the mighty Phelps.

Within a year, back home in South Africa, he was filming television commercials, opening supermarkets, appearing on television chat shows. He had become a celebrity.

“I’m famous,” he chuckles, four years on from his international debut.

“Nothing to do with me. Clare Balding and the BBC made me famous. And my son, of course.” Bert has always been at his son’s side, relishing his sporting achievements, forever bellowing out his support.

“To me he was always a superstar,” he says. If anything, the scale of his support has only grown over the years as he has followed Chad’s every stroke and splash. “I see my son as the future,” he enthuses.

“I see him as the David Beckham of his sport. My God, if he was English or Italian he’d be a world superstar by now. For me, he is the greatest. Not just as a swimmer, but as a role model, as a human being. He is a million times the man I am. He has made me.”

Bert will be alongside the Rio pool, cheering his son on in the rematch with Phelps (the American is said to have come out of retirement specifically in an attempt to reclaim his title). But it has not been an easy last few months for the super dad or his family. In the spring, Chad’s mother Geraldine underwent a double mastectomy after a recurrence of breast cancer.

And while taking a routine medical, Bert himself discovered that he had a tumour in his prostate, which required surgery. The couple’s extraordinary determination to be in place to cheer on their son is recorded in a new documentary, directed by the former Olympian Matthew Pinsent and called, inevitably, ‘Unbelievable.’

The cameras were in the process of following the family up to Rio when the shock diagnosis was delivered. Both Geraldine and Bert tailored their surgery to ensure that they would be fit to attend the Games. But what clearly worried them was how their health fears might affect Chad. Their fear that they had inadvertently distracted their son from his preparations is etched on the couple’s faces.

“It was going to be very different for him going to Rio anyway,” suggests Bert, speaking on the phone from his home in Durban ahead of his flight to Brazil. “When we went to London, nobody had heard of him. Now he is a big name, the defending champion, with the expectations of his country, maybe the whole world on his shoulders. We don’t want to add pressure on him. But then, I’m not sure it does. He is such a cool guy. His attitude to his sport, his focus: he is world class.”

And when the starting buzzer goes on Monday for the 200m butterfly final, Bert will be there, the model of the supportive father. Though he may not look the same as he did in London — he has lost 30kg (4st 10lb) through a strict dietary regime in an attempt to ensure his cancer does not spread — his enthusiasm will make him once more an immediately recognisable figure. There will be no holding back Bert le Clos.

This, after all, is the dad who stole the Games.

— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2016