After her 1984 Olympic campaign, she stepped off a Qantas jet at the Adelaide Airport, greeted by her entire year 11 Loreto College friends and peers, having gathered to celebrate her Olympic Games performances.
Anna McVann’s parents had six children in eight years. She was the sixth child and openly admits her young life was about trying to keep up and prove herself to older siblings.
Her father, who in partnership with his wife, owned a textile company, decided to enrol all six children in Saturday morning swimming lessons at the Norwood Pool, so their “could sit on the lawn, read the paper and have a rest.”
Anna began developing her water talent at age six when the family had a backyard pool installed.
In a meteoritic period of her life, just nine years later, she stepped off a Qantas jet at the Adelaide Airport, greeted by her entire year 11 Loreto College friends and peers, having just swum in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Her swimming journey from age six to 15 was staggering. She had qualified for the junior nationals in Perth when she was 12 but returned without a medal – and without a place in a final.
But a fire began to burn. She established that her young life’s ambition was to be an Olympian.
Within a year she was ranked No. 1 in her age group in Australia and by the age of 14 she won her first senior National title and selected in her first senior Australian Swim Team.
McVann was the first Australian woman to win gold medals in all freestyle events at the 1984 Australian Championships in Brisbane.
Distance swimming became her focus.
She covered a phenomenal 120kms each week in summer training. “More is best” was the philosophy of the time.
With her coach Graeme Brown at Burnside Club, she never missed a session. It meant getting up at 4.30am, training till 7-7.30am, breakfast, followed by a day at school, then homework, more training till 7pm followed by dinner, more homework and in bed by 8.30pm.
In 1984 she was selected in pre-Olympic teams to tour US and Japan at age 14, and she found herself extremely homesick. However, she was directed by the coaching staff to “put it behind her and get on with it.” And she did.
Selected for the XXIII Olympics in Los Angeles at the age of just 15, Anna McVann was a finalist in all her Olympic events – the 200m, 400m, 800m freestyle and the 4x100m freestyle relay, rarely achieved by any swimmer from any country of the world.
She was fourth in the 400m freestyle. Had she produced her heat time in the final, she would have won silver.
Following her selection in the Commonwealth Games two years later, Anna McVann retired, completed her physiotherapy degree and having travelled the world, is now married and settled in the Clare Valley with four children, and has been involved with coaching.
She has been inducted into the Swimming SA Hall of Fame.
