Swimming: Foster attacks treadmill of 'boring' British swimming

As we contemplate the prospect of the German football team, the one hammered 5-1 by England just nine months ago, competing in tomorrow's World Cup final, there is solace to be found in the achievements of other Englishmen in other sports, and I'm not talking only about Tim Henman.

The world record holder in the men's 50 metres freestyle short-course swimming event, arguably entitled to call himself the fastest swimmer on the planet, comes not from Bondi Beach but from Southend-on-Sea. And next month, in Manchester, this man, 32-year-old Mark Foster, will attempt to win a third consecutive Commonwealth gold in the 50m freestyle.

This weekend, however, he is in Coventry, competing in the Queen's Jubilee national championships. Foster is a fierce patriot, with a red rose tattooed on his chest. He owns a pair of British bulldogs. But his country's national championships, even in golden jubilee year, do not get his juices flowing.

"The pool in Coventry is one of the worst in the world," he grumbles.

"It's years and years old, and the depth of water at both ends is only 3ft 6in. That's what you've got to dive into." Foster is 6ft 6in, which puts that task into perspective.

"And you get nothing for winning," he adds. "I'm Lottery-funded, and in return for the money you have to compete in certain events. But even I find them boring and I swim in them. It's the same people, week in, week out. If you give me a programme for Coventry I'll tell you who's going to win what, who'll come second, and who'll come third, and I'll be 90 per cent right. The little medals you get from the national championships don't mean anything, not any more. I won my first senior national title when I was 15. The international events, that's where it's at."

Foster has been branded "the bad boy of British swimming," partly as a result of a couple of brushes with the police when he was a teenager, one of which involved using money obtained by deception, and partly because of a ban he received in France in 1995, after traces of – horreur! – cannabis were found in his system. He is also irreverent and gloriously outspoken.

Quite possibly, he is exactly what British swimming needs.

We are chatting in the Bath flat he shares with the hurdler Colin Jackson. Foster is reclining on a large sofa and taking up very nearly all of it. It is somehow reassuring that Mother Nature, that fickle creature, gave him prematurely greying hair. Because he really is an extraordinary physical specimen.

He is also, he adds matter-of-factly, a very fine all-round sportsman.

As a boy he was in every school team, played basketball for Essex, and was a particularly promising tennis player. It remains a source of regret that he gave up his tennis lessons to concentrate on swimming.

"From a mercenary point of view I wish I was playing professional tennis," he says. "My mum didn't tell me how much I might earn from tennis as opposed to swimming. And I think I would have been good. I truly believe that if I had put in the same effort I put into swimming, I could have beaten a Henman or Rusedski. They don't look like natural athletes to me. I could have been very good at rowing, too. Their event lasts six minutes, whereas mine lasts 22 seconds, but you need to be tall, long-levered, upper-body orientated, which I am."

As arrogant as these words appear in print, they do not seem so in person. Foster clearly has implacable self-belief, and yet he is a genial man, exceptionally likeable (unless, perhaps, you are the organiser of the "boring" Queen's Jubilee national championships).

He was given swimming lessons early at the insistence of his father, who couldn't swim, and still can't. The mother of swimmer Sarah Hardcastle was his instructor, and she recognised his natural talent. But it is his own mother to whom Foster feels beholden. She was the one, he says, who took him training every day and later sat through countless competitions. "And she slags me off for not crediting her enough, so let's put that right."

At 13, already 6ft 1in, Foster went to Millfield School, in Somerset, on a sports scholarship which paid half his fees. His grandparents contributed the other half. He realised some of his promise in the 1987 European Championships, when, aged only 17, he finished ninth in the 50m freestyle. A successful swimming career seemed to stretch before him like a lane of clear blue water. But he under-achieved at the Seoul Olympics the following year, and lost heart and direction.

"I did all kinds of jobs – courier, double-glazing salesman, caretaker – but in the summer of '91 my sister said to me one day, 'just what are you going to do with your life?' She thought I should give swimming another go.

"And at about the same time I was watching the European Championships on TV, and a guy called Mike Fibbens came third in the 50m freestyle. I had maybe lost to him once in 50 races, or maybe not even once, so I thought, 'I could be close to winning medals'. That's when I started to train seriously again, towards the end of '91. And in the Barcelona Olympics I came sixth, 0.2 seconds away from a medal. So I thought, if I can do that in six months, what might I do in six years?"

In fact, Foster did not achieve as much as he would have liked in the ensuing six years. The next big development in his career was getting to know Colin Jackson and his coach, Malcolm Arnold, in 1997.

"From them I learnt a whole new way of training. Colin can't even swim, but he has so much experience of training, and from Malcolm I learnt all about weights and diets and things, stuff I wish I'd known five years earlier.

"Now, I coach myself, and break down everything I do, from the stroke, which I analyse and then do weights accordingly, to my diet. Because the less I weigh, the higher I'll be in the water. It's like with a boat. The more weight you put in it, the more it's going to sink. And the more body that's out of the water, the better, because air offers no resistance."

Surely, though, he needs a certain amount of body mass to generate power?

"Yes, but, I dive in, and that's three seconds gone. So there's only 19 seconds of work left. You need explosive energy, but not like a 400m swimmer needs. So I try to touch hardly any carbohydrates, just fish or chicken and vegetables in the evening, and just a protein drink for lunch.

"You can't run a Ferrari on diesel. And I might have bran flakes and yoghurt for breakfast, fibre and protein." He grins. "That makes me regular, too, which keeps me lighter."

Alcohol, he says, is off limits "apart from a bender every now and then". And cannabis? Another grin. "I've not touched it since '95, another sacrifice I make for my sport. I was swimming for a French team then, Cannes, and we had a joint one night before a race. Out of four or five people tested, I was the only one found positive. Yet there were four or five people in the room the night before. Strange. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but it was almost as if they [the French authorities] wanted to stop me swimming in France."

Despite his record with recreational drugs, Foster insists vehemently that he would never touch performance-enhancing steroids.

"I'm one of those who agree with blood-testing," he says. "If you've got nothing to hide then why oppose it? Because it's scary what doctors can do. You have a list of banned substances, so Mr Clever-Clogs Doctor will devise something similar but not on the list. Or you might find that X is banned but if you take Y while you're taking X, nobody will be able to detect it. These things are always happening."

Does he have evidence? "Well, Thorpie [the Australian Olympic champion, Ian Thorpe] isn't cheating unless he's had plastic surgery to increase the size of his feet. He's just a freak. If I had size 17 feet I could do a lot of damage [Foster's are a mere size 13]. It's like having flippers.

"And Gary Hall Jnr, and Anthony Ervin, from America, are fantastic talents. Then there's Pieter van den Hoogenband, whose father is the doctor for PSV Eindhoven. I stand next to him on the block and you look at our physiques and think 'Foster's going to beat his arse'. And I take that much [Foster places his hands a couple of feet apart] off him on the dive, but then he beats me. I'm sure that he's just got superior technique, that it's natural talent.

"He's certainly a superb swimmer. But I know how hard it is, and how strong I am."

It was in Paris last January that Foster established his world record time of 21.3sec. Given that the event is freestyle, I wonder, doubtless naïvely, whether there might be anything quicker than front crawl, which seems to be what freestyle means? "Actually," he says, "I'm thinking of devising a stroke using front crawl arms and butterfly legs. But it's tough to co-ordinate."

As one who has never completely mastered the co-ordination of breaststroke arms and breaststroke legs, I can see why that might be so.

Anyway, whether or not he devises his revolutionary stroke, Foster urgently wants not just another Commonwealth gold, but also a first Olympic gold. Yet he will be 34 by the Athens Olympics, which in swimming terms is pretty elderly.

"Yes, but people are continuing longer because they can earn a living from the sport now," he explains. "You earn from breaking world records, winning world championships, advertising campaigns [he is the public face of Wellman vitamin tablets]. And I do clinics at swimming clubs. I did a swimming video, too, but that was a complete flop." He declines to tell me how much a good year might yield, but says that he received $17,000 (£12,150) for breaking the world record, to which his sponsor, Speedo, added £5,000.

"So it's not a fortune. Jacko [Colin Jackson] could add a couple of noughts to my annual income. It's different for swimmers in Australia.

"They're already paid like footballers over there. People like Ian Thorpe, Grant Hackett, Michael Klim, are multi-million dollar earners.

"Here, we've got to find a way of raising the profile of swimming. The public are far more interested in watching football, and I can see why, because every game is different. In athletics you have highly tactical races. Whereas in swimming you start at that end, finish at that end, and just go up and down in between. But there must be a way of selling it better, maybe a sexier angle."

Perhaps, I venture, they should have competitions in the nude? "Actually, there used to be a race like that in France every year, although I never swam in it. Maybe. Who knows? There was talk of having round pools, with swimmers going round the perimeter like athletes. I don't think that would work. But they do need to find a way of jazzing it up. It ought to be more popular. After all, more people swim than play football."

That said, Foster confesses that were he not paid to do so, he would swim very little. He is much happier in the gym than the pool. "The truth is," he says, "I don't much like getting wet."

Mark Foster: The life and times

Name: Mark Foster

Born: 12 May 1970

Birthplace: Billericay, Essex

Height: 6ft 6in

Weight: 14st 7lb

Club: University of Bath

Coach: Ian Turner

Career: Competed at international level since 1985. Best in the 50m butterfly and freestyle events but also swims 100m. Has held seven world records and seven European records. The Sydney Olympics were his fourth Games and, at 32, insists he is still good for Athens in 2004.

World rankings (2002): 50m freestyle long course ­ fourth; 50m butterfly long course ­ second; 50m freestyle short course ­ third; 50m butterfly short course ­ third.

Personal best times: 50m freestyle long course 22.13secs (May 2001); 50m butterfly long course 23.62 (Jul 2001); 50m freestyle short course 21.13 (Jan 2001); 50m butterfly short course 22.87 (Jan 2001).

Olympic Games: Seventh 50m freestyle (2000); sixth 50m freestyle (1992).

Commonwealth Games: Two gold medals (50m freestyle ­ 1998 and 1994), three bronze medals, flag bearer for England in 1998.

World Championships: Five gold (50m freestyle short course ­ 2000, 1999 and 1993; 50m butterfly short course ­ 2000 and 1999), two silver and four bronze.

European Championships: Six gold (50m freestyle short course ­, 1998, 1996 and 1993, 50m butterfly short course ­ 2000 and 1996), five silver and six bronze.

Interests: Tottenham Hotspur FC, golf, outdoor sports

Miscellaneous: Based in Bath, Hamburg and St Neots. Has a bull dog called George. Rates Steve Redgrave as his top Olympian. Doesn't make friends with his international rivals. Sees his job as "purely business." Contemplates a career as a male model, having posed naked for Cosmopolitan. "Either that or opening a clothes shop in Bath." His friend and occasional training partner at Bath, Colin Jackson, is also his lodger.