Mark Tonelli

Mark Lyndon Tonelli (born 13 April 1957), whose birth name was Mark Lyndon Leembruggen, is an Australian former backstroke, butterfly, and freestyle swimmer of the 1970s and 1980s, who won a gold in the 4×100-metre medley relay at the 1980 Moscow Olympics as a makeshift butterfly swimmer in the self-named Quietly Confident Quartet.

Tonelli unofficially led the relay team and was an athletes' spokesperson who fought for the right of Australian Olympians to compete in the face of a government call for a boycott to protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Tonelli took up swimming due to his asthma, and quickly came to prominence.

Selected to represent Australia at the 1973 World Championships, he came sixth in the 200 m backstroke at the age of 16.

In 1973, at the age of 15, Tonelli competed in his first Australian Age Championships in Hobart, winning the 100 m and 200 m freestyle, and the 200 m backstroke.

These results allowed him to swim at the preliminary qualifying trials for the 1973 World Aquatics Championships, where he managed four fourth placings.

However, the selectors held another set of trials just before the World Championships, which offered swimmers a final chance to gain selection.

Tonelli said "Everyone, except me, knew it was a ploy simply to keep the team on its toes".

Upon returning to Brisbane after the first round of trials, Tonelli tore rib cartilage while participating in judo at high school.

The pain of the injury restricted him to swimming backstroke for four months, and his times steadily improved during this period under the guidance of John Rigby at the Valley Pool.

He won his first Australian titles in 1974 in the 100 m backstroke and 200 m butterfly and went on to the 1974 Commonwealth Games in Christchurch, where he won his first major international race, the 100 m backstroke, and took silver in the 200 m backstroke.

In 1975, Tonelli won his only individual medal at global level, a silver in the 200 m backstroke at the World Championships in Cali, Colombia.

In 1975, Tonelli enrolled at the University of Alabama in the United States, studying and competing in the collegiate sport system.

He was selected in both backstroke events for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, but struggled and missed the medals in both events.

During his stay in America, Tonelli set times that would have placed him among the world's leading swimmers, but he was expelled from the 1978 Commonwealth Games team for breaches of discipline.

After finishing his American university career, Tonelli returned to Australia and gained selection for his second Olympics.

Having cleared the political obstacles, Tonelli was given a heavy schedule of six events: both backstroke races, the 100 m freestyle and butterfly, and two relays.

He made little impact in the individual events, only reaching one final.

Australia lacked butterfly swimmers and Tonelli was versatile, so he swum the stroke in the medley relay.

He performed above his previous record, posting a time fast enough to win silver in the corresponding individual event and helping Australia to an unexpected win.

Upon returning to Australia, Tonelli retired with eleven individual Australian championships in three different strokes.

Tonelli was born Mark Lyndon Leembruggen into a working-class family in Ipswich, Queensland.

His father Lyndon was a blue-collar worker of Dutch origin and his Irish mother Muriel worked in the Queensland Department of Industrial Relations.

Muriel was pregnant with twins, but miscarried one of the babies and gave birth only to Mark.

The family moved to the northern outback mining town of Mount Isa, where Lyndon worked as a miner.

There, Muriel left her husband and married Renato "Ray" Tonelli, an Italian immigrant labourer.

Still a toddler, Tonelli and his stepfather left the town and returned to Brisbane.

He adopted his stepfather's surname, but did not officially change his name until he was 18.

Tonelli was effectively an only child; his half-sister was not born until he was 14.

A decade later, he discovered two half-sisters from his biological father's remarriage.

His family moved around frequently due to his stepfather's work, before settling permanently in Brisbane.

Tonelli's family had no history of athletic success, and had little knowledge of swimming, but his mother encouraged him to take up the sport to ease his asthma.

In his first year, Tonelli came third in his age group at Western Districts Club, prompting his mother to send him at age nine to John Keating—a swimming coach who had guided several swimmers to national selection–at the Centenary Pool in the hope that he could improve to Olympic standards.

Tonelli said the reality was that he could hardly swim at all.

By the age of 10, Tonelli was regularly winning at school carnivals and at 11, came seventh in the 100 m freestyle in his division at the Queensland Championships, before winning the event the following year.

Tonelli rates his win over Stephen Holland, the future 1500 m freestyle world champion and world record holder, in a 200 m freestyle race at a schoolboys' carnival as his favourite race.

Holland was to break his first world record just a few months later.

Keating motivated Tonelli by showing him the best times recorded by American boys of the same age, as documented in Swimming World Magazine.

Unaware that the Americans were swimming in 50 yd pools, roughly 10% shorter than those in Australia, Tonelli could not understand his inability to match and better their times.

He said that his greatest motivation was the desire to impress his parents.