John Coutts was born in Marton in 1955 and grew up in Hastings. He attended Hastings Central, Hastings Intermediate, and Hastings Boys' High Schools. From when he was 7, he was trained as a swimmer by noted coach Bert Cotterill.

He was named Hawke’s Bay Sportsman of the year in 1972, when he was only 16, primarily for winning the national 200m butterfly title. He was to win that title five years in succession. In addition, he won the 100m butterfly title from 1974-77. In 1973 he won the Australian 100m title.

Coutts gained national prominence by winning a bronze medal at the 1974 Commonwealth Games, when he was only 18.

But he garnered much greater fame with his long-distance swimming feats, especially his record-breaking swims of Cook Strait.

Coutts was selected for the two butterfly events at Christchurch. He was 5th in his 100m butterfly heat in 59.81s and did not advance to the final, finishing 10th overall.

In the 200m, where his strength came into play, he qualified with a time of 2min 09.04s, the fourth fastest. Coutts was some distance behind the leaders at the halfway point of the final, but he stormed home in impressive fashion and ended up a comfortable 3rd in 2min 07.03s. England’s Brian Brinkley won in 2min 04.51s.

There was a humorous aftermath to Coutts’ medal-winning swim. Members of the swim team celebrated by dunking team manager Dave Gerrard in the pool. Gerrard had won the 200m butterfly at Kingston, Jamaica, eight years earlier.

Coutts also swam in two relay teams in Christchurch. In the men’s 4x100m relay New Zealand (Coutts, Ashley Fogel, Michael Johnston, Brett Naylor) finished fourth and in the 4 x 200m New Zealand (Coutts, Johnston, Naylor, Mark Treffers) were 5th.

After representing New Zealand at the 1975 world champs in Colombia, Coutts set his sights on the 1976 Olympics at Montreal. There he swam 57.29s in his 100m butterfly heat and 2min 05.05s in the 200m race, but did not qualify for either final.

By then he was being drawn to ultra-long distance swimming and through 1977 and 1978 he became the first person to swim Cook Strait in both directions.

After a false start and a frustrating wait for the right conditions, on February 13, 1977 he successfully completed a 23km Cook Strait crossing, North to South, in 9h 25min. Coutts felt the false start, when he was pulled out of the water after battling through a strong rip, actually helped him, and likened the experience to “hopping into a cage with a tiger, but then finding out that the tiger was not as vicious as everyone said”. He could now think of the Strait, not as the mythical enemy, but as just another stretch of water. “We could cope with it. We could defeat it.”

Almost exactly a year later, he smashed all records with a South to North crossing in 6h 46min, which was the record for several years. Even nearly half a century later, where there have been more than 150 successful crossings, it is still the 12th fastest time.

Eager to capitalise on his fitness and strength, he did a Lake Taupo swim just a week later, 35km from Stump Bay to Taupo in 10h 47min. In February 1980 he swam Lake Taupo in the other direction, this time in 12h 55min. There was one more effort at Lake Taupo, in 1981, when he again went south to north in 11h 39min.

His last really notable distance swim was Maratona del Golfo Capri-Napoli in July 1981, the world marathon swimming championship. Coutts was assisted in his preparation by another noted New Zealand swim coach, Tony Keenan. This race starts on the island of Capri and finishes 36km later on Marina Grande Beach in Naples on the mainland of Italy.

Besides his swimming prowess, Coutts was also a champion surf lifesaver. In 1976 he won the New Zealand open individual surf race and he represented the strong Kiwi club, which won several national surf titles, as well as helping Hawke’s Bay win the Norrie Trophy inter-district crown.

Now based in Australia, Coutts owns and is director of Carlile Swimming Australia, the largest private swimming school in the world, originally set up by Australian swimming legend Forbes Carlile and his wife Ursula. Coutts is also co-owner of a large swimming school in the United States that operates out of Chicago and Minneapolis.

He is married to Sally, and they have four children.

John Coutts

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