Bob Windle - Olympic Gold

Olympic Gold

Windle's performances qualified him for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where he was slated to swim four events: the 400 m and 1500 m freestyle and the 4 × 100 m and 4 × 200 m freestyle relays. Windle's first event was the 4 × 100 m freestyle relay, where he combined with Dickson, Peter Doak, and John Ryan to win Australia's heat in a time of 3 min 40.6 s, which lagged behind the United States' winning heat time by 1.8 s. Windle anchored the team as Australia came from second at the halfway point to win their heat. The Australians were the second fastest qualifier for the finals. However, the United States improved their time by a further 5.6 s in the final, but Australia could only improve their time to 3 min 39.1 s, leaving them third behind the Americans and Germans. Australia were in second place for the first two legs, until Germany moved into the silver medal position at the last change by 0.1 s. A distance swimmer, Windle could not keep up with his German anchorman counterpart, and Australia fell 1.9 s behind the silver medalists by the end of the race.

In the 400 m freestyle heats, Windle and Talbot made a misjudgement; in an attempt to conserve his energy for the final they decided that Windle should not go flat out, and Windle was four seconds slower than he was at the Australian Championships . Windle was one of the top seeds for the race, and Talbot advised him to swim hard in the first half of the race before slowing down. However, he swam too slowly and missed the final completely. Although he won his heat by seven seconds in a time of 4 min 21.6 s, he was the ninth fastest overall, so he missed the final by one position with a time deficit of 0.5 s. The slowest qualifier was Tsuyoshi Yamanaka, who had been prevented from withdrawing from the race by his coaches. On the other hand, the two other Australian representatives who he defeated at the national championships did make the final, including Wood, who went on to win bronze. Talbot said that the tactical error was mostly his responsibility and that he learnt a lot from it.

In the 1500 m, Talbot decided that Windle would attack from the outset and attempt to hang on in the latter stages of the race. They also worked on Windle's technique, curing his habit of dropping his elbow to a lower position when he was tired. Windle broke the Olympic record in the heats with a time of 17 min 15.9 s to qualify fastest for the final by more than six seconds. In the final, Windle repeated the strategy of sprinting from the start, leading throughout to lower his own Olympic record to 17 min 1.7 s and holding off American John Nelson by 1.3 s. Windle's tactics disrupted the raceplan of the Americans; Nelson and world record holder Roy Saari had planned to pace each other throughout the race, but ended up reacting to Windle instead of swimming their own race. As a result, Saari finished in seventh place, far outside his global standard.

Windle later combined with Wood, Ryan and Dickson in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay final. Having rested their two individual medallists—Wood and Windle—in the heats, Australia struggled to fourth place and were the slowest qualifier for the final. In the decider, Australia were fourth when Windle dived in for the anchor leg, 3.7 s behind the third-placed Japan. Windle posted a time of 1 min 58.7 s, the sixth fastest split in the race and the fastest Australian leg by 3.0 s. Although he made up 1.8 s on the Japanese anchor swimmer, it was not enough and Australia finished fourth, 1.9 s out of the medals.