Mark Tonelli - Early Years

Early Years

Tonelli was born Mark Lyndon Leembruggen into a working-class family in Ipswich, a city 40 km southwest of Brisbane, the capital of 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.