SOURCE: The Times

DATE: 15 May 1993

PAGE: TM/52 Games People Play;Sharon Davies Interview by Simon Morgan Warr 

I LIKE any sort of card game, really. Brag, whist, poker, pontoon, rummy. I have been playing since I was about 11, when I started getting into swimming teams, because we normally play a lot while we're away preparing for competitions. For two weeks before a competition, you do specific speed training rather than the normal strength training, which means you spend less time in the pool. Between training sessions you have to rest. Some people, for example Adrian Moorehouse, just go to bed for two weeks but I can't do that.

I get bored. You can't even go shopping or sunbathing because both use up your energy, which is really frustrating. So we play cards for hours. It's an unenergetic way of letting out our competitive natures and using our brains, and, of course, it fills the hours.

Crib is one of my favourites because it's about numbers; also diminishing whist, in which you have to predict how many tricks you are going to get. Your opponents will try to make you go wrong. It's mainly the lads who play;

most of the girls go and read or something. Even when I was younger, the lads were pretty ruthless; they never let me win. They taught me how to shuffle, with all the fans and fancy shuffles; I look like a real card shark now.

Some of my fondest memories of playing are from the `76 Olympics, when I was the youngest on the team. Playing cards really got me accepted, made me almost like one of the lads. Now it is slightly different because everyone brings their Game Boy along or a Sega Mega Drive and plays on those for hours. I'll play Game Boy. I'm currently struggling to beat Othello, but, like anything, you can do it too much. Cards are not ideal either, but at least you are using your memory and working with numbers.

It may sound whiter than white, but we don't cheat and we hardly ever gamble. Cheating is just not in a swimmer's nature. You can't cheat in the pool, you have to put in the effort if you are going to win. We do sometimes play for money but gambling for drachmas or something when we're abroad doesn't seem the same. So it's not a sleazy smoke-filled room with bottles of beer on a green baize.

I play a pretty good game and I'd play anyone as long as they were not professional. My mother has always said, "Unlucky in cards, lucky in love'', and I'm happy with that. 


(c) Times Newspapers Ltd. 1993
