Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1992,

and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a sportsman. His career was chosen for him when at the age of five

he watched a bulldozer digging up the family tennis court to replace it with a swimming pool.

From that moment swimming became his life. When he

was 19 he represented Britain at the Montreal Olympics but his nerve failed him and he

won no medals. Four years later however he recovered to carry off the gold for the 100 meters breaststroke at the Moscow Games.

Completely bald as a result of a childhood accident, he now campaigns vigorously for fitness and health and also in support of those who

like him have lost all their hair.

He is Duncan Goodhew.

So it was a bulldozer Duncan that set you on the path to fame can you can you still see this

machine in your mind's eye yeah I was about five years old and I remember this

a commotion going on and this bulldozer started attacking the tennis court and I thought it was some kind of animal

or something like this and as I crept closer and once in a while this thing would swing

round and go for me and I'd run back clinging to mommy's legs. But it took a while to dig up the tennis court and I think

my father was in mourning at the time because there were super little holes in this grass tennis court and he knew which where each one was

so he always won. So why did he make this momentous decision then to dig it up?

Well everybody thought he was actually mad at the time because nobody had outdoor swimming

pools but he always liked swimming and later on actually before he knew that I was going to

become a fairly good swimmer he said to me in terms of fun it was the best

investment he ever made because from that moment on once they filled it up we

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