You would be hard pressed to think of swimmer Mark Roach, 28, as anything but an Adonis.
But the hanger-shouldered SA Olympian swimmer did not arrive on Earth with a golden ticket in his little hand.
In fact, he was born profoundly deaf. And that’s not all.
Was it a hindrance? You’d think not, since he competed in multiple international swim races.
Roach was only 14 when started swimming for SA at the Deaf World Championships and at 22 retired, having reached the Deaflympics finals a number of times.
He made six finals at the Deaflympics and Deaf World Championships and captained SA at the Deaf World Championships in São Paulo, Brazil in 2019.
He was a multiple SA senior national deaf medallist in all four strokes and the individual medley.
His life is a palette of many colours — he studied graphic art and makes great videos, one of the Shell seismic protest scoring 81,178 views, he is an ardent surfski paddler, diver, creator of tiny homes, but his biggest love of them all, is ocean swimming.
And suddenly, this year, the retired champion decided he wanted to get back into global competition.
His coach since he was six, Vionne “Coach V” Skinner, of Harlequins Aquatics in East London, and a three-time SA coach for the SA deaf team at the international events, said: “After a long history of travelling with Mark to global events he turned to open water swimming, doing crazy things like the Robben Island crossing and the Bell Buoy swim.
“A month or two ago (June) my phone rang and Mark said ‘V, they are swimming in Tokyo. Is it too late to try make the qualifying times?’
“I immediately sent out feelers as the timespan was very tight. We got him to the PEA Winter Championship gala in Gqeberha on July 1. He went there and smashed it, qualifying handsomely in all six events he entered.
On Wednesday, August 20, the SA Deaf Sports Federation announced that Roach had been selected to swim for the SA team in the 2025 Summer Deaflympics in Tokyo, Japan, in mid-November.
He was back in with a shot at international glory!
Frantic arrangements and training schedules were thrown together. It was out of his beloved ocean and back into the pool.
Vionne said: “Mark had been doing a lot of cross training, swimming open ocean daily, surf-ski ocean paddling, home workouts with a pull up bar and floor work and doing ‘dunes’ which is running up a soft dune, racing down and sprint swimming to the backline while competing against his training buddy, Tyler Ridge. He had such an active and athletic lifestyle that I had no doubt about his fitness level.
“He has retained excellent technique with the most amazing long pushes. His arm strokes are so natural and beautiful. I just love them.
“We are hard at work back in the pool bringing back the polish to his starts, turns and finishes and it’s such a joy to see how he trains with such dedication and discipline.”
He will be trained in the elite squad by Harlequins’ head coach Tazlin Birch, Skinner’s daughter.
“We have two months and I know he is up to the gruelling rigour of once again proudly representing SA,” Tazlin said.
