Nocher immune to all but Fed

It was only last May when Melanie Nocher decided she had better look up this female boxer everyone was raving about as a gold medal prospect.

Up to that, the Irish swimmer wouldn’t have known Katie Taylor had she been standing next to her in gloves and singlet so she Googled a few pictures. And good thing she did. As it happens, she will be sharing a townhouse in the Olympic village with the Bray boxer when the latter returns to fight in London next week.

It’s a revealing anecdote. Nocher is still only 24 but she has been pitching up at these major events for 11 years now and has two Commonwealth Games, three World Championships and the Beijing Games piled high on her CV.

It’s not that they’re old hat or anything — she had the five rings tattooed on the back of her neck when she returned from China in 2008 — just that she knows the ropes and the pitfalls and how to avoid being dazzled by the bright lights.

Four years ago, the USA’s basketball Dream Team — the Harlem Globetrotters as she innocently calls them — swaggered into the cafeteria in Beijing’s Olympic village and Nocher sat in blissful ignorance as the world’s greatest athletes swarmed over Kobe Bryant & Co. Even the sight of Michael Phelps doesn’t stir her. The one time she came close to being star-struck was when Roger Federer entered her orbit.

“Yeah, well, I’m 24, I’m pretty set in what I do,” she explains. “If I’m honest, I think that’s one of the main errors that people make in the Olympics. They get there and they freak out — ‘Rafa Nadal is eating salad all week, so I’ll eat salad all week’.

“The worst thing you can do is change your routine at the last minute. If Katie Taylor comes in and she drinks a Lucozade before she goes out should I go, ‘Oh I’ll drink a Lucozade’. No, don’t, just do what you do.”

That she was unaware of Taylor’s commercial partnership with the drink in question just emphasises her singular focus but Nocher learned in China that there are far more important, if mundane, considerations to be taken into account when an athlete steps foot into what she calls the “bubble of a world” that is an Olympic village.

Knowing which way it is to the pool, how to get back to the changing-rooms: these and more are issues which need to be ticked off the list of things to do before you get your feet wet. Nocher discovered that the hard way in Beijing when the swim caps issued to the Irish team bore logos that exceeded the size allowed under Olympic rules.

The result was a disaster in the 200m freestyle when the replacement caps proved too big, slipped and caused her goggles to fill with water. With the time lost to readjust, she found herself trailing in three seconds behind the winner.

The experienced and worldly Peter Banks has since assumed the role of performance director with Swim Ireland and she couldn’t foresee a circumstance where he would allow something like that to happen again but she won’t take any chances. This time, every little detail regarding her kit, her schedule and her diet will be checked and double-checked by Nocher herself. Once bitten and all that.

“It was crushing because, literally, you look back and all you see is a replay of your hat coming off. I swam the race without being able to see anything because my goggles were filled with water. It wasn’t actually a horrendous time, it wasn’t a good time, but it could have been a lot worse.

“Then I had to come out through the press area and not cry. I did and it made me a stronger person because… I was 19 and I just assumed that it would have been sorted and I think it’s taught me in sport that you can never assume that things will be done. You have to take responsibility for yourself in that respect.”

She is encouraged, too, by the knowledge that most Olympians fare better at their second Games, once the sense of wonder and fear has been burned off by their proximity to the flame first time around, and London offers less of a cultural learning curve than Beijing.

There’s nothing left for her to do but swim. Just how she likes it.