It seems that Laurie Lawrence may just have a touch of chlorine in the blood and was always destined to be a teacher of swimming and a coach. As a young boy his father managed the Tobruk pool in Townsville. The family lived in a small unit above the pool entrance. There he was exposed to Australia's dominance of International swimming when the Australian Olympic Team trained there prior to the 1956 Olympic Games. In those early days he hunted and treasured autographs from Australian swimming legends Dawn Fraser, Jon Henricks, Murray Rose, Lorraine Crapp, David Thiele and other Australian Olympic team members. Laurie fondly remembers giving his bed to Jon Henricks when the Lawrence family billeted Henricks during the 1956 Olympic training camp in Townsville.

As a young man he left the pool to complete his studies a Bachelor of Arts, a Diploma of Teaching, and a Diploma of Physical Education. He represented Australia in Rugby Union and toured New Zealand with the Wallabies in 1964 before becoming a swimming teacher and coach.

His quest for perfection saw his swimmers win world championships, break world records, win Olympic gold medals, honoured as Australia's sports coach of the year by Australia's Sporting Hall of Fame and inducted into ISHOF as an honour coach. In May 2011 he will be honoured In Florida's International Swimming Hall of Fame for his contribution to baby swimming. This is unique as he is the only person in the world with honours at ISHOF for both babies and elite coaching of Olympians.

He represented Australia as a coach at Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and has been an integral part of the Australian Olympic team at every Olympic Games since and has been selected to assist the AOC in London as well. London will be his eighth Olympic Games living in the village and being part of the Australian Olympic team.

His passion for baby swimming began with the birth of his first daughter Jane in 1975. He purchased Virginia Hunt Newman's book and the journey began. After seeing how good Jane became he documented Kate his next daughter's progress on film. Emma his youngest continued the passion and research into baby swimming and now as young women Jane, Kate and Emma all work in the family business. Emma and Laurie spent five years documenting and creating worldwideswimschool.com as a resource for swimming teachers all round the world with a particular emphasis on infant aquatics based on progressive skill development determined by the growth and development of the child. The first grandchild, Evie, has inspired the creation of a newly released iphone, ipad app for swimming teachers and parents. This app will add to the three video DVDs, three books and online swimming teaching resources already created by Laurie.

His Internationally acclaimed Water Safety Program "Kids Alive Do the Five" has seen drowning in Australia plummet from 63 in the year 2000 to 33 in 2010. His latest Kids Alive Water Safety DVD "Living with Water" has been done in conjunction with the Australian Government as a drowning prevention measure for children under five. It is being given to the parents of every newborn in Australia for four years as a drowning prevention measure. To date more than 800,000 DVDs have been distributed in Australia. He eagerly awaits Australia's drowning statistics later in the year to judge the success of this latest project.

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