Janice Gabrielle Cameron (, formerly Talbot), (20 February 1947 – 30 April 2018) was an Australian competition swimmer and coach. She won a silver medal at the

1964 Tokyo Olympics The , officially the and commonly known as Tokyo 1964 ( ja, 東京1964), were an international multi-sport event held from 10 to 24 October 1964 in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this hon ...

and three medals at the

1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games The 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Kingston, Jamaica, from 4 to 13 August 1966. This was the first time that the Games had been held outside the so-called White Dominions. They were followed by the 1966 Commonwealth P ...

in Jamaica. She coached with her first husband

Don Talbot Donald Malcolm Talbot (23 August 19333 November 2020) was an Australian Olympic swimming coach and sport administrator. He coached national teams for Canada, the United States and Australia. Early life Talbot was born on 23 August 1933 as t ...

in Australia, Canada, and the United States, and then moved to New Zealand, where she worked as a coach and sporting administrator until 2011. From May 2013 until February 2017, she coached the Paralympic Swimming Program at the USC Spartans Swim Club based at

University of the Sunshine Coast The University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) is a public university based on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. After opening with 524 students in 1996 as the Sunshine Coast University College, it was later renamed the University of the ...

in Queensland, and she was Australia's National Para Sport Mentor Coach from February 2017 until her death.

Early life

Janice Murphy was born on 20 February 1947 in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, the eldest of three children. Her two brothers were keen

rugby Rugby may refer to: Sport * Rugby football in many forms: ** Rugby league: 13 players per side *** Masters Rugby League *** Mod league *** Rugby league nines *** Rugby league sevens *** Touch (sport) *** Wheelchair rugby league ** Rugby union: 1 ...

players. She attended

Rosebank College , motto_translation = Lift Up Your Hearts , location = 1A Harris Road, Five Dock, Inner West Sydney, New South Wales , country = Australia , coordinates = , pushpin_map = Au ...

Competitive swimming career

Murphy's career overlapped that of fellow Australian swimmer,

Dawn Fraser Dawn Fraser (born 4 September 1937) is an Australian freestyle champion swimmer and former politician. She is one of only four swimmers to have won the same Olympic individual event three times – in her case the women's 100-metre freestyle. ...

. Murphy won a silver medal in the 4×100-metre freestyle relay at the

1964 Summer Olympics The , officially the and commonly known as Tokyo 1964 ( ja, 東京1964), were an international multi-sport event held from 10 to 24 October 1964 in Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but this ho ...

in Tokyo; she teamed with Fraser, Lyn Bell and Robyn Thorn to finish 3.1 seconds behind the United States. She subsequently switched from

Forbes Carlile Forbes Carlile MBE (3 June 19212 August 2016) was Australia's first post-World War II Olympics swimming coach and later Australia's first competitor in the modern pentathlon at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He remains the only person to ...

's swimming team to work with

. At the

1966 Commonwealth Games The 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games were held in Kingston, Jamaica, from 4 to 13 August 1966. This was the first time that the Games had been held outside the so-called White Dominions. They were followed by the 1966 Commonwealth Par ...

in Kingston, Jamaica, she won two silver medals in the 440-yard individual medley and the freestyle relay, and a bronze medal in the 110-yard freestyle.

Coaching career

After the Tokyo Olympics, she began a teaching scholarship at the Wollongong Teachers' College (now the

University of Wollongong The University of Wollongong (abbreviated as UOW) is an Australian public research university located in the coastal city of Wollongong, New South Wales, approximately 80 kilometres south of Sydney. As of 2017, the university had an enrolment of ...

). While studying there she did coaching on the sidelines; her first coaching job was in 1968 at a small swimming club in

Port Kembla A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ha ...

. After graduation, she took the activity up full-time. She was the Paralympic swimming coach for the Australian team at the 1972 Heidelberg Paralympics, notably working with Pauline English, whom she also coached at the 1976 Toronto Paralympics. She worked as an assistant coach for Talbot, her first husband, in Canada, the United States and Australia. While in Canada, she completed an Honours degree in Physical Education and received a Masters in Coaching Sciences from

Lakehead University Lakehead University is a public research university with campuses in Thunder Bay and Orillia, Ontario, Canada. Lakehead University, shortened to 'Lakehead U', is non-denominational and provincially supported. It has undergraduate programs, grad ...

. She moved to New Zealand with Kevin Cameron, her second husband, and in 1991 she began working as head coach for the North Shore Swimming Club, turning it from a club with little money and no resources to one that attracted New Zealand's elite swimmers. In 2001, Cameron began working as a national coach at the newly built Millennium Institute of Sport and Health (now AUT Millennium) at the

Auckland University of Technology Auckland University of Technology (AUT) ( mi, Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau) is a university in New Zealand, formed on 1 January 2000 when a former technical college (originally established in 1895) was granted university status. AUT ...

, and in 2008 she was appointed as the general manager performance and pathways at Swimming New Zealand. In September 2011 she resigned from this position, nearly three months after the release of the Ineson report initiated by

Sport New Zealand Sport New Zealand (Sport NZ) (Māori: ''Ihi Aotearoa'') is a New Zealand Crown entity responsible for governing sport and recreation in New Zealand. Sport NZ believes sport is an integral part of New Zealand's culture and way of life. The org ...

, which described the high-performance culture of Swimming New Zealand as "negative" and "dysfunctional". In an interview shortly after her resignation, Cameron said that the report was "Poorly written, poorly done, rubbish", and described parts of the report as "speculation, opinion and unsubstantiated stuff put there as facts". From 2011 to 2014 she was managing director of Jan Cameron Performance Compass, a performance sports consulting company that she founded. She was the Paralympic swimming coach at the

in Queensland from April 2014 to February 2017, having been appointed to that role in an interim capacity in May 2013. From February 2017 until her death, she was the Australian National Para Sport Mentor Coach. She also worked as a swimming commentator for Sky TV. She was selected as an Australian Team Coach at the 2014 Para Pan Pacific Swimming Championships and the

2015 IPC Swimming World Championships The 2015 IPC Swimming World Championships was an international swimming competition for athletes with a disability. It was held in Glasgow, United Kingdom and took place from 13 to 19 July. Around 580 athletes from around 70 countries competed at ...

Team. In 2015, she became the third Australian woman to gain her Platinum Coaching Licence following on from her swimmers' winning ten medals at the

in Glasgow, Scotland. She coached the Australian Swim Team at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Paralympics and was the Head Para Mentor Coach at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Personal life

She married

in 1973. The couple had a son,

Scott Talbot Scott Thomas Talbot, also Talbot-Cameron (born 13 July 1981) is an Australian-born swimmer and swimming coach who represented New Zealand in swimming from 1997 to 2006 and has worked as a coach in several countries. Biography Talbot is the son ...

, an Olympic swimmer and coach. Her marriage to Talbot ended in 1989, and she married Kevin Cameron, the director of sport production at Sky Television in New Zealand, in 1990. They had first met in 1961 when Kevin Cameron, then 14, was playing rugby for a New Zealand school team that was touring Australia. He was

billet A billet is a living-quarters to which a soldier is assigned to sleep. Historically, a billet was a private dwelling that was required to accept the soldier. Soldiers are generally billeted in barracks or garrisons when not on combat duty, alth ...

ed with the Murphy family as her brother was playing in the opposition team. The two corresponded for six years after their first meeting, and were briefly engaged after Murphy's retirement from the Olympics. On 30 April 2018, Cameron died in Queensland after a short illness at the age of 71. Cameron posthumously received the

Medal of the Order of Australia The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...

in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours "for service to swimming, particularly as a coach."

Notes

References