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Sport saves live: Shelley Taylor-Smith

Marathon swimmer Shelley Taylor-Smith supports compulsory swimming lessons. Picture: Michael Wilson/The West Australian

Marathon swimming legend Shelley Taylor-Smith has used a return to the headlines to call for compulsory swimming programs in all schools, revealing her prodigious talent helped save the life of a Balinese man last year.

Taylor-Smith, women's world marathon swimming champion for a record seven consecutive years, will tomorrow night join cyclist Ryan Bayley as inductees into the coveted WA Sporting Hall of Champions.

It is due recognition for a swimming star who fought through a childhood battle with scoliosis and was once given only six months to live by doctors as she swam herself to exhaustion.

She also fought through poverty, a marriage break-up, the scare of a benign breast tumour, a miscarriage and several diseases that were the result of swimming in the murky waters that underpinned her remarkable journey.

But the 53-year-old was anxious to defer much of her latest honour to the watery craft that made her an International Swimming Hall of Famer, pleading for more focus on school swimming classes because it was "the only sport that saves lives".

"What I say to kids is that it's not just about being a fast swimmer," Taylor-Smith said. "You just never know when you might need that skill. The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of life."

Which is what her mastery of the craft allowed her to do for a drowning man in the waters near Bali's popular Potato Head restaurant last year.

"I looked out, I could hear everyone screaming and knew it was my call to swim out," she said of her 300m dash.

"He was moving really quick, so I knew there was a rip and no one was moving to him.

"I actually had my goggles because I was going to do laps, so I ran down there and just swam out.

"Thank God I hadn't had anything to drink. He was going more under than up and I knew he'd be pretty tired by the time I got there. There were a lot of waves because the afternoon tides were switching in the rip.

"Next minute I couldn't see him, so I went under and could just make him out.

"I pulled him up, he was fully clothed, gasping, his eyes were glazed and he threw up all over me. I thought he was going to push me under, so I rolled on to my back, wrapped my legs around him and started doing one-arm backstroke to get him in."

By that point, another local had pulled alongside with a surfboard to help with the rescue effort, reminding Taylor-Smith not to kick her legs too much for fear of attracting sharks.

The Potato Head clientele gave her a standing ovation when she returned.

Taylor-Smith's career as an elite swimmer started because of her badly curved spine. She had to wear a back brace for more than 2000 days through all of her high school studies from ages 12 to 17.

"I just loved going swimming because I got to take the brace off," she said.

"Even though I wasn't very good at it then, not being able to swim would have been like taking the air out of my lungs. When I was in the water, I could be free without the brace - that's the relief I got."

She had pleaded with her parents not to put her through the recommended operation to fuse her spine, which would have dashed any hopes for a swimming career and promised to "do whatever it took" to stay out of surgery.

She said the condition still sometimes caused her to fall over because one of her legs was longer than the other.

"The only time I wear stilettos is in my bed," she laughed.

Taylor-Smith is now a swimming and life coach through her Champion Mindset business.