Nigel Kemp

Nigel Kemp

Coach-2026

Nigel Kemp has been one of the most enduring and influential figures in Canadian swimming, with a career spanning more than five decades as a coach, educator, mentor and sport leader. Best known internationally as the longtime coach of Olympic medallist and world-record holder Nancy Garapick, Kemp also built one of the most successful university swimming programs in Atlantic Canada and helped generations of athletes and coaches believe they could compete at the national and international levels.

A former international swimmer for Great Britain, Kemp came to Canada in 1971 to join Dalhousie University in Halifax as a lecturer in Physical Education and head coach of the university's men's and women's swimming teams. He simultaneously took over the Halifax Trojan Aquatic Club, beginning a partnership with Nova Scotia swimming that would define much of his career.

When Kemp arrived in Halifax, Atlantic Canadian swimmers faced significant geographical and competitive challenges. Access to national-level competition was limited, and there was a perception that athletes from the region could not realistically compete with Canada's established swimming powers.

Kemp set about changing that expectation.

He believed athletes needed exposure to the standards they were trying to reach. His teams travelled throughout Canada and the United States, often supported by extensive fundraising within the club community. By giving his swimmers opportunities to race athletes from stronger programs, Kemp helped remove the psychological barrier separating Atlantic Canadian swimmers from their national and international counterparts.

As he later reflected, those experiences allowed his athletes to discover that swimmers elsewhere trained much as they did—and that achievements they had once thought belonged only to athletes from other parts of the country were within their own reach.

No swimmer demonstrated that possibility more dramatically than Nancy Garapick.

Kemp coached Garapick throughout an extraordinary career that made her one of Canada's first great international swimming stars. By age 12 she had already established numerous Canadian age-group records. Then, on April 27, 1975, at just 13 years old, Garapick broke the world record in the 200-metre backstroke, becoming one of the youngest swimmers ever to establish a world swimming record.

Later that year, at the 1975 World Championships in Cali, Colombia, she won silver in the 200-metre backstroke and bronze in the 100-metre backstroke. At just 14, Garapick was named Canada's Female Athlete of the Year.

The following summer brought the Olympic Games to Montreal.

Competing at home in 1976, Garapick won bronze medals in both the 100-metre and 200-metre backstroke. Her performances were among the defining Canadian swimming achievements of the Games and represented a remarkable accomplishment for an athlete still only 14 years old.

Kemp's work with Garapick demonstrated many of the principles that characterized his coaching.

Rather than treating every athlete according to a single system, he believed strongly in recognizing individual needs and abilities. His approach emphasized technique, efficiency, speed and race-specific preparation, while his broader philosophy was that success should not be measured solely by winning.

For Kemp, improvement itself represented success.

That philosophy extended from Olympic athletes to varsity swimmers and, later in his career, Masters swimmers. He believed that anyone prepared to commit time and effort deserved a coach's attention, regardless of whether that athlete was pursuing an Olympic medal, a university championship or a personal best.

Garapick once summarized the importance of Kemp to her swimming career in a single word: “Everything.”

Yet Kemp's legacy was never limited to one athlete.

Over 27 seasons as Head Coach at Dalhousie University from 1971 to 1998, he built the Tigers into one of the most consistently successful programs in Canadian university swimming. Dalhousie's men's and women's teams captured 27 Atlantic conference championships during his tenure, while his swimmers earned 63 medals at the Canadian university championships, including 19 national titles.

His teams accumulated more than 260 conference dual-meet victories, helping establish swimming as one of Dalhousie's strongest varsity sports.

Kemp's accomplishments earned repeated recognition from his peers. He was named Atlantic university Coach of the Year 10 times, Dalhousie Coach of the Year three times and Canadian Interuniversity Athletic Union Coach of the Year twice.

In 1975, during Garapick's breakthrough season, Kemp was named Canadian Swimming Coaches Association Coach of the Year.

His expertise also led to extensive service with Canada's national teams.

Kemp coached Canada at the 1975 World Aquatics Championships in Cali and was a member of the Canadian coaching staff at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal. He was selected to Canada's coaching staff for the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow before Canada joined the international boycott of those Games.

His international assignments also included the 1978 Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, the 1978 World Championships in West Berlin, World University Games and numerous international tours. He twice coached Canada's World University Games team and served Canadian swimming in a variety of coaching, advisory and coach-development capacities.

Kemp's influence on the sport also came through his career as an educator.

He remained a member of Dalhousie's academic community from 1971 until retiring as a professor of Kinesiology in 2006. The combination of teaching and coaching allowed him to influence students, athletes and developing coaches while reinforcing his belief that coaching was fundamentally an educational process.

He contributed nationally as an advisor to Canada's swimming organization and as a member of its coaching development committee, helping advance the profession beyond his own athletes and programs.

Retirement from university coaching did not mean retirement from swimming.

Kemp remained active in Masters swimming as both a swimmer and coach. He became a multiple Canadian Masters champion himself and served in leadership roles that included President of Masters Swimming Canada. He later became Head Coach of the Halifax Chronos Masters Swim Club, continuing to coach athletes with widely different ages, abilities and competitive goals.

His philosophy remained remarkably consistent.

Kemp believed a coach's responsibility was to understand why each individual was in the pool and to help that swimmer pursue goals that were meaningful to them. His advice to Masters coaches reflected the values that had guided him throughout his career: above all else, demonstrate to swimmers that their coach genuinely cares about them.

Recognition of Kemp's contribution has extended across Canadian sport.

He was inducted into the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame as a Builder in 1989 and into the Dalhousie Sport Hall of Fame in 2004. In 1998, he received the Distinguished Coaches Award from the Canadian university swimming coaches association in recognition of his exceptional career in university sport.

One of the most significant honours came in 2026.

On the 50th anniversary of the Montreal Olympic Games, Swimming Canada inducted Kemp and Nancy Garapick together into its Circle of Excellence. The joint induction was particularly fitting: half a century after their Olympic success, athlete and coach were recognized together for a partnership that helped elevate Canadian swimming on the international stage.

Looking back on his career, Kemp has identified his greatest satisfaction not simply as medals or championships, but the opportunity to work with large numbers of individuals and influence how they approached their lives.

That perspective helps explain the breadth of his legacy.

Nigel Kemp coached a world-record holder and Olympic medallist. He built championship university teams. He represented Canada at the Olympic Games, World Championships and other major international competitions. He educated coaches and students, contributed to the administration of the sport, and continued coaching Masters swimmers decades after his first arrival on a Canadian pool deck.

But the common thread throughout all of it was his belief in the potential of the individual.

By helping swimmers from Halifax recognize that international excellence was possible, by giving equal importance to improvement at every level, and by continuing to teach and mentor across generations, Kemp helped transform both the expectations and the culture of swimming in Atlantic Canada.

His legacy is therefore found not only in Nancy Garapick's world record and Olympic medals, but in the hundreds of swimmers and coaches who learned through Nigel Kemp that success begins with believing improvement is possible.