Chapter
4: SIMPLY THE BEST
Australians
need their champions to win at the highest levels because we have been so
great in the past. So we will always love, almost idolise, our world champions,
even if they are few and far between. The reason ‘Matilda' wears boxing gloves
on the boxing kangaroo flag (which emanated from our America's Cup triumph)
may well be to show the world that while Australian sport might be down, it's
still fighting – even against its own unfortunate ‘knocking' syndrome.
-
Neil Cadigan (et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport
(1989).
Sport,
business or agriculture – the best in any field are all marked by one notable
quality: an ability to stay absolutely focused, especially under pressure.
That single-minded determination is intense and unwavering. It is almost a
kind of preoccupation.
- Professor
John Daly, in a lecture at the International Olympic Academy (1990s).
I couldn't
wait to bat. I never suffered from stage-fright. The bigger the occasion, the
tenser the atmosphere, the more I liked the game. It just happened to be part
of my make-up.
- Cricket
legend Sir Don Bradman. Robertson-Glasgow summed him up in a fine tribute in
the 1949 Wisden: “His aim was the making of runs, and he made them
in staggering and ceaseless profusion. He was as near a man batting may be the
flawless engine.”
When the
match was finished, after four days, to see all those cushions being thrown
into the centre of Kooyong stadium was really something.
- Ken Rosewall
after Australia won the 1953 Davis Cup 3-2 with a 5 set victory over Vic Seixas
of the United States.
Every time
you lose, you think life's unfair. You think of the bad breaks. But when you're
winning and playing well, you still get those bad breaks, only you overcome
them. It just depends on how strong your mind is. Unlike most players I have
no fear of golf, no worry in the back of my mind that the insidious game can
take back what it has given me. I don't let anything bother me, because I know
that if I work harder and harder, I'm going to win. I knew I was going to win
a major title. I believe in myself to the nth degree, and if you feel like that,
you won't have any problems.
- Golfer Greg
Norman. After a British Open victory Norman noted, “I am not one who tends to
boast, but I was in awe of myself” (1990s).
I wouldn't
have been what you'd call a champion if I had accepted failure when it first
came, if I had looked at it and said “Well, that's it.”
- Melbourne
Olympics legend and gold medal runner Shirley Strickland.
I
have known Johnny for forty years after first meeting him at St George training.
What I didn't realise then was that he would, in a sense, become a freak
in Australian football. Not because he excelled in a team of twelve year
olds at the age of five. Not because he became his club captain at nineteen,
national team vice-captain at twenty-one and Australian captain at twenty-three.
Not because he made a courageous comeback from a horrendous injury, which
had him written off by doctors, coaches and fans alike. He is a freak because
he is the true-blue soccer hero, in a country where soccer heroes are not
true-blue. In our confusing Tower of Babel, where the soccer culture is
entirely imported, he is the native who puts us to shame in his love and
devotion to the game.
-
Les Murray, SBS soccer commentator speaking about his friend Johnny Warren
(1990s).
Tell
Australia the same boy as he who left is coming back, although he is now a
champion.
- Sculler
Bobby Pearce when he won gold at the Olympic Games of 1928.
You
can separate it from the rest of the championship. To win Bathurst is something
you hold pretty highly on your CV regardless of how your championship is
going. If you pull that one it's the highlight of your year, and the guys
that win the race have a special passion for the circuit.
- Greg Murphy
before his third win in the Bathurst 1000 which is part of the V8 Supercar
series (2003).
Outstanding
sports people personify the ideal - the concept that anyone can achieve success
if they set themselves goals, work hard and are willing to hold on to their
ideals and integrity.
- Journalist
Judith Maestracci (2000).
Or are
we kidding ourselves about all this? Have we simply lost the drive and tenacity
to be great once more? Have we become indolent; a nation so blessed with wealth,
sunshine and a high standard of living that it doesn't really matter any more?
History will reveal that.
- Neil Cadigan
(et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport (1989).
I
was pleased with it, yet disappointed. With the preparation I have had and
the way I have trained, I thought that I should have been able to swim a lot
faster than that.
- Olympic
gold medal swimmer and world champion after achieving his 11th world title while
competing at the World Swimming Championships at Barcelona in 2003.
Making
that slow walk around the ground when it is all over is an extra-ordinarily
rewarding moment in time, the true worth of which is not totally apparent until
it has been experienced. You, and your team, are champions.
- Mal Meninga,
Australian and Queensland State of Origin Rugby League captain (1995).
I've gone
through pain a lot and I don't think I have to anymore. I've got nothing to
prove to nobody.
- Jeff Fenech,
a world boxing champion in 3 divisions when announcing his ‘retirement' in April
1989. The agony of persistent problems with his hands was the reason for his
decision at the time.
There
are a lot of other great players in the world. I'm just up there, I think.
To me it (being named MVP) means I've made my mark on women's basketball.
It doesn't necessarily mean I'm the best. I would never say that.
- Lauren
Jackson after being voted the most valuable player in the WNBA competition
in the United States in 2003. Jackson 's vote count was a record, adding to
the one she set during the season when she became the youngest player at 22
to score 1000 career points. She also featured in league's top 10 in nine
of the 10 key statistics.
I have
a 105 per cent commitment - and that means in everything ... my training, my
attitude. My whole life is based around athletics.
- Debbie Flintoff-King
after charging to the finish to narrowly win the 400 metres hurdles final at
the Seoul Olympics 1988.
Champions
find brilliant and beautiful and different ways of walking into history
but Brisbane yesterday built a football dynasty on its wounded but fearsome
pride.
-
Caroline Wilson of the Sunday Age commenting on the third successive
AFL Premiership by the Brisbane Lions (2003). She went on to say, “There
has never been a team like this one.”
I'm
no hero—any one of the boys would have done the same. It was a bit sore -
but that was nothing.
- An injured
equestrian Bill Roycroft after completing a clear jumping round on his horse
Our Solo to help win a gold medal for Australia at the Rome Olympics in 1960.
Roycroft competed after having suffered a bad fall in the cross-country event.
His reported comment after this occurrence was, “Where's my bloody horse?”
The great
secret with Brad is that he learned to lose hundreds of times before he won
... a lot of early winners can't handle it when other kids start catching up,
they go to pieces and drop their bundles.
- Ray Bevan,
father of champion triathlete Brad (1996).
Heather
McKay is the best women's squash player there has been and one of the few genuine
great sporting figures of our time.
- Rex Bellamy
writing in about Australian squash player Heather McKay in The Times
(London) in 1973.
He could
play as if surrounded by champions, and sometimes that was enough to lift a
mediocre team to great and unexpected victories. Illusion and belief, a brilliant
defiance, characterized his game as much as they did the fervour of his team's
supporters. In this, he epitomized the essential qualities of the club we loved.
- Tribute
to Australian Football player, Nicky Winmar, ‘The Importance of Being Nicky,'
by Stephanie Holt in The Age (Melbourne), 1999.
I picked
up the paper on the morning of the final and there, covering the whole front
page of ‘The Argus', was a glorious action photograph of myself in
colour with the words ‘Betty Cuthbert – Golden Girl' superimposed down the side
of it.
- Olympic
legend Betty Cuthbert in recalling how she came to known as the ‘Golden Girl'
at the Melbourne Olympics (1956).
As a child
I was a weakling – in fact an actual cripple – and had to wear painful steel
braces on my legs. Such miserable devices only defeat their own ends because
they prevent the exercise by which alone strength can be achieved. I could walk
only with greatest difficulty and pain, and for me childish sports were quite
impossible. Had it not been for my father's common sense and unusual foresight
I should today have been an ill formed cripple.
- Annette
Kellerman began swimming when a child in the 1890s as therapy for her ill health.
She became a famous international star and actress.
I never
regretted the voyage. I was so happy out there, I didn't want to come back.
When it ended I felt like I was leaving a really good friend behind.
- Kay Cottee,
the first woman to solo circumnavigate the world unassisted and non-stop (1989).
I just
ran. I forgot all my nervousness and just ran. I focused on the white tape and
ran towards it as fast as my legs could carry me.
- Olympic
runner and gold medal winner of the 1950s, Marjorie Jackson (‘The Lithgow Flash').
My style
as a runner, was to be a gambler. I had an attitude to keep pushing to the limits,
to race from the front as fast as I possibly could. Sometimes it worked, sometimes
it didn't.
- Former Olympic
runner and world record holder in the 1960s, Ron Clarke.
Australia
fell at Robert de Castella's feet, wooed him, pursued him, cheered him and called
him champion.
-
Newspaper report on the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games marathon gold medallist.
Waugh
is a cricketer of many contradictions, but an inner certitude reconciles
with them. He is both hard-headed and a sentimentalist, of the team and
above it, anxious for his place and certain of it, mindful of the game's
history and sometimes contemptuous of its traditions. He is hard of heart,
but wears it on his sleeve. He is both cool and blazing inside. He has an
open and sharp mind. He is a traveller, philosopher and an author of a type.
He helped to shape a revolution in player payments and welfare. Cricket
has been as good to him as he has been to it.
Greg
Baum, ‘Steve Waugh's Timeless Innings,' in The Age (Melbourne)
2002.
-
Greg Baum, 'Steve Waugh's Timeless Innings,' in The Age (Melbourne)
2002.
You
could spend a lifetime trying to teach kids court craft and he has it all,
just completely in a nutshell. Very rarely does he play the wrong shot at
the wrong time. His shot selection is just unbelievable, and he's a good
learner. Wally Masur, Australian Davis Cup coach speaking about Lleyton
Hewitt. Hewitt, at the age of 20, became the youngest player ever to attain
the No. 1 tennis ranking (2003).
- Wally
Masur, Australian Davis Cup coach speaking about Lleyton Hewitt. Hewitt, at
the age of 20, became the youngest player ever to attain the No.1 tennis ranking
(2003).
When I
look back on it, it really seems like [surfing] was just something I had to
do.
- Champion
surfer Tom Carroll (1990s).
It was
about saying you were going to do something and then doing it.
- Multiple
English Channel swimmer Des Renford (1980s).
I'd like
to think that people respected me for the way I played the game, that they liked
the fact that I wanted to attack with the ball in hand, and have a bit of fun.
- Mark Ella,
‘master' of running Rugby (1990s).
In all
recorded human history, with the possible exception of Albert Einstein, there
has never been a man so far ahead of everyone else in his own field as Walter
Lindrum, billiards champion of the world.
- S.W.
Pacific magazine (1946).
It seemed
almost incredible that a man born and bred in New South Wales should go home
to England and beat the champion of the Thames .
- The Sydney
Morning Herald in 1876 in reporting on sculler Edward Trickett after his
defeat of Englishman Joseph Henry Sadler for the grandly named ‘Championship
of the World.'
Every day
during the summer this fine athlete takes her swim, and it is a pleasure to
see her at the Bondi Baths among her club mates. Unassuming and generous by
nature, she is voted a ‘true sport' and her obvious popularity is easily understood.
She together with some other expert swimmers devotes much of her leisure to
coaching the ‘small fry' and to pacing swimmers from other clubs.
- Sydney
Morning-Herald (February 1913) in a comment on Sarah ‘Fanny' Durack Australia
's first women's gold medal winner, Stockholm Olympics 1912.
He's a
freak in the modern game because he can kick a goal from outside 50 metres.
He can turn a game in a short period of time. He can beat the odds.
-
Former player Royce Hart commenting about Australian Footballer, Wayne Carey
(2000).
Ian
Thorpe is a great Australian. Bigger, faster, better – he is the epitome
of everything great about this country. He is a super-freak, and we are
living in the era of freaks.
- Sam Kekovich,
'You Know It Makes Sense: Journalists' on The Fat website, 2003.
Ian Thorpe was a multiple event World and Olympic swimming champion.
I think
you've probably seen one of the greatest ever sportsmen we are likely to put
together, because he's done it on character and discipline and control in the
way he's gone about it.
- Head coach
Charlie Walsh in describing the incredible ride of cyclist Shane Kelly whose
effort in winning the 1km world title for the third successive year in 1997.
Walsh believed that it was one of the Australia's greatest sporting achievements.
In the
sixth hour a twisted chainwheel caused dismounts in three successive laps. No
other machine was available for a few minutes and in order to lose the least
amount of ground, Opperman filled in time by running a lap of the track on foot.
This great Australian then procured a road machine equipped with bell, pump,
brakes and mud guards and maintained his place for 15 kilometres in spite of
such equipment. Such is the stuff of which great champions are made.
- The
Referee in describing the efforts of Hubert Opperman in the Bol d'Or 24
hour cycling classic of 1928. This was held at the Montrouge Velodrome in Paris
.
One of
those girls would have been the new champion. That humbled me, to see what they
thought of me as a person.
- Olympic
athlete Majorie Nelson (Jackson) in commenting on how the other competitors
in the NSW championships got together and decided to wait for three weeks to
allow her recover from a car accident.
It's a
rare event and it's recognized by one's peers as being the pinnacle and it is
– no doubt about that whatsoever.
- John Konrads,
1500 metre swimmer at Rome in 1960 on being a world champion and an Olympic
gold medal winner. Swimming is the sport that Australia is most readily identified
with world-wide.
Something
a bit different, someone who could be relied on to produce a bloody good performance
every time that I performed.
- 1960 Rome
Olympics 1500 metres gold medallist Herb Elliott in recalling how he would like
to be remembered as an athlete. Elliott was undefeated over the premier track
distances for six years.
I'm done
in. Haven't seen the other blighter most of the fight. Get me a drink.
- Albert ‘Young
Griffo' won a world title fight in Sydney in 1892. He was drunk and won the
fight on a debateable points decision when police stopped the fight. In a court
appearance in Brooklyn (USA) in 1895 be pleaded, “Let me go back to old Australia,
and I'll never bother dis rotten town ag'in.”
With Alfie,
his commitment was unconditional. He believed what you wanted him to do and
he just went and did it. It didn't matter how silly it was.
- Tommy Raudonikis
in a comment on rugby league ‘genius' Allan Langer (2000).
It's changed
my life. Absolutely. People were saying two or three years ago that I should
quit, and now I'm going on indefinitely, because I don't see why you should
stop if you're the best in the world. It certainly has nothing to do with my
age. I'm by far the best athlete I've ever been.
- Kirstie
Marshall – about her world champion aerial ski title in The Best of Wide
World of Sports (1998).
I
have dreamed of playing for this trophy since I was a kid. This is a real
ripper, I don't want to let go of it.
- World number
one tennis player Leyton Hewitt after winning Wimbledon in 2002.
He possessed
remarkable stamina, flashing speed, uncanny judgement, amazing intuition, and
perfect technique, all the attributes of the champion … Football instinct told
Messenger what the opposition would expect the ordinary man to do: therefore,
he did the extraordinary – almost the impossible – thing and, of course, succeeded.
- ‘Light Blue,'
in the Sydney Mail (1931) referring to ‘Dally' Messenger, the master
rugby league player in the early 1900s.
Simply,
he was Aussie Rules. Fierce, fiery, determined and inspirational. The set of
his jaw could make children scream, the passion in his heart could make men
cry. And just about everything the ruck rover touched turned to gold. Six premierships
with Melbourne (the first in 1955), two with Carlton (as captain/coach) and
two with North Melbourne (as coach).
- Comment
about former AFL player and coach Ron Barassi in Collector's Edition – Sports
Illustrated the Best of 1999.
If any
of you don't aim to be champions you shouldn't be here. Go and play billiards,
or bowl, or do something else that's a nice social game, but don't stay here
and waste my time.
- Ron Barassi,
Australian Football coach (1980s).
Athletes,
in particular, have a higher level of personal expectation. They are hardest
on themselves, there is no middle ground. They want to be the best and it is
this mentality which separates them from the field.
-
Psychologist Kylie Reynolds (2003).
They're
a wonderful group of young men and we're as proud of that as we are of the
fact that they are a bloody good football team.
- Brisbane
Lions coach Leigh Matthews after their successive AFL premiership (2003).
He was later to remind his players about becoming 'big-heads'.
Performance
is physical, it's technical, it's tactical, and it's mental, it's team, it's
culture and it's the processes around all that to make sure you've got a pathway
or a system to allow that to continue.
-
Coach John Buchanan in suggesting that the world champions Australia can take
cricket to a higher level (2003).
I have
really enjoyed riding in the Yellow Jersey, and it has definitely been the
biggest moment of my cycling career up until now. I have a lot more respect
for all the big riders now, because they have to live with all this stress
and attention all the time, especially during the really hard stages.
- Cyclist
Brad MaGee after winning the coveted Yellow Jersey for a stage win in the
Centenary Tour de France (2003).
At the
time of writing, Australia (with a population of eighteen million, remember)
are world cricket champions, world Rugby Champions, world tennis champions,
work netball champions, world woman's hockey champions, and world men and women
surfing champions. Further, on per capita basis, Australia was by far the most
outstanding performer at the 1996 Olympic Games.
- Phillip
Knightley in Australia: A Biography of a Nation (2000).
This
was a man.
- Peter Jackson
(‘The Black Prince'), a West Indian boxer, arrived in Australia in 1880. Because
of his character and prowress he was very popular with the public but died from
the effects of tuberculosis. In Brisbane a large procession took the body to
Toowong where Jackson was buried. The inscription was placed on the memorial
built on his gravesite.
Australians
need their champions to win at the highest levels because we have been so great
in the past. So we will always love, almost idolise, our world champions, even
if they are few and far between. The reason ‘Matilda' wears boxing gloves on
the boxing kangaroo flag (which emanated from our America 's Cup triumph)
may well be to show the world that while Australian sport might be down, it's
still fighting – even against its own unfortunate ‘knocking' syndrome.
- Neil Cadigan
(et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport (1989).
Each
era of Australian sport has its own heroes but some prevail. Heroes never
die. Legends are never forgotten.
- Anonymous.
We are
adept at idolising, at putting sporting heroes on pedestals, at glorifying.
It is part of our national psyche that we gain as a nation from the successes
of our athletes. This is not in itself a trait peculiar to Australians. What
is perhaps peculiar is our readiness to turn our backs on those same sporting
heroes the moment they falter, our readiness to cut them off at the legs.
- Neil Cadigan
(et al.), in Blood, Sweat and Tears: Australians and Sport (1989).
The Summer
Olympic Games are highly valued by many Australians as an international testing
ground. It is not surprising then that the Olympic Games produces a greater
proportion of national heroes and heroines than any one sporting code. While
the cricketer Donald Bradman is generally considered the most admired Australian
sports star, Olympians, including Dawn Fraser, Betty Cuthbert, Cathy Freeman,
Ian Thorpe and Murray Rose, dominate the next tier of Australian sporting heroes
and heroines.
- Richard
Cashman in Sport in the National Imagination (2001).
The significance
of sport to Australians is frequently demonstrated by the adulation of individual
sportsmen and sportswomen, some of whom have achieved sporting celebrity or
hero status.
- Sports historian,
Ian Jobling, of The University of Queensland (1987).
It would
be surprising if sporting culture and sporting heroes and heroines did not contribute
to the imagination of an Australian nation, to help flesh out what nationhood
represented and to publicise the important symbols of the nation.
- Richard
Cashman in Sport, Federation, Nation (2001) when discussing the Federation
of Australia in 1901.
The Australian
people made heroes of none, and raised no idols, except perhaps Ned Kelly, an
outlaw, and Carbine, a horse.
-Brian Fitzpatrick's
conclusion to his survey of The Australian Commonwealth (1956).
Australians
are not given to applauding tragedy unless it is at a distance like Gallipoli
or Cooper's Creek, and they prefer pure heroism to be spiced with disaster,
except of course in sport. It was all very well for Adam Lindsay Gordon to have
shot himself, but it would never have done for Don Bradman.
- Geoffrey
Dutton in The Australian Heroes (1981).
For people
to be heroes in Australia they have to tap into the feelings and ideals of the
nation. It has a lot to do with how they are represented and how the media portray
them. A hero has to be seen at some level as a role model.
- Sports historian
and sociologist Brett Hutchins (2000).
Sport is
a passion and out of passion comes love. No point trying to work out why some
become heroes and others don't. The chosen ones just go into the pantheon and
refuse to fade. Think of Bradman and Les Darcy, Phar Lap and Tommy Corrigan.
- Les Carlyon
in The Sunday Age (December 1995).
Some sports
people are pretty boring, some of them are pretty stupid (most are pretty smart),
some are petty criminals, some are transsexuals, some are drug cheats - probably
more than we imagine, some are rude and horrible.
- Tracey Holmes,
host of ABC radio show Grandstand, in pointing out that sports people
were portrayed solely as heroes but were ordinary people who had a lot more
to them than sport (2000).
The heroes
in Australian Rules Football are what the game is all about. Some fans are obsessive.
People go to watch their heroes. They relate to their heroes. They dream about
their heroes. The kids aspire to be what their heroes are out there on the field.
- Ross Oakley,
AFL Commissioner (1988).
I hate
chuck'in things in anyway. I couldn't let my team down, myself down.
- Veteran
potato farmer and runner Cliff Young in 1982 after winning the Sydney to Melbourne
Ultra Marathon. 'Cliffie' died in 2003.
I deplore
that some of these athletes are made such as fuss of and yet they can't bend
down and sign an autograph for a child. I find it very diminishing for that
person inside the athlete.
- Joyce Brown
coach of the Australian World Championship winning Netball team (1991).
What I
most want to do is lead by example.
- Wallaby
captain, John Eales (2001).
Yes, a
gallant lad, simple and honest, with an abiding courage.
-
Dave Smith, former trainer and opponent of boxer Les Darcy (1910s). Darcy
died at the age of 20 in the United States.
Eddie
Thomson was a Scot. But in every sense he was the child of Australian soccer.
Make no underestimation of the significance of his passing. He epitomised
and embodied the frontier-breaking spirit on which Australian soccer was
built, mostly on the back of opportunity-seeking migrants who arrived here
in the latter half of the last century.
-
Ray Gatt, 'Socceroo Coach at Home with the Fans,' in The Australian.
The article was a tribute to former player and Socceroo coach Eddie Thomson
after his death in February 2003.
To those
who love billiards he was the man who had been too good for his sport ... forever
doomed to sit in loneliness and watch the futile attempts of his opponents to
match his skill.
- Sun-Herald
(Melbourne), July 1960, in an obituary for the billiards champion Walter
Lindrum who was the supreme master of his sport.
My primary
school teacher who encouraged sporting competition and fair play.
-
Motor-racing legend Peter Brock on the greatest influence on his career (1998).
The
man of the match is … Andrew Symonds. No kidding. That no-hoper. That hindrance.
That bloke who shouldn't even be here, that bloke who can't bat, can't bowl
… that bloke who has dared keep Stephen Roger Waugh out of the squad. We
were wrong? Ricky Ponting was right? We were so far bloody wrong? So
far not-even-in-the-ballpark wrong, so far egg-smeared-all-over-our-faces-wrong?
Yes, we were wrong. … Symonds is phenomenal, playing one of the great limited-overs
innings: 143 from 125 balls with 18 fours and two thumping sixes on a difficult
pitch against fast-bowling royalty. Repeating: Andrew Symonds was phenomenal.
- Will Swanton
in a newspaper article, 'Not the Captain's Diary.' In this quote from the
article he was describing the performance of Andrew Symonds in a 2003 World
Cup cricket match against Pakistan. Australia won the event.
Sporting
heroes provide positive role models for our kids. They demonstrate clear messages
about commitment, working as a team, the sheer joy of personal achievement,
of doing the very best you can do.
- Journalist
Judith Maestracci (2000).
An intriguing
thing is that Australian men tend to most admire other men who do well in sport.
It's a thing that is ingrained into our youth at school.
- Richard
Cashman in explaining how Australia has evolved as a nation and looks for heroes
in sport rather than in other fields of endeavour (2000).
Sporting
identities are not gods or even heroes. Sport is not nuclear science. Listen
to most of our sporting greats give an interview and they can barely string
two words together. While not being articulate is overlooked, other flaws rarely
are. … they are human beings with myriad faults and flaws – like us all. … Let's
applaud them by all means and even, if we must, bask in the reflected glow.
But we should avoid bestowing upon them qualities and even an intellect they
don't (and don't need to) possess.
- Dr. Karen
Brooks, University of the Sunshine Coast (2003).
Sport's
celebration of the body beautiful becomes a depoliticized celebration of physical
labour in capitalism … The sporting male body is, consequently, an active hegemonic
agent for patriarchal capitalism, and as such fits nearly with sport's embodiment
of our dominant ideology. The sporting values of fairness and equality for all
its players, of respect for the loser and proper celebration of the winner,
represent the dominant ideology b which democratic capitalism values itself.
The grotesque realism of the ugly, distorted body is therefore opposed semiotically
and politically to the dominant.
- John Fiske,
Myths of Oz (1987).
There were
no points to be gained by stripping away the mythology surrounding Gary and
declaring he was just an ordinary man. No one wanted to hear that.
- Garry Linnell
in Playing God: The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett (2003). Because of
his rare talent and Christian beliefs Ablett became was called ‘God' by fans.
After his retirement his reputation was tarnished by the drug overdose death
of Alisha Horan after a night of partying with her idol.
Arguably,
Australia is a country now desperately in need of worthy heroes and inspiring
role models. The old Anzac mystique is fading. Most of our Anglomorph traditions
are being undermined or attacked by teachers, radical-chic intellectuals, extreme
feminists, ethnic grumblers and, of course, Paul Keating.
- ‘Sport,
our national disease' by journalist Ronald Conway.
Australian
national heroes are largely cricketers, tennis-players, swimmers and boxers
or even race-horses. Probably only Ned Kelly and the largely nameless heroes
of ANZAC rival in the sports arena or on the race-track.
- Dr. W. Mandle,
'Cricket and Australian Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century,' in Sport
in Australia: Selected Readings in Physical Activity (1973).
Yet again
it seems Warne has allowed his unique combination of arrogance, stupidity, naivety
and immaturity get the better of him … Warne's record is so damaged that he
needs to be cut loose.
- Mike Hedge
of AAP (August, 2003) after yet another private life revelation about cricketer
Shane Warne. Australia's sports heroes and heroines have been allowed a degree
of latitude because they let us bask in their reflected glory but sometimes
there are limits.
Olympics
and Commonwealth Games
If
Australasia is to be represented at these it is about time something in the
shape of a pow-wow was decided upon.
- ‘Prodigal'
writing in 1895 about the 1896 Olympics.
They tell
me I have become the lion of Athens.
- Edwin Flack,
Australia's first gold medal winner (800 metres) in a letter from Athens to
his father in Melbourne, April, 1896. Flack entered and won the 800 metres and
1500 metres events. When Flack won his track events reports indicate that an
Austrian flag was hoisted to announce his success – there was no Australian
flag at this time.
They wore
snug green caps which had been dispatched from Australia in haste, and the eight
track-and-field athletes marched in short-sleeved singlets with green-and-gold
bands sewn on the legs of their shorts, while the four swimmers and the diver
wore their swim gear and marched barefoot.
- Harry Gordon,
Australia at the Olympic Games (1994), in commenting on the small Australasian
team which compared poorly to the splendour of some of the European teams.
Determined
and self-willed, she has long dark hair and a figure which shows no symptom
of ropes of athletic muscle.
- A 1913 Sydney
Morning Herald report on swimmer Sarah ‘Fanny' Durack, Australia's first
female gold medallist in 1912.
‘Forgotten'
medal wins by Australian representatives include a gold medal to the Rugby Union
team at the 1908 London Games, Freddy Lane's gold medal in the ‘obstacle' swimming
race at the 1900 Paris Games, D. Macintosh's bronze medal in the ‘live pigeon
shooting' event at Paris in 1900 - (The last medal is still wide open to doubt
and the vast majority of Olympic Games histories do not include the event in
statistics.)
- Jack Pollard,
Ampol's Australian Sporting Records, (1969).
Father
was a sympathetic and humane person. But he was extremely competitive. If the
race had been close, he would have gone right through those ducks.
- Rupert Pearce
in reference to his father (Bobby Pearce) and his action in the quarterfinals
of the sculling competition at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics where he slowed his
boat to allow a duck and its six ducklings cross. He won the race and went on
to win the gold medal in the final.
For Melbourne
has now the satisfaction of great memories to treasure and to savour privately
in the quiet workaday days to come, when the visitors have gone home, the decorations
have disappeared and the cricketers in chaste white can once more call the Main
Olympic Stadium the MCG.
- ‘Flame
dies, Flag is Furled on 1956 Olympics,' by Stuart Sayers in The Age
(Melbourne), December, 1956. The Stadium announcer at the Closing Ceremony
of the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne in comments to the visitors to Australia
said, “We will always think of you in our hearts and we will always have a welcome
for you here.”
Keep going—30yards
to go … Hell, I think I'm going to win. Twenty yards to go. I'm going to win.
I've won it! I've won it!
- ‘Gold Medal
Day,' by Ralph Doubell, Mexico Olympics (1968). Doubell won the 800 metres final
and equaled the world and Olympic record.
The Olympics
crossed the line and made a new beginning. It's now time to look forward.
- Mandawuy
Yunupingu of the band Yothu Yindi who performed in the Closing Ceremony of the
2000 Sydney Olympics in a comment on the role of the Olympics in reconciliation
in Australia.
... no
team is to keep together ... they must be spread out evenly, and THEY
MUST NOT MARCH but walk freely and wave to the public.
- Ian Wing,
an apprentice carpenter from Melbourne in a letter to the Melbourne Olympics
organising committee mad a suggestion for the closing ceremony that is now an
Olympic tradition (1956).
I have
felt exhaustion before in ironman events [lifesaving] but never this numbness
which came over me.
- Clint Robinson
after winning the gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics in the KI 100 singles.
Betty
Cuthbert–Golden Girl
- Newspaper
headline. Betty Cuthbert was the original Golden Girl. The Melbourne
Argus made it that way when they devoted their entire front page
to her in colour after she won the 200 metres at the Melbourne Olympics in
1956.
The
greatest day the MCG has ever seen.
- The
Melbourne Herald in describing the Opening Ceremony of the 1956 Olympics.
I guess
the feeling I remember most when I did hit the finishing line was sheer and
utter relief, because the pressure was finally off. Just relief.
-
Herb Elliott after winning the 1500 metres at the 1960 Rome Olympics in world
record time. Elliott was to suggest that "The only tactics I admire are
do-or-die."
When
I reached him he was ashen-faced and completely unconscious. His heart was
beating irregularly. There was not enough oxygen for him at this level. He
ran past the limits of endurance.
- Dr Brian
Corrigan on the collapse of Ron Clarke in the 10 000 metres final at the 1968
Mexico Olympics.
Everything
that glitters is not Gould.
- The Americans
did their best to ‘psyche out' swimmer Shane Gould. T-shirts bearing the above
message were sported around the Munich Olympic village in 1972. Shane, 15, won
three gold medals (200 metres freestyle, 400 metres freestyle and 200 metres
individual medley), a silver (800 metres freestyle), and a bronze (100 metres
freestyle).
Aussie!
Aussie! Aussie! Oi-oi-oi.
- The Australian
chant used so vigorously and frequently during the Sydney 2000 Olympics and
at other sporting events.
Freeman's
win was more than just a gold medal. It was a tangible symbol for many that
Australia was coming of age and taking a step towards reconciling its past.
- Paticia
Young, The Globe and Mail, Toronto. After her victory lap Freeman said,
“I just feel so relieved it is over. I made a lot of people so happy tonight,
especially my family.” (2000)
That's
got to be the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.
- Kieren Perkins
after winning the 1500 metres at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
I can't
give them any blessing to go but I can say that I hope that any athlete who
does compete in Moscow makes damn sure that he or she beats everyone else in
whatever the event be.
- Prime Minister
Malcolm Fraser criticising the 123 athletes (out of 273) who ignored the boycott
of the 1980 Moscow Games. The boycott was because of the involvement of the
USSR in Afghanistan.
It's an
interesting thing in this country. I haven't won a gold medal, yet Australians
still take me into their houses and hearts, they know my name and they care.
I think Aussies like the little Aussie battler and the person who will stand
up for their rights and I've never been short of a word, especially with officialdom.
- Commonwealth
Games gold medallist and Olympian Raelene Boyle (1990s).
Time will
show that the emotional pleas for aid to revive our flagging international sports
reputation have already fallen on deaf ears. Political leaders know only too
well that the chances of large-scale funding for amateur sport are remote …
They are convinced that public concern over our dismal Olympic performance will
be short-lived.
- David O'Reilly
in The Australian (1976) writing in the aftermath of the Montreal
Olympics where Australia failed to win a gold medal. It was only after considerable
pressure from the press, sports administrators, journalists and the general
public that more assistance was provided.
I looked
behind on the inside as I entered the straight and you flashed past on the outside
... People said looking round cost me the race, but that isn't true. I was absolutely
leaden legged, I'd really given it everything I had.
- John Landy
on his famous race at Vancouver in 1954 against Roger Bannister.
No city
could have provided a more beautiful backdrop for all the Games or friendlier
volunteers, all 46 000 of them.
- Los
Angles Times on Sydney Olympics (2000).
When we
think about Australians who have done well at the Olympics, the names that come
most readily to mind are those of women.
- Historian
John Daly (1994).
The idea
of Australia holding an official inquiry into the country's performance at the
Munich Olympics is deplorable and pathetic. It is not for a government to worry
about how many medals are won - this is taking sport far too seriously.
- Prince Philip,
The Duke of Edinburgh (1976). Australia did fairly poorly at Munich in 1972
and even worse at Montreal in 1976. The results at Montreal eventually lead
to the formation of the Australian Institute of Sport.
They have
no idea what they are talking about. We are here representing our country at
the Olympic Games; we are not here screwing around. We are doing our job to
the best of our ability and anybody who is disappointed is a complete moron
because they have no idea whatsoever of what we do. This is the Olympic Games.
What do they think we are doing, partying? This is our life they are talking
about. Every athlete who is here, this is their life.”
- Gold medal
swimmer Kieran Perkins in Sports Weekly on comments that the swimming
team in Atlanta were a bit ‘sloppy' at first (1996).
We were
too scared not to get it right.
- Amanda Smith,
Sports Factor on ABC Radio (2000) in suggesting that the success of
the Sydney Games was not an expression of self-confidence by Australia.
And the
winner is … the, uh, the winner is Syd-ney.
- IOC President,
Juan Antonio Samaranch announcement in Monte Carlo on 23 September 1993 that
Sydney had won the right to hold the 2000 Olympics.
Australia
bid farewell to the Olympics last night in a celebration that saw the athletes
of the world unite after 16 days of hope, anguish, joy and despair. The Games
that began with Cathy Freeman standing in a fiery lake ended with a river or
fire. Sydney never missed a beat. And it won the ultimate praise from Juan Antonio
Samaranch for producing the “best Games ever”.
- ‘Simply
the Best,' The Australian (October, 2000).
An ardent
supporter of the Olympic movement, Australia is one of just five nations in
the world (along with Greece, Great Britain, France and Switzerland), to have
been represented at every summer Olympic Games held since Baron de Coubertin
revived the Olympic Games in 1896.
-
Alan Batey (et al.) Tomorrow's World (1993).
The
Sydney 2000 Games are an outstanding example of nationalism overriding the
gendered, racial and ethnic dimensions of Australian sport. For a fleeting
nationalistic moment, successful women, Aborigines and non-Anglo-Saxons,
and in the case of the Paralympics, people with disabilities, are embraced
by the wider Australian community. Unfortunately, when the flame was extinguished,
so too was the equal sporting citizenship temporarily accorded to these
athletes. In stark contrast, the Games reinforced the increasing role for
governments as well as the inextricable link with local, national and transnational
companies and corporations, as political and economic incentives increased
with the global exposure provided by the most watched sporting event in
the world.
- Sports
historians Murray Phillips and Tara Magdalinski (2003).