The Juggling Act: Gold Does Not a Champion Make

So, the Olympics are over. Australia didn’t have quite the gold rush many might have hoped. But, let me just say, the silver cabinet is gleaming. And, seriously… who wouldn’t want to be a bronzed Aussie?

I would like to congratulate every one of our Olympic athletes who gave it their all just to represent our country and mix it with the very best in the world.

I can’t even begin to imagine how much time and effort you and your families have put in to achieve such a tremendous goal. You have done us proud.

I know sports pundits are scratching their heads wondering how such an apparent `lacklustre’ Olympic performance could result, when so much money is poured into developing talent at an elite level (much to the detriment of grassroots sport, the arts, and scientific research I might add – but that’s another blog).

There has been a barrage of criticism, finger pointing and calls for more focus on sports in schools to `fix’ the problem.

(Just what teachers need – as they struggle to implement a new national curriculum, push kids through academic hoops to be among the smartest in the world, and teach manners and social skills which, quite frankly should have been taught at home.
Yes… let’s make teachers responsible for finding the athletes of the future as well. But again… that’s another blog too)

Personally, I believe THIS is the Olympic result Australia needed to have.

I know my opinion won’t be popular.

As far as I’m concerned - armchair commentator that I am - a handful of our athletes (I’m not naming names and I’m not just talking about the Olympics) and plenty of Australians – great sporting fans that we are – have become too arrogant.

There is too much hype, too much over-inflated ego, too much self-absorbtion, and too much emphasis on winning at all costs.

It has become less about being the best we can be… and more about being the best: beating the rest: and then beating our chest about it.

And it is ugly.

In the eyes of the world, it makes us, as Australians, seem petty and selfish.

I wonder what it is that has made us this way, and why it seems as though we feel we need something to prove.

Now I’m as competitive as the next person. I know self-belief and steely determination are vital if an athlete wants to achieve – Sally Pearson proves it.

You’ve heard the old saying…`If you want to walk the walk, you’ve got to talk the talk’.
I get it.

But there’s a big difference between charisma and confidence… and conceit.

Think of Cathy Freeman. Despite all of the pressure, all of the adulation leading to her gold medal win at the 2000 Sydney Olympics… there has never been a shred of arrogance about her.

That’s why she was and remains Australia’s darling.

One of my all time favourite sporting moments was the 2001 Wimbledon final between Australia’s Pat Rafter and Croatia’s Goran Ivanisevic.

After five sets and 3 hours, a lot of guts and grit, Ivanisevic won. Rafter LOST - yet I have never been more proud to be an Australian than I was at that moment.

Rafter was spent, but so gracious in defeat and genuinely happy for his opponent’s joy at winning. It is something I won’t ever forget.

Susie O’Neill – swimming’s golden girl if there was one – is definitely all about keeping it real.

Not long after she won a bronze medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when she was earmarked as a star of the future, she gave her time to an 18 year old university journalism student who had the gall to cold-call her parents.

For a uni assignment, Susie came to QUT with her medal, did an interview with a nervous would-be journalist and swam laps of the uni pool.

That student was me. Susie didn’t know me from a bar of soap, but she gave me a break because that’s the kind of person she is.

Not so long ago I ran into her again. She couldn’t remember me as that gawky teenager, but she could remember swimming up and down the QUT pool.

We started chatting and I asked her how life was now that she was no longer `in the fast lane’ of competitive swimming.

What she said surprised me.

According to Susie - real life; being a mum with chores and responsibilities is so much harder than being an elite athlete.

“I used to spend much of my day with my head in a bucket of water,” she joked.

“When I got out of the pool, my meals were arranged, my washing was done, my life was organized – I didn’t have to think.”

Perhaps Australia is putting our sports stars on too high a pedestal – so high they can’t get grounded even if they wanted to. And then too many of us are ready to tear shreds off them when they fall short of the dizzying heights we expect. Tall Poppy Syndrome is one of the most hideous aspects of the Australian psyche.

For the sake of the next generation of Australian sports stars, we need a reminder about what really makes a champion.

Maybe that’s what the results of the 2012 Olympics are telling us.

Gold is not what makes a champion – but humility, grace and guts.

Australia’s sports stars and Australian fans have had these qualities in spades in the past.

I know there are still there – we just have to brush off the bravado and be a bit more real.

Sally

Follow Sally on Twitter @SallyEeles