On Side

This episode of Clean and Gold celebrates the Paralympic Games – an event that is so often referred to as “more than sport”.

Hosted by Tim Gavel and three-time Olympic gold medallist Petria Thomas, this edition features Paralympic mentor and former Australian head coach Chris Nunn and Paralympic hopeful, swimmer Ahmed Kelly.

Nunn, who works as a consultant with the Oceania Paralympic Committee, says due to a lack of resources, many of the emerging countries that he has been mentoring will not be able to make it to the Games.

“We are a country of haves,” he says. “We have as many resources as we can get and I’ve worked in countries that have had nothing and invested a lot of time and effort that are not be going to the Paralympic Games.

“They cannot get there or get back without a five-week quarantine. These people have a minimal amount of work and just can’t afford to do that.”

Nunn, who has opted not to go to Tokyo for the Games but will coach remotely, laments the direction the Paralympics has taken and says it’s now a landscape “for the less disability you have the higher chance of you being selected to represent your country”.

“The disappointing part of where Paralympic sport has gone is that fact that we are now doing everything we can to chase the medal,” he says. “It’s gone away from the initial concept of what the Games is all about.”

While he admits he is somewhat “disillusioned”, Nunn says he will always be an advocate for an equal playing field for all.

“I will never deny an athlete a chance to be the best they can be, and never deny a coach the access to education that will help them produce a better athlete, but, boy, we’ve still got some hurdles to overcome in Para sport in terms of getting the right group of athletes there to showcase Para sport.”

Kelly, who made his Paralympic debut at the London Games in 2012, was born in Baghdad with under-developed arms and legs – not uncommon in countries torn by chemical warfare.

He was adopted at the aged of seven by an Australia women and is now competing in his third Games.

Kelly admits it’s “going to be one of the strangest Games that I’m going to be a part of but as long as I get to wear the green and gold and the gold cap I’ll be pretty happy”.

While he may be inspiring others, he finds others with similar difficulties equally inspiring.

“To be able to see how people with a disability get around and do their own business that also inspires me to do better,” he says.

“I want people who have a disability or who look just like me, to know they have just as amount of opportunity to be able to be successful, whether it’s in life or in the pool. I want them to give it a crack because if you don’t give it a crack, you will never know.”

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It was billed as “the Olympics the world had to have” and it certainly delivered. This episode of Clean and Gold looks back at the Games’ highlights and features two of our gold medallists, rowers Lucy Stephan and Alex Purnell.

Stephan, who grew up in Nhill - a town with no water for years, says she was “prepared for anything” when her races were delayed by an approaching typhoon.

“I think, honestly, it’s kind of like, ‘ok, what else have we got,” says Stephen, who won the coxless four event alongside Rosemary Popa, Jessica Morrison and Annabelle McIntyre.

Being the first Olympic gold medallist from a town of less than 2000 people, one of the things she’s looking forward to the most is heading home and sharing it with the school kids.

“You don’t have the luxury of seeing those people around you often go off and do sport and amazing things, especially a sport like rowing,” she says. “This [gold medal] may help push and guide those young kids to help them achieve their goals, whatever they may be.”

Fellow gold medallist Alex Purnell says the lack of international competition may have played in their favour.

“I think it was an advantage for us,” he says. “It was nice that there was no real form guide so we could fly under the radar, do our thing and it ended up working out well for us and we managed to cross the line in front.”

Alongside men’s four crew mates Alex Hill, Spencer Turrin and Jack Hargreaves, they held off a fast-finishing Romania to win gold, ending Great Britain’s dominance in the event since the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

The foursome dug deep for inspiration and drew on the Raiders for strength.

“At that point when everything is hurting so much you try and draw inspiration from somewhere and just try and find an extra something,” he says. “Over the last 100 it was ‘Raiders, Raiders, Raiders!”

And the prospect of Paris 2023? Both admit it’s definitely “tempting” that’s for sure.

ABC commentator Glen Mitchell, a veteran of four Olympic Games, admits he was ambivalent in the lead-in the Tokyo Games given the lack of crowds and the fact the majority of the Japanese didn’t want them to go ahead.

“I was pleasantly surprised how watching the Olympic Games, it [lack of a crowd] didn’t really stand out to me so much, it changed my perception in some ways to have crowds at venues,” he says.

While highlights included watching Jess Fox and Peter Bol race, Mitchell also enjoyed the camaraderie of the athletes, particularly those competing in the new Olympic sports of skateboarding and BMX riding.

“I thought that was really heart-warming the way the youngsters reacted to their competitors that had actually had a bad run, it’s not the sort of thing you’re used to seeing at the Olympics competition.”

Finally former Olympian Ben Hardy, a Sport Integrity Australia’s Intelligence Analyst, shares his top tips for competing clean.

Hosted by Tim Gavel and three-time Olympic gold medallist Petria Thomas

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Hosted by Tim Gavel and three-time Olympic gold medallist Petria Thomas, this blockbuster edition of our Clean And Gold series features champion sprinter Raelene Boyle, four-time Olympian Bronwen Knox and dual Olympic and Paralympic table tennis player Milly Tapper.

Raelene burst on to the scene at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico as a 16-year-old, taking home a silver medal in the 200m sprint.

She went on to win silver medals in the 100m and 200m sprints in Munich, only for it to be later revealed that she was cheated out of gold in what remains one of the greatest travesties in the history of Australian sport.

“I look back at it and I just hope that people don’t remember me for those things or remember me as an athlete for those things, or for whingeing,” she says. “I’ve never really whinged about it it’s just what happened, it is what it was and there’s an awful lot more to my career than that.”

She remains divided over the suggestion of a retrospective gold medal.

“It would be nice to have a gold medal but I wasn’t first over the line,” she says. “I don’t know, there’s different ways to view it, you could say Renate Stecher was loaded with testosterone and sure a male is always going to beat a female over the distances that I ran….oh, I don’t know, I don’t know how I feel about it.”

She also talks about integrity in sport, the evolving Olympic Games, her battles with cancer and, showing her trademark sense of humour, Raelene insists she can “still push out a bit of weight for a grey headed old bag”.

Dual Olympic bronze medallist Bronwen Knox is preparing for her fourth Olympic campaign, one much different to her previous campaigns.

In the absence of international competition for 18 months, the Sport Integrity Australia athlete educator says the Stingers are “just going in solely focussing on what we need to do….having that focus solely on us and what we can control”.

Bronwen admits returning to the pool after COVID was more difficult than she had anticipated.

“… having that really long break during the first COVID lockdown and not being able to train, it sort of took everyone by surprise ….there was nothing in place for us to stay engaged, stay involved, to stay in shape. Being an older athlete the body sorts of disintegrates on you and getting back and try to start again there was just roadblock after roadblock.”

At Rio, Milly Tapper made history by becoming the first Australian athlete to qualify for both the Olympics and Paralympics.

Milly, who has an injury that causes paralysis of the arm, started playing table tennis in 2002 while she was still at primary school.

Regardless of the competition, she treats everybody the same.

“Everyone that I compete again is turning up and trying to play their best to win,” she says. “Every athlete that you play has a different strength, a different weakness, regardless if it’s able bodied or Para, you still need to find a way to be able to win the point. For me, it’s exactly the same approach.”

Her first venture into the competitive Paralympic world was an eye-opener – as a youngster she didn’t know that the Paralympics existed.

“When I went into this international stage, some had one arm, one leg, no legs … The only thing I did notice was every athlete’s ability to play table tennis….. they can find a way regardless to get on the job and play table tennis amazingly.”

Finally, former Sydney 2000 Olympic rower Kerry Knowler, our Assistant Director Anti-Doping, shares her top tips for competing clean.

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Hosted by Tim Gavel and three-time Olympic gold medallist Petria Thomas, this Clean And Gold episode features two-time Paralympic gold medallist Chris Bond and Olympic gold medallist Kim Brennan (nee Crow).

Bond, who was 19 when he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia which resulted in amputation of both his legs below the knee, says it was the power of sport that helped him adjust to life with prosthetic limbs.

“Sport’s great at that,” he says. “It always has competition, year on year, and milestones in terms of testing and fitness and performance and that kind of thing. You go incrementally. You’ve got something to look forward to, something to compete at which has helped stay positive.”

Bond also reminisces about being part of the “best wheelchair rugby match ever”, a double overtime win against Team USA to become a back-to-back Paralympic gold medallist, retirement, and the legacy he hopes to leave when his playing days are over.

For Brennan, she says striving for Olympic gold changed her life.

“Sport teaches you a huge amount of who you are and what you believe in,” she says.

“The medal is wonderful, but it’s the journey and striving that went into the medal that actually made me the person that I am and has given me opportunities beyond the rowing course.”

Brennan, who won gold in the women's single scull after leading the race from start to finish, believes the athletes that adjust best to living in a bubble will succeed in Tokyo.

“There’s going to be a lot of idle times sitting in rooms, and that’s something that those we are prepared and are comfortable in their own thoughts I think are going to be the ones who really relish the opportunity to get out there.”

To wrap it up our athlete educator Bronwen Knox, soon to be a 4-time Olympian, gives her top tips for competing clean.

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At On Side we are celebrating the impending Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo with a special Clean and Gold series.

Hosted by Tim Gavel and three-time Olympic gold medallist Petria Thomas, our Clean And Gold series features some of Australia’s Olympic and Paralympic greats about their Olympic journey.

Today we speak to two-time Olympic gold medallist Anna Meares and Paralympic gold medallist Curtis McGrath.

By her own admission Meares has come a long way from that little girl riding a BMX bike, winning two Olympic gold medals eight years apart.

Her story is one of resilience, with her fighting spirit instrumental in coming back from breaking her neck in a horrific crash at a World Cup meet in Los Angeles to winning an Olympic silver medal just seven months later.

She is the only female track cyclist in history to have won Olympic medals in all four sprint events –  keirin, sprint, team sprint and the 500m time trial (discontinued) – but, surprisingly, her proudest moment is off the track.

“My proudest moment was being flag bearer in Rio … I feel like that was in recognition of the accumulation of performances over a long time, being consistent over 16 years being at the elite senior level, being at the Olympics and world championships every year and being on the podium,” she says.

McGrath, too, has battled back from the most agonising of circumstances.
He took up canoeing as part of his rehabilitation after having both of his legs amputated as a result of a mine blast whilst serving in the Australian Army in Afghanistan.

When he was being carried on the stretcher in Afghanistan he told his comrades that he would go to the Paralympics.

“I didn’t say that with much substance and much knowledge of what that actually meant,” he says, “but it was a comment to try and ease the minds of the guys around me, they were also going through a pretty traumatic experience.”

It makes his para-canoe gold medal at Rio all the more poignant.

“I think that’s part of the reason why I pursued the Paralympic journey not for my own goals and mindset but to show that I was still capable and still able to get out there and do things and be a part of something so great as the Paralympic Games.”

However, the aftermath of that gold-medal race was not as he expected.
“[When I crossed the line] I expected to be excited and a huge sense of joy and excitement that I’d achieved that but what I actually got was this huge wave of relief … I almost physically felt it. It was like this wave that fell on me, the relief of going through what I went through over those four years and culminating to crossing that line and being a gold medallist is one that I didn’t expect whatsoever.”

To wrap things up, Sport Integrity Australia’s medical adviser Dr Larissa Trease, an Australian Olympic and Paralympic team doctor, gives her top tips on competing clean. #cleanandgold

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Players, coaches, commentators, fans ... when you’re a match official, everyone has an opinion about your performance on the field.

In the latest episode of On Side we talk to retired Australian football referee Ben Williams, who had a 25-year career in the sport, NRL touch judge Kasey Badger, and Grant Jones, whose path to officialdom was unusual to say the least, about the pressures faced by sporting officials.

Once Australia’s No.1 football official, Williams has seen everything during his time calling the shots. But there’s one match that stands out – for all the wrong reasons. While officiating the Asian Cup quarter-final between arch-rivals Iran and Iraq at Canberra Stadium in 2015, Williams issued 12 yellow cards and one red.

“That match had absolutely everything … a send-off can change a match, at the same time cheating can change a match as well,” he said.

The match was decided in a penalty shoot-out but resulted in death threats to Williams and his family. “For me that’s too far… my family’s off limits.”

He also talks about bribes - the offer of women and secret brown paper bags being left at his hotel door - and the importance of credibility – “it’s your currency after all”.

For Badger, whose ultimate goal remains refereeing an NRL match, it’s the challenges officiating poses that attracts her.

“No two games are alike,” Badger says, “No two situations are alike. You’re continually learning, you’re continually challenged and you need to make decisions quickly, you don’t have time to really think and process and take your time to weigh things up, you have to do things very instinctively and that was something that really appealed to me.”

While she admits negativity and criticism goes with the territory, it’s “a catch 22” being a female in such a male-dominated industry.

By his own admission, Grant Jones’s path to refereeing is “embarrassing”.

“I’m embarrassed to say I would have a crack at referees and that sort of thing and I’d always be embarrassed afterwards,” he says.

When he fronted the judiciary in 2017 for his comments to the touch judge, he was given a simple punishment - he had to referee some junior matches. And the rest is history.

The reaction from his friends?

“A lot of them would argue that you always thought you knew the laws of the game so it’s only natural that you decided to do it yourself.”

Our athlete educator Laura Brittain answers the question, “What is an athlete biological passport and how do you use it?.”

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There is growing evidence that multiple concussions may increase the risk of experiencing a range of diseases and cognitive impairments later in life.

In latest episode of On Side we talk to former Wallabies player Peter FitzSimons, whose personal crusade against concussion started 15 years ago, Alan Pearce, Associate Professor at La Trobe University and Research Manager at Australian Sports Brain Bank (Victoria), and Paralympian Michael Milton about concussion in sport.

While he admits there has been “huge progress” within the contact codes, FitzSimons says the rules are still flaunted every week.

“…When you see someone clearly concussed, clearly gaga, still getting HIA (head injury assessments), which is let’s see if they’re concussed or not, and then so often they come back on the field …. Can you tell us what is was?” he asks.

“Why he was wobbling at the knees, wandering all over the place. But you’ve done the head injury assessment, it wasn’t concussion, what was it? I tell you Tim we will see those cases show up in court 10 years from now.

“Professional football codes have to get serious about observing the protocols.”

Associate Professor Pearce, a neurophysiologist, says while sports are now starting to take concussion seriously, in terms of the long-term outcomes, there’s still a hesitancy to accept the science.

“We never thought that we’d get 12 day stand down with the AFL until this year,” he said. “It’s all about small steps, it’s all about changing the attitudes of the wider community to concussion or sub-concussions, taking the injury more seriously… We will still keep calling for changes because we know that the long-term welfare will pay off in the end.”

Our most successful Paralympian with six gold, three silver and two bronze medals, Milton admits he competed in a different era – often without a helmet. Crashes were “a part of the sport” says the Australian downhill skiing speed record holder.

“[The impacts of those crashes] is certainly a concern going forward,” he admits. “When I start to think about skiing over 6,000 days in my life, averaging a crash at least once a day, you start adding up and thinking there’s probably pretty high numbers of multiple impacts that potentially could have an issue in the future.”

Our athlete educator Hayley Baker answers the question, “Do repeat offenders face tougher sanctions?”.

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The dearth of women in leadership and in high performance coaching roles is still a problem in sport.

In latest episode of On Side we talk to former Sport Australia CEO Kate Palmer on the gulf in parity that still exists in high performance sport and what needs to be done to help women transition into these roles. Palmer says sports need to take a “proactive approach” to, not just equality, but diversity in general.

“The reality is that sport is not immune to society,” Palmer says. “Sport reflects all that’s great about society, and all of the things that are bad about society.
“Sport can play a role [in promoting women and diversity] because on the whole it’s very public so we can show best practice to other industries and other organisations.”

She says thinking about diversity more broadly is really important. “I think acknowledging the differences and including everyone in the decision making is really important, and that goes beyond gender, that goes into multi-cultural areas too, indigenous areas, to disability, everyone, putting a voice around the table for all.”

We also talk to Commonwealth Games gold medallist Cara Honeychurch, who has a unique perspective as both an athlete and an administrator.

“I have to say I had a very positive experience throughout my whole life, I’ve never really felt that being a women has held me back,” Honeychurch, one of Australia’s most successful ten pin bowlers, says. “My sport of tenpin bowling has always been very inclusive, and very welcoming of women.”

Honeychurch, who is now General Manager of Corporate Services at Athletics Australia, says she is “very aware” her experience is “very much the exception” rather than the norm.

And in our segment From the Highlight Reel, we re-live the 400m freestyle event at the Athens Olympic Games through the lens of Ian Thorpe’s coach – Tracey Menzies.

Menzies says she faced criticism for having a coaching philosophy that differed from her (mostly male) peers.

“Sometimes there has been a bit of a criticism that I’ve shown too much empathy for people and compassion but I sort of wear that as a badge of honour now, that I actually have that vulnerability that I’m prepared to show who I am and care for the athlete,” she says. “Having the capacity to hear what we say, and to understand, if we do things a little differently, that’s ok. Not everyone has to coach the same way, behave the same way, and different is actually good.”

In the segment From Left Field our athlete educator Annabelle Cleary answers the question, “Do coaches get in trouble if an athlete tests positive?”

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One in three elite athletes report experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression at some time during or post their sporting career.

In the seventh and latest episode of On Side, we examine the prevalence of mental health issues in sport, sports’ duty of care to ensure the wellbeing of athletes and what’s being done to address these issues.

We talk to Clinical Psychologist Mary Spillane, and our Olympic heroes, basketballer Rachael Sporn and swimmer Daniel Kowalski, about their own battles with mental health.

Spillane, who is part of the AIS’s world-leading mental health referral network, says the stigma around mental health is changing.

“Certainly, in the work that I’ve done, females are much more likely to access support for mental health but we know that males are increasingly starting to access that support,” she says.

“There’s a lot more awareness out there now about mental health symptoms, what people might experience, so generally we think that people might actually be more likely to get help.”

Two-time Olympic silver medallist Sporn, who fought back from a knee injury simply to play in Sydney in 2000, battled her own demons after Australia lost the Olympic gold medal play-off.

“When we won silver you’ve lost your final match, who celebrates that in the normal world,” she says.

Losing can also have far-reaching ramifications for many athletes or teams, Sporn adds.

“It goes beyond that personal failure, then Basketball Australia doesn’t get that funding because we didn’t finish well, far-reaching when you are playing for Australia at an international level because you are thinking about those things as a player because moving forward that funding was so important.”

Daniel Kowalski, who has four Olympic medals to his name, ponders the question, “How do you drop your guard and show an element of vulnerability that doesn’t compromise performance?” If he could have any of his swims over again it would be the 400m freestyle, he says, “because I had that perfect combination of speed and endurance, it was what sat between my ears that let me down”.

In our segment From the Highlight Reel, we re-live the 1500m freestyle event at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic, where Daniel snatched silver.

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This highlight edition of our podcast On Side features our chat with AIS Chief Medical Officer Dr David Hughes on inclusion in sport following last year’s release of the Guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport.

Dr Hughes says transgender and gender diversity is not a sport issue, it’s a societal issue. “It’s important that sport at all time reflects societal changes, and moves with societal changes,” Dr Hughes says.

Three-time Paralympian Michael Roeger has dreamed of winning gold for his country - ever since he was a young boy growing up in Langhorne Creek.

Michael talks about the Tokyo 2020 setback given his “hot” start to the year and why he thinks Paralympians are less likely to dope than their Olympic counterparts.

Each month we celebrate one of the great moments in Australian sport in our segment From The Highlight Reel. This time we relive the 1989 Rugby League Grand Final - regarded by many as the greatest of all time - with try scorer Steve Jackson.

Jackson, the self-confessed naughty boy who rather than dip his toe in the water would dive head-first, admits he played and lived his dream. He also talks about his transformation and how he now uses his own experiences to help young people.

Our final guest is Australian marathon runner Cassie Fien, who was preparing for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games before she was banned for nine months after taking a supplement.

It’s a powerful story.

She talks about the devastating moment she was told she was banned and the impacts that ban had on her career and her life.

Her sanction had a far-reaching impact.

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