Fortune Favours The Bold
Amanda Smith: Today, 'fortune favours the bold'. It's a sentiment that applies to Australian cricketer Shane Warne; and one that Herb Elliott says our Olympic athletes need now, in the countdown to the Sydney Games.
THEME
Amanda Smith: Hi, I'm Amanda Smith, thanks for joining me on The Sports Factor, where I'll also be speaking with one of the competitors in the Melbourne to Osaka yacht race, who's about as bold as they come.
Vincent Lauwers: I'm sure there's a lot of listeners out there thinking these guys are crazy, you know, they're missing legs; one guy can't walk, his back's broken in several places, he can't use his legs; the other guy's missing a leg, they must be missing a few rocks in the head or something. But in all honesty it's not that bad, and it's a sense to show to people that we can do it. Someone's got a disability, doesn't mean they have to sit at home, watch TV and get pushed around.
Amanda Smith: That's Vincent Lauwers, about to set sail for Japan in the Osaka Cup yacht race. And we'll hear more from him later in the program.
Well it's now less than 18 months till the Sydney Olympic Games, and that means our Olympic hopefuls are moving into the serious phase of their training and preparation. This Sunday, the New South Wales Institute of Sport is running a seminar for athletes, about how to survive these next 18 months: the lead-up to the Games, and the Games themselves.
Herb Elliott, one of Australia's all-time athletics champions, is one of the people who'll be speaking to these athletes. These days, Herb Elliott is the Director of Athlete and Corporate Relations for the Australian Olympic Committee. And he's concerned to convey to athletes an understanding of the paradoxes they'll be facing, like having to keep in perspective that this is just one event in their lives, while also developing a kind of boldness that he calls 'optimum attitude'.
Herb Elliott: It's just amazing, I discovered when I visited the Australian team in '92 and in '96 in the Olympic Games, that there might be as many as 30% or 40% of the athletes in our Olympic team, and one therefore assumes in other countries' Olympic teams, where they don't have the optimum attitude for getting the very best out of themselves. And that can be for all sorts of reasons, but a typical situation might be one where the athlete's not prepared to say 'I'm going to achieve this', and they absolutely totally visualise and state objectively what the time is or the height is, or the distances or whatever, 'I'm going to do that'. They're not prepared to do it because it heightens the risk of failure, as soon as you make a specific commitment like that. So you might find some of the athletes will just say something like, 'I'm going to give it my best shot' or 'Do my best', so that they're not putting themselves at such a high level of risk, and they therefore are not facing the prospect of a very unpleasant failure at some stage of the game.
Amanda Smith: Tell me about your own experiences and recollections of this time of build-up back to the 1960 Games, your Games, in Rome.
Herb Elliott: I guess probably one of the most important things was to recognise that it's far enough away for you to put it out of your head. I mean if you or your listeners are planning a holiday in 18 months time, you go preoccupying yourself with it too much and you get so damned excited that by the time you get to it you're going to be exhausted; you really need to focus on the process every day. And as I got closer and closer to the Games, the emotional challenge basically was to keep the emotions controlled and harnessed, so that you could actually use those emotions as a reservoir of spiritual and emotional energy. So you wanted to keep them under control so they didn't blow your head off, but at the same time you needed to be able to then harness them and release them during your event.
There are techniques in ways to do that and we talk about that with the athletes as well.
Amanda Smith: Tell me a little bit about the techniques to do that.
Herb Elliott: Oh well, each person has a different technique. In my case, if I had a big race coming up or something, that restlessness and that horrible yawning that you get before a big challenge, where you feel absolutely exhausted and listless and no energy, and you just wonder how on earth you're going to get to the track, much less run around it, and then you start to worry about it. I found that the ocean, going and standing next to the ocean, or standing in a forest and just realising how utterly insignificant you were as a human being, in the context of the universality and the enormous size and the lifespan of the ocean or the forest, and you think, 'Dammit, why are you getting yourself so carried away by this? This is really very insignificant in the whole scheme of things.' So that was the way I was able to keep it under control. But I didn't want to get to the point where it became totally insignificant, because then I wouldn't compete well. So it's a sort of a balance line. Some of the kids might find that certain styles of music are things that help them quiet down and keep themselves under control without losing it. Everybody has their different ways of doing it, and we talk about those sorts of things.
Amanda Smith: Did that ever happen to you? Can you think of a particular example where you really had to face that kind of challenge of negativity?
Herb Elliott: Well you constantly had to face your own doubts; you'd have to recognise that OK, I'm feeling unsure of myself here at this very moment. And instead of getting down about it, you think to yourself, 'Now my competitor over in East Germany, or wherever, may be going through this process at exactly the same moment as I am, or tomorrow, or yesterday, and I'm going to deal with it better than they are.' So you're actually running your race at the emotional level as well as later at the physical level, and that used to help me a lot.
Amanda Smith: Are there particular things that you think athletes have to be aware of, or mindful of, as far as competing in front of a home crowd is concerned, as Australian athletes will be doing in September next year?
Herb Elliott: I think there's lots of things. Firstly I think we all realise that having your home crowd is going to be a very positive influence for most athletes. I mean, if you study every home Olympic Games, the number of, say gold medals that the home team wins in that Games, and then have a look at what they won in gold medals in the previous Olympic Games, there will be just utterly outstanding changes. Probably the most outstanding one was Spain, who had their games in Barcelona in 1992. I think they won 13 gold medals in Barcelona, and they won one in Seoul four years earlier. Now that's an extreme case, but in every case, the home games makes a very big difference to the overall performance of the team. And I guess we would hope that it's going to happen in Australia, and it certainly will if the Australians crowds come and support their athletes. That'll make a huge difference.
On the other side of the coin, you're going to have all sorts of distractions and impositions. When you go away overseas, you're away from most of your family and friends and all of that sort of thing, so you're able to just keep focused on what it's about. Here, not only will you have your close family and friends just outside the door of the village, and they're very excited about the fact that you're in the team, but you also suddenly find that schoolmates that you haven't seen for 20 years are suddenly knocking on the door, 'G'day mate, how're you going? Got any tickets?' I mean people are going to turn up out of the woodwork, and be wanting to touch you and be with you and share your experience with you. The media are going to be very, very focused on our Australian athletes, and instead of having 20 or 30 media from Australian media overseas, or 40 or 50, or whatever it is, you can multiply that by 10. So you have this perverse situation where the very people who care about them, and want to share it with them actually could be the source of their destruction.
Amanda Smith: So don't try and bott tickets from an athlete you met 20 years ago in kinder! That was Herb Elliott, the Australian Olympic Committee's Director of Athlete and Corporate Services - and of course the great 1500 metres and mile champion of the late '50s and '60s - who'll be passing on that sort of advice to athletes at a seminar on Sunday, for the New South Wales Institute of Sport.
Commentator: Shane Warne rubs the hand on the grass, takes a very deep breath; I'm sure he'd love a hat-trick. Will this be it? You don't get too many chances. He bowls to Devon Malcolm who is taken on the pad and there's a catch at short leg is there? It's certainly been played, and he's out!! Warne, a hat trick!!
Amanda Smith: Shane Warne demolishes the visiting English cricket side on their tour of Australia back in the summer of 1994. And Shane Warne is, surely, one of cricket's most talented, and controversial, characters. 'Bold Warnie' is the name of a biography that's just been written about him, by Roland Perry. Now although I don't always love reading biographies and autobiographies of famous athletes, one thing that I do think is always interesting is finding out about the early lives of these people, before they became successful and famous. Shane Warne really only turned to cricket seriously after a failed attempt to become an Australian Rules footballer. But his subsequent impact on world cricket was also due to a piece of advice he was given as an 11-year-old, as Roland Perry explains.
Roland Perry: Quite extraordinary. His first coach, a guy called Ron Cantlin in Melbourne, said to him that because the pace bowlers were dominating world cricket, and Australian cricket included, and the West Indies were so big, and Lillie was a star, it would be a good idea if he became a spin bowler. Now telling an 11-year-old is one thing, when he sees everyone else ripping in and bowling quickly, but Warne, who was always a pleaser, always wanted to please, and a very good listener (which for those who have children is a very unusual trait. I have an 11-year-old and getting him to listen to Dad is tough, even with cricket.) And Warne listened and learned, and even when he was getting belted out of the park bowling his spinners, he kept going. With this coach saying 'In ten years time they'll be searching Australia for a spin bowler and you'll be it.'
Amanda Smith: Well since Shane Warne's entry into the Australian cricket team in 1992, we're pretty familiar with his achievements on the field, but I'd like to talk to you about your assessment of his character. Warne himself has said that his life is a soap opera. Do you think that some of his more loutish or arrogant behaviour, not to mention dubious ethics as far as accepting money from an illegal bookmaker, do you think those things have diminished him as a sportsman, or made him in fact more interesting?
Roland Perry: Well I wouldn't ever call him loutish or arrogant, this is one of the misconceptions about him. He at times has lacked humility, and to describe him in one word I'd go for the word 'bold'. Now 'Bold Warnie' is the title of the book, of course it comes from Healy behind the stumps saying it [bowled, Warnie] for the last six years whenever Warne delivers a ball. But oddly the b.o.l.d. spelling really sums the man up because he is a risk-taker, he is aggressive on the field, and off. He also is a bold type of character. Think of the bold typeface in printing, he wears the blonded hair and the earring and so forth, and the body language is all bold. And then the other side of bold, the other definition is bold, is lacking humility. Now that's where you're I think mixing up arrogance. No-one who has ever known him well has ever called him arrogant.
Amanda Smith: He certainly can come across that way though.
Roland Perry: It's true, but if messers - the three Bs I call them, because they've been quite important in my research - Bradman, Benaud and Border were in this room, none of them would call him arrogant. And they wouldn't do it in private, and all three of them would say it, particularly Bradman to me, if they thought he was an arrogant individual. I don't think he's putting on an act for them and other people. He does lack humility at times. And one of the bad images that came across was during the 1997 Ashes at Old Trafford, when we'd won the series, and he was on the balcony (I call it The Dance of the Derriere in the book) holding a stump above his head. Now the media in England, and here and around the world, took this as humiliating the beaten foe downstairs in the dressing room, the humbled English who'd been just done again in another Ashes series. Of course he wasn't doing that; he'd been abused up and down the country, and a lot of those supporters were still abusing him and he was just responding to them. But of course all we see is that visual of him looking like he's being particularly arrogant about winning, which was not the case. This is not to justify it, it's a stupid act that very few cricketers and sportsmen go on with, I mean motor car racing drivers do crazy things after they've won and that sort of thing, but really Warne and McGrath and company should be told by someone, should be counselled of the impact of those images.
Amanda Smith: Yes, now you're referring, with Glenn McGrath, to his spitting at the end of the last Test in the West Indies.
Roland Perry: Yes. Spitting, as the Australians have defended him sort of technically correctly, in the vicinity of the batsman. Well that's not the way unfortunately it looked from two angles on television, and I agree with the Australians, he was not spitting at the batsman, but it was a deliberate act of defiance, aggression in the face of the batsman. So again it's the image thing coming across to us all. And when I saw that (I watch, unfortunately for my sleep patterns, I watch all the cricket, all night), and I sat up straight away and though, 'Oh you silly so-and-so doing that, absolutely stupid.'
Amanda Smith: Well Roland this is your second cricket biography; you've also written a biography of Don Bradman. As a result of both those projects, and in relation to what we've just been talking about, what's your analysis of the burden of fame on top sports people, and as it relates to Shane Warne?
Roland Perry: Yes, it's a fascinating one with these two characters because they handle it in different ways, and they handle it in similar ways. They actually discussed it, I wasn't quite the fly on the wall but I dragged as much out of Don Bradman, Sir Donald, as I could about the meeting, which, it's very difficult to get him to talk about private meetings.
Amanda Smith: This was a meeting around his 90th birthday last year?
Roland Perry: Yes, he met Sachin Tendulkar and Warne on the day, and he did bring up the subject. Warne tends to shut down completely and ignore the media. In other words, the biggest beef he'll have from cricket journalists is that he doesn't return phone calls. And it is a tough thing, because they move from schoolyard and the school locker room, into the Test team locker room without any other training. It's pretty raw stuff, and the locker room familiarity is all they know. I mean Warne's got married and he's having children and so forth, but really in terms of maturity, there's not much opportunity in the normal sense, that the average person goes through. So that causes problems with how to handle fame immediately, and the money that goes with it.
Now Bradman of course is a special case, intellectually and every other way he is a special case. I mean Bradman could handle most situations, even though he wasn't a natural speaker, he hated the publicity. Warne I think probably went into it loving it, a different approach again. But then of course now, is very defensive about what happens with fame and what comes with it. For example, he doesn't know how to take criticism, he doesn't understand it. We all know that some journalists are vitriolic and vicious, but very few. Most of them try to be objective. You know, a few have axes to grind and are very pompous twits about their writing and their cricket, and their sport and so forth. But most of them don't. So he's got to learn to take the good with the bad really.
Amanda Smith: Now Roland, there's still no resolution to the match-fixing and bribery allegations made by Shane Warne, along with Mark Waugh and Tim May, against Salim Malik and Pakistan cricket. That whole business of course got very muddied, and Shane Warne and Mark Waugh's credibility was seriously compromised by the revelation last year that they'd accepted money from an Indian bookmaker. But where is that Pakistan inquiry heading now?
Roland Perry: The current stage with that is fascinating. Rashid Latif, who was the first person to name, had the courage to name, as a former Pakistani captain, had the courage to name Salim Malik and others as being corrupt, has just said this week that Pakistan are at it again in a one-day game against England, losing. And he claims that this was a thrown game as well. So it's very current.
Amanda Smith: What's your view generally on it?
Roland Perry: Look, as far as Warne's concerned, he and Mark Waugh on the one hand should be given a medal, like they should be in the same class as Latif, who told the world about this corruption. But they did spoil it, as you rightly said, by taking money from a bookie. They're two separate issues though, and I'm very clear, that it was a set-up. I mean Mark Waugh and Shane Warne were being set up for a major corruption. The difference in (I was going to say that terrible cliche 'culture' but I'll say the mentality) of the Australians and the Pakistanis is monumental in this respect at this time. And that is that the Australians once confronted with an actual bribe - I mean it's all right to take, well it's not all right, but it is one thing to take money for match reports, because you've been found $5,000 short at the casino, and an Indian says 'Please take it, you'll dishonour me and my country if you don't take the money' and Warne says, 'Thank you mate' and goes and drops the $5,000 on the table that night, another five you know. When you've got well over a million to play with each year perhaps that's part of the deal. But anyway, that is a totally different thing from the next step, and that is someone coming to you, orchestrated, I have no question about this from my sources, the next step is to say, 'OK, here's $250 if you throw a game'.
Amanda Smith: $250,000?
Roland Perry: Thousand, yes, yes, not $250, $250,000. Now that's what happened with Warne and Mark Waugh, and they both categorically told Malik in this case, where to go. Now that is the Pakistanis clearly not understanding the Australian mentality in terms of winning, and their pride for the country. It's as simple as that. That doesn't absolve them from the stupidity and the naivete in which they involved themselves, by taking the money in the first place.
Amanda Smith: Well Shane Warne is still struggling with consistent form since coming back into the Australian side after his shoulder surgery. Are his days numbered?
Roland Perry: I think no, off the top. He's talking it down and saying 'Well I may have to'. I think that's just being defensive he may have to retire. Remember that he had his surgery in June last year, in 1998, that's less than 12 months, it's major surgery, he's come back and managed himself extremely well. He's just struggled for those extra wickets and the pressure games and the Test, and the pressure moments, and he's failed, and I was the first one in the country to call for him being sacked. But that's one Test. He's back already doing very well in the one-day games, so he has another opportunity at this stage to pick up his form and get in front of McGill and get back in the side. It'll be good for Warne, it'll give him something to fight for and I think he will make it, because he is a class act. And he's a tremendous performer and he does well when he's against it, and I think he's up against it right now.
Amanda Smith: Roland Perry, author of 'Bold Warnie', the biography of Shane Warne.
Now, the Melbourne to Osaka yacht race, the Osaka Cup, gets under way this weekend. This is a double-handed race that's held every four years. The five-and-a-half-thousand nautical miles from Melbourne to Osaka takes about five to six weeks to complete.
One of the yachts competing this year is called 'Vision Quest', skippered by Vincent Lauwers and Grahme Rayner. Now these sorts of ocean yacht races are pretty gruelling stuff, but when you consider that Vincent is paraplegic and Grahme has one leg, the challenge is, you'd have to think, a little bit more extreme.
Below deck on the 'Vision Quest' at the Melbourne docks, Vincent Lauwers talked to me about how sailing in a race like this has been a lifetime's ambition.
Vincent Lauwers: It's interesting actually, I started sailing when I was I'd say 12, and I did a bit of sailing, it was mainly on dinghies. And from there a friend of mine that I met in Westernport, Hastings, he was building his own boat, and at the age of 14 I was offered to crew on the yacht from Hastings to Sydney, and I took it up as being the best adventure. And one thing led to another and from there I sailed to Sydney, and the moment we went into the Heads, I thought, 'This is it, this is for me. I want to sail around the world and build a boat.' So everything started from there.
Amanda Smith: So tell me when you became a paraplegic.
Vincent Lauwers: That was in 1990. I was cruising along on a motorbike, on the Morning Peninsula, doing 100 kilometres an hour in one direction and a car went through a Stop sign doing whatever speed he was, and the paraplegia was the result. So that was January 1990, and I didn't think I could sail any more. But I saw a video of Kay Cottee, and this was probably a year after I'd had the accident, and I thought, 'Hang on, this looks good.' I watched it about seven times that night, (and I've said it a few times) it was the best feeling any woman had given me in a long time back then!
But I thought, 'Hey this would be great. Imagine a paraplegic doing that.' So it really started the dream and got me going.
Amanda Smith: And was the decision to return to sailing or to keep sailing, a difficult one?
Vincent Lauwers: It was Amanda, because I had all these fears and phobias. I thought, 'How am I going to get to the front of the boat quickly? What about sail configurations, changing sails, dealing with storms, getting round the boat safely without falling off, steering the boat, getting from one end to another; what if a mast breaks', and all these sorts of things. And it was difficult, but I thought OK, tackle it the way you have everything else, tackle it logically. Stack it up into an order, tackle each one individually, and once you've overcome that barrier, move on to the next one, and that's basically all we've done from Day 1.
Amanda Smith: Well it seems to me that moving around a yacht in the open sea is difficult for anyone, the boat's constantly lurching and being buffeted by waves. I can only imagine that it is rather more difficult when your movement is restricted by a physical disability.
Vincent Lauwers: Yes it is Amanda, in one way yes, in another no. If I'm downstairs, then down below decks it's all purpose-built just for the wheelchair, and I can get around quite easily downstairs. On deck we don't use the wheelchair, I just strap a cushion to my bottom and drag myself around. If the boat's lurching and carrying on a little bit, you've sort of just got to wait until the boat's in a position you can get around quite safely down below decks. But on decks we just strap a cushion to the bottom and get from one end to another, like being on a slide, in no time.
Amanda Smith: Are there in fact ways then that you have perhaps an advantage in moving around on deck over able-bodied competitors?
Vincent Lauwers: Yes definitely, because able-bodied people - and everyone that's seen me and seen the way we do it, and who have been out in a big storm, say exactly the same. They're used to standing up and walking around the decks, but when it really gets to the thick of things, they're down on their hands and knees. Whereas someone like Grahme or myself, Grahme who's missing his leg, we're both always crawling round anyway, so we're used to it. And so when it comes to the thick of things, we get from one end to another twice as quick as anyone else.
Amanda Smith: So what modifications have you made to this yacht, as opposed to standard yacht design, that works for your disability and also Grahme's?
Vincent Lauwers: That's a good question. I'd say rather than modifications I'd say probably improvements. Because we've had a lot of able-bodied people come on board and say, 'This is just fantastic, it's simple, it's practical, it works'. Whereas you get on other boats and people go crazy and they do all these things thinking, 'I'll have that fancy thing there, or this here and that there', and in the end, it's just like an obstacle course, and it's too much of a hard job. Whereas we thought, 'OK, let's keep it simple, let's keep it practical and make it work.' And I just got out there and kept doing sea trials and sea trials and sea trials: 14 Bass Strait crossings, two Sydney to Hobarts, East Coast station races, yacht deliveries. Just to get the experience to say, 'Right, this works for me, that doesn't work for me.' And we just built it very, very simply, so there's nothing in a sense that we've made modifications to. We've just improved with different designs and thought, 'OK, the cockpit is like a cockpit, it's purposely designed so everything functions in a one-man area. The nav. station, the whole area works in the one functional area.' So the working area downstairs, it's purposely built so everything functions with limited movement, limited effort, so actually you're saving energy because you're not having to chase round doing things.
Amanda Smith: Now we're sitting below deck, and I notice to get up to deck there's three steps that are quite steep. How do you two get up and down those?
Vincent Lauwers: It's quite easy actually. I could show you, and listeners won't be able to see what's happening, but as Grahme's just doing now: as you heard that clunk, that third step, the very top step, just came down as an elevator. And all we do is you'd sit onto the step, you pull on a cord that's on the side of that, on a pulley system, and you can hoist yourself all the way up to the top. So within a few seconds it's converted from a step for an able-bodied person, to an elevator seat that someone sits on and just lifts themself up.
Amanda Smith: Which Grahme is doing as we speak.
Vincent Lauwers: Yes, exactly, and as you can see, in the amount of time it took me to explain it to you, Grahme's converted it from a step to the elevator and he's up the top looking out. So it's very simple, and very safe too. We call it the Parascope!
Amanda Smith: Now you've competed in Sydney to Hobart races, Vincent. I guess the experience of tragedy and disaster with the most recent Sydney to Hobart yacht race alerted us all to the dangers of this sort of race, and that you can't beat the weather. Has that last Sydney to Hobart yacht race made you more cautious or mindful of the dangers, and particularly about wanting really accurate weather information?
Vincent Lauwers: I was hoping you'd ask me something like that. I actually wish that I was in that Sydney to Hobart. The reason being is because I did a solo trip from Melbourne to Sydney and return, like in the middle of winter last year. And it just so happened that at that time, the same weather system that they went through, we (the yacht and myself) had. It's called a 'bomb', and there was about five of them that passed through the Tasman last year. The boat handled it well, I handled it well, and the reason being is because this yacht is purposely built for my solo, non-stop, unassisted trip around the world. Therefore it's built for the Southern oceans, it's built to take a hiding. I've been perfecting my sailing skills and abilities to be able to handle those conditions, and all I did was I sailed and adapted to the situation I was in. No, a race can be a little bit different and I can't comment on what those guys went through in the sense that I wasn't there, so I can't say they should have done this, or should have done that, or this happened or that didn't happen. But I do believe that it's a good eye opener, because it makes people see now that I think there's a big thing that has to be done with safety in the marine field. In the sense that you have to stick to stringent safety codes. Whereas I had built this boat from scratch with those safety factors built into it. I mean I could sit here all day and show you and talk to you about all the safety things we've done. The safety inspectors for this race are more than impressed with what we've done so far, and it just shows the credibility of the yacht herself, to its sea kindness and sea safety sense, and also our abilities as to what we're planning to do. Sure we don't know everything, and sure there's going to be times things are going to be tough and we're going to make mistakes, but the fact of the matter is that the strong point is the yacht is purposely built for that, and you're only as strong as your weak point, so we're trying to improve our weak points to the utmost.
Amanda Smith: Vincent Lauwers, one of the competitors in the Osaka Cup yacht race over five-and-a-half-thousand nautical miles, and getting under way this weekend. And which Vincent is doing as preparation for a solo round-the-world voyage he plans to do later this year, the first to be done by a paraplegic sailor.
And that's The Sports Factor for this week. I'm Amanda Smith, hope you can join me again next Friday.
The Sports Factor can be heard on Radio National, 8.30am Fridays (Repeated Friday evenings at 8.30pm).