Oh #@
Newcastle Herald
21 August 2008
By RICHARD HINDS SMH
SALLY McLellan gave Australia a silver medal. But, with her earthy, spontaneous display of pure jubilation, she gave much more.
She gave an over-dog Olympic nation the unadulterated joy that only the sporting minnow, freed from the burden of expectation, can usually feel.Having stared at the big screen for 30 seconds waiting for the results of the photo finish to be posted, McLellan did not preen or pose or point to the label on her sneakers.She celebrated the way the runner from Yemen does after snatching a bronze. The way Brendan Nelson celebrates when he records a double-digit approval rating. In the best possible way, McLellan went nuts.And, as she bounced and hugged and swore, Australians in turn got to be like Bangladeshis celebrating a Test match victory, elevated by that sense of innocent pleasure that has, for so long, been buried beneath an avalanche of government-funded excellence.Which is not to impugn or diminish the joy that every successful Australian athlete feels when hours of arduous training and sacrifice end on the Olympic podium. It is merely to relish and envy the excitement that the nations we have come to pity or patronise for their dearth of competent freestylers, canoeists or bicycle riders experience when their athletes defy the odds, a feeling heightened greatly because it occurred on the greatest and the most competitive stage. A stage where, in the absence of the injured Jana Rawlinson and walker Nathan Deakes, Australia was cast in the role of Jamaican bobsled team.Her first words to the media in the mixed zone after winning? "Oh my God. You guys never doubted me; you knew I was going to win a medal. Oh shit."McLellan's innocent joy was a potent antidote to eight sometimes arduous days at the Water Cube, where Australia was one of the big boys. As a consequence, even if the individual emotions were as heartfelt as McLellan's, there was a sense of power and entitlement attached to the vast success that was achieved and, often, crushing disappointment about what was not.At the pool only gold usually glittered for Australia. Minor placegetters were left to explain the mere satisfaction of silver or even the crushing disappointment of bronze. To justify what would be, for the swimmer from Liechtenstein, a life-defining moment, with apologetic cliches about how they had "given it my best shot" and "left everything in the pool". This was the result not merely of our great expectations, but of their own.Compare this with McLellan, who cradled her silver medal in her hand so lovingly you would have thought it had just been delivered by caesarean section.In a claustrophobic area beneath the grandstands, she held the medal out towards some reporters who inspected it from a respectful distance. "Go on, touch it," she said like a proud mother. "Touch it."Nearby, British reporters circled the latest in a long line of English gold medallists, the 400 metres champion Christine Ohuruogu. "We're giving your lot a flogging," chirped an English journalist.The type who, until recently, once disparaged Australia's sporting triumphalism.Now, as that smokescreen used to disguise decades of comparative failure by British athletes clears, the English will become acquainted with the sometimes bittersweet feeling of first-world sporting status.They will have great pride in their lottery-funded overachievers and return serve to their Australian tormentors. But they will also squirm at the jingoism of their own version of the chest-beating Fanatics; find that their own crushing expectations can make medals that, years ago, would have been heralded as stellar achievements seem like abject failures.In the best possible way, McLellan went nuts. And, as she bounced and hugged and swore, Australians were elevated by that sense of innocent pleasure that has been buried beneath an avalanche of government-funded excellence.
