The Manchester Six

Callus, the chrome-domed Queensland sprinter, was part of the gold medal version of the men’s 4x100m relay team that set a hugely-impressive world record at the Sydney games in 2000, beating the Seppos for the first time ever – and establishing a benchmark for all future relay swimmers to live up to.

Callus also swam the heat in Athens four years later before losing his spot in the final to one of Michael Klim or Ian Thorpe.

Of course, the regular thing for Making the Nut to do would be to lay all blame for the current mess squarely at the feet of that Swiss skulker, Thorpe, but in this case Callus is the mark.

Callus, you see, undoubtedly rubbed shoulders with a young and presumably impressionable Eamon Sullivan in Athens. And more than eight years later, as the senior member of the Manchester Six, Sullivan has worn his share of the blame for making a regrettable decision in encouraging his teammates to carry on the long-standing relay team 'bonding' tradition ahead of the London games.

Thorpe was also part of the Athens team that saw Sullivan make his Olympic bow, but given his secretive and generally enigmatic character, it seems likely the Thorpedo dodged team bonding at every opportunity.

According to the collaborative statement released on Friday, “Matt and Eamon were asked how they had bonded with the senior members of the team when they were junior members and both Eamon Sullivan and Matt Targett shared their stories of initiation onto the relay squad and together we decided to continue in what we felt was a harmless activity and tradition.”

“The Stilnox was prescribed to both Eamon and Matthew prior to our arrival at the Manchester Camp.”

That grab is just part of the statement read by Kowalski – and is taken verbatim.

No editing. No cut and shut for poetic purposes.

The reader is led from a reference to a “harmless activity and tradition” directly to misuse of the prescription sedative Stilnox – or Zolpidem if you want it in non-branded terms.

Media reports this week have suggested the Manchester bonding session involved the tried and true ‘Stilnox and Red Bull’ combo favoured by Rugby League pro's Australia-wide. 

Sounds great, right?

A Manchester hotel room, a bunch of mates and a whole shitload of free time. Why not ‘ave it large? Likely lads and loads’a laughs.

By the sound of things, all that was missing was a Happy Monday’s LP and actual party drugs.

As well as any sign of hard core ‘bonding’ past a respectable hour.

“We were all in bed by 10.30pm. The tradition has been that the bonding session would remain between us. We honoured that tradition.”

While they reminded the Australian sporting public that “Stilnox is NOT a banned substance on the WADA list, and has been used for many years”, the swimmers acknowledged “that at the time Stilnox was consumed it had been recently prohibited for use by the AOC”.

And this, perhaps, suggests the Australian Olympic Committee was aware of the likelihood of Stilnox being abused by athletes in London, and chose to run the prohibition line in order to head off any trouble.

But they obviously didn’t count on the strength of ‘tradition’ and the 2012 group’s desire to live up to the deeds of their forebears.

Can you imagine if Australia’s female swimmers had such extraordinary respect for tradition?

What started in 1964 with Dawn Fraser stealing an Olympic flag from outside Hirohito’s Tokyo palace might have ended last year with the most daring Crown Jewels heist in living memory.

But it didn’t.

Instead, the poor, rule-abiding girls were subjected to horrifying prank calls and that nerve-jangling trepidation that comes with a late-night hotel door knock: Is it room service with my chamomile tea or James Magnussen with dilated pupils and a clammy sweat?

The door knocking and prank calling was nothing more than “childish behaviour”, but the six “acknowledge that our actions on the night were stupid”.

Probably more stupid, though, was lying about what went on in Manchester when the inevitable questioning commenced in the wake of a ‘disappointing’ Olympic campaign.

(N.B., the term ‘disappointing’ is used here as it appears to have been the adjective of choice for most Australian media outlets. This correspondent would not use the word ‘disappointing’ in reference to the 2012 Olympic swimming campaign alone. Rather, this column believes swimming is ‘disappointing’ at all times and should be considered little more than a glorified recreational activity, much like tennis.)

Even more stupid than that was the justification for their deceit: “…some individuals have denied the incident took place in part because of tradition but also to give the review due process to run its course.”

Well played, chaps. A-grade deception followed by first-class spin.

Nothing like keeping shtum while you’ve got something to hide and then defending your actions by suggesting your intention was to ensure the investigators had the chance to discover everything themselves.

Or does the statement really suggest that the ‘tradition’ in Australian 4x100m relay teams is to get jacked up together ahead of a big meet AND to lie to authorities when time comes to face the music?

With widespread reports of a ‘toxic’ culture revealed in the wake of the Bluestone Review, perhaps what is really shining through today is the mollycoddled state some of Australia’s high-profile athletes exist in.

The best swimmers are an easy target, too. What more individual sport is there? Even when they’re part of a relay team, a swimmer is in the water on their own.

They’ve chased a black line every day for years, been cheered on at countless carnivals by family members in otherwise empty bleachers and forced to become increasingly preoccupied by elusive Olympic gold in order to justify their bread.

In turn – and due to a heady mix of former glory and relatively recent success – this nation looks to its swimmers for the medals that have somehow become a right, rather than a rare privilege.

Elite swimmers can be role models, of course. But it also stands to reason some are as prone to pitiable tantrums and acts of pure petulance as the best tennis players or golfers.

They just don’t have anything like the profile.

They swim one meet that really counts every Olympiad. World Championships and Commonwealth Games come and go with scant consequence.

But when the Olympics happen along, the nation – not just the athletes – shaves down and prepares itself for an avalanche of the shiny yellow stuff.

Leading up to London, The Missile was primed for launch by the mainstream media – and, for what it’s worth, he dished out a few egotistic lines, too.

Everyone loves a cocky jock right up until he chokes on the open net.

And it’s that point that Ashley Callus (or whoever it was that insisted on the passage of tradition in the Australian relay team) must have failed to stress to the current crop.

You can do just about whatever you want if you deliver the goods. But if you fail to do so, expect retribution. Particularly in Australia, where lopping tall poppies is a national pastime.

It might be that Magnusson et. al. return in Rio and get the job done.

That being the case – and barring the potential for this whole thing to blow over by mid-March – don’t expect any mention of the current shambles in press reports from Brazil.

Not unless it’s framed as a cautionary tale, one of misled youth made good in the face of poor coaching, lax administration and overwhelming public expectation.

And then expect the vitriol to be replaced by adoration, the controversy caused by assumed complacency to be supplanted by national pride and, quite literally, ALL to be forgiven.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images AsiaPac