‘I’m shocked’: Sally Pearson drops Paris Olympics bombshell

Aussie Olympic champion Sally Pearson has dropped a bomb on the Australian team just 58 days from the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.

COMMENT

I’m shocked, Lisa Weightman is heartbroken and Athletics Australia (AA) is in crisis.

A bombshell has been dropped on Australian athletics 58 days before the Paris Olympics opening ceremony on July 26.

I can’t believe what is happening in the sport I love dearly.

Behind the scenes, Aussie marathon runner Lisa Weightman, a close friend of mine, is fighting to make sure an extraordinary piece of Australian sporting folklore still happens.

The desperately sad truth is that AA is stopping Weightman from becoming the first Aussie track and field athlete to compete at five Olympics, having debuted in the 2008 Beijing Games.

You can see exactly how explosive the situation is with the statement Weightman has exclusively sent to me. That statement can be read in full at the bottom of this column.

The fact that Weightman and I were flatmates inside an Olympics village previously has nothing to do with it. This is about the integrity of my sport.

Lisa Weightman during the Women's Marathon at the 2023 World Athletics Championships. Photo by Hannah Peters/Getty Images

Lisa Weightman at the Tokyo Olympics. Photo by Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

The furore erupted this week via a Nine report when it became public that Sinead Diver, Genevieve Gregson and Jessica Stenson (nee Trengove) will represent Australia in the marathon at the Paris Games.

AA hasn’t confirmed this yet, but the announcement is imminent. The truth is this was decided weeks ago.

I’m stoked for all three of them. Unfortunately, their selection has come at a price. Six Aussies did enough to qualify under the Paris entry standard of 2:26:50, but only three can be chosen.

It’s a very grey area, but in black-and-white terms it’s simple to say Weightman qualified with the third quickest time and did everything she could to earn a spot on the plane to France.

Her time of 2:23:15 was only behind Gregson’s 2:23:08 and Diver’s 2:21:34, but ahead of Izzi Batt-Doyle (2:23:27), Eloise Wellings (2:25:47) and critically Stenson (2:24:01).

The last thing anyone wants is for this to become a public war of words between Lisa’s family and Jess’s family.

Unfortunately, emotions are running high and the heartbreak felt by Weightman’s husband Lachlan McArthur prompted a public comment for Stenson to delete the header image on her Twitter account, which showed both families happy after a race.

The controversial tweet in question.

Jessica Stenson won marathon gold at the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games. Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

There is hurt felt by all involved, but nobody is feeling the emotional agony that Weightman is right now.

This is about so much more than her omission from the team.

I’m disappointed with the national selection panel, but I’m more shocked at the integrity of Athletics Australia and how this has become a total farce.

I’ll do my best to explain it to you.

After being informed she didn’t make the cut, Weightman has appealed the decision all the way to the National Sports Tribunal, a somewhat toothless government body that settles national-level disputes.

AA doesn’t appear to have listened to the NST’s recommendations from the case. How else do you explain the fact that AA elected not to convene a new and independent selection committee to re-determine the matter – as they were advised to?

Australia's greatest modern-day track and field athlete Sally Pearson. AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts

This is where it gets really ugly. AA’s original selection committee re-affirmed its original decision. Simple as that, Weightman’s hopes of a historic appearance in Paris were dashed.

News.com.au has contacted AA national selection panel chairman Peter Hamilton for comment.

The panel has some serious explaining to do when it comes to its decision to hold the belief that Stenson has a better chance of winning a medal in Paris than Weightman has. The fact that Weightman has a 7-1 head-to-head winning record against Stenson in events they have both competed in says a lot. Nobody ran under the qualifying time more than what Weightman did during the qualifying period. It’s black and white, clear as day, that she should have been selected.

The most damning thing of all are Weightman’s claims that throughout the whole process she has not been given a direct reason why she wasn’t selected. She won her appeal, but her cries keep going back to the same selection panel that didn’t select her in the first place and they’re not even looking at it.

She’s going round and round in circles with the same people.

I’ve never heard of anything like this happening before. But now we have to ask what’s happened in the past?

We just want answers.

STATEMENT FROM LISA WEIGHTMAN

Despite winning an appeal at the National Sports Tribunal (the NST) against my non-nomination for the women’s marathon team, the NST returned the nomination decision to AA for re-determination. The NST was critical of AA’s handling of this nomination decision including its failure to properly understand or apply its own nomination criteria.

Notwithstanding the NST’s recommendation for AA to convene a new and independent selection committee to re-determine the matter (i.e. to avoid the risk of potential bias), AA’s original selection committee simply re-affirmed its original decision.

I have received legal advice that I have a sound basis to appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (the only avenue available to me).

However, success in that forum would be expensive and uncertain and still likely result in the matter being returned to AA for re-determination.

I am of course disappointed by the decision given that I fought hard and fair to gain my qualification time – the third fastest of all Australian women during the qualification period. However, what I am most disappointed about is AA’s own internal systems and procedures that have allowed this outcome and which, unless corrected, will negatively impact future Australian athletes and their legitimate claims to represent Australia.

Lisa Weightman at the Gold Coast Marathon. Picture: John Gass

Jess Trengove and teammate Sinead Diver.

Much of the dispute before the NST involved an interpretation of AA’s own nomination criteria for the marathon. The nomination criteria was so unclear and ambiguous that the NST observed that AA did not even properly understand how to interpret or apply it.

It was not disputed that I achieved the qualifying criteria for nomination. AA elected not to nominate me to the Australian Olympic Committee despite:

• Earning a quota place (Top three fastest Australians in the qualification period);

• Obtaining three qualifiers and running under the standard five times from July 2022 to Feb 2024 (no nominated athlete had more than 1 in that period - man or woman), including one race in Valencia where I ran with covid;

• Having a 7-1 head-to-head record (including 3-1 in the marathon) against the fifth ranked athlete who was nominated in place of me; and

• Being the only Australian athlete to podium finish in an international marathon (23 seconds from 1st place) and having beaten the highest ranked athlete with a quota place (12th - Helen Bekele) on the road to Paris qualification ranking list.

The selection committee was effectively able to disregard the above facts and instead give greater weight to a speculative belief that the three nominated athletes had superior claims to finishing top eight in Paris. AA failed to provide its reasons for forming this belief until the actual appeal to the NST and, even then, failed to provide its reasons in the correct evidentiary form. The NST was critical of AA’s conduct and afforded it an opportunity to present its evidence in the correct written form: AA failed to do so.

Olympic legends Dawn Fraser and Sally Pearson. Image/Josh Woning.

It gets worse. AA’s Head of Integrity sent AA’s written submissions to the NST which included information supporting AA’s reasons for my non-nomination. However, this information was incorrect and, ironically, would have supported my claims for nomination. Upon realising his error the Head of Integrity sent an updated and corrected version of AA’s submissions to the NST outside of the agreed deadline, without disclosing details of the changes.

The NST was again critical of AA’s conduct and noted that the revised submissions further indicated AA’s “uncertainty or lack of clarity in respect of (its) real reasons” for not nominating me.

As noted, the NST upheld my appeal and referred the decision back to AA with a recommendation that a newly convened Selection Committee should make a fresh nomination decision taking into account all of the submissions made by the parties and that upon accepting this responsibility that it “must observe the principles of natural justice”.

AA doubled down in its refusal of my nomination to the AOC.

Noting the NST’s findings we asked AA to convene a new Selection Committee for the purpose of independently re-determining the non-nomination decision. The original Selection Committee rejected the request and any suggestion of bias. To the best of my knowledge, the AA Board was not alerted to this obvious break down in governance.

Subject to the futility of pursuing an appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport, AA would appear to have ended my dream of becoming the first female athlete to compete in the marathon at five consecutive Olympics and first Australian athlete to compete in five Olympics in Track and Field, altering the course of Australian Women’s Sporting History.

AA chief executive Peter Bromley responded to news.com.au in a text, saying: “Sorry, but we have no further comment at this time as to the selection process”.

Sally Pearson is an olympic gold medallist and one of Australia’s greatest ever track and field athletes. The former world champ is writing exclusively with news.com.au ahead of the Paris Olympics

Originally published as ‘I’m shocked’: Sally Pearson drops Paris Olympics bombshell