High Steaks: Lucy Zelic talks about family, career and her passion for women’s sport

Sports broadcaster Lucy Zelic is no stranger to copping online abuse, but the bullying reached a new level after she spoke out against transgender players in women’s sport.

It was backstage at the 2019 Logies, after then-SBS Broadcaster Lucy Zelic and her colleague Craig Foster took home the award for Most Outstanding Sports Coverage for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, that Zelic felt an intense shift in her life.

At the time Zelic had her 10-week old daughter Mila upstairs in the hotel and she recalls not wanting to go to the Logies at all.

“I just wanted to be home with my baby. I didn’t really care for the wanky red carpet stuff,” she starts, as we sit down for lunch at one of her local restaurants, Bella Vista’s Italian Street Kitchen.

The award was a vindication of sorts for the football-loving Zelic, born into a Croatian family in Canberra.

During the coverage, she’d been incessantly bullied online for daring to pronounce the names of players correctly. It was an experience that left her “devastated.”

Lucy Zelic sits down for her High Steaks interview with journalist Karlie Rutherford at Bella Vista’s Italian Street Kitchen. Picture: Thomas Lisson

But she wasn’t feeling triumphant when she won the award, rather melancholic.

“We came off the stage and Foz and I were pretty quiet. I turned to him and I said, ‘Mate, I feel like this is it’. And he goes, ‘Yep’,” she says.

Lucy Zelic when she was a SBS soccer presenter. Picture: SBS

Not long after, when she was seven-months-pregnant with her son Max, Zelic was made redundant.

And now, as we sit down to a steak tagliata and share a rocket and parmesan salad, she explains that moment started a transformational journey that saw the sports broadcaster become a political commentator and passionate advocate for saving women’s sport.

“I was made redundant and it’s the most undignified thing that you can go through.

“It was such a sad and heartbreaking time for me in my career, because I never wanted to ever leave it that way,” she says.

“But on the flip side of that coin, being seven months pregnant and acknowledging just how much I struggled when I had to go back to work after having my daughter, there was this immense sense of relief because I thought, ‘Finally I get my wish to be at home with my children in their formative years’.”

Zelic’s husband, former professional footballer Corey Gameiro. Picture: AAP Image

Any parent will know that being with children full-time is no walk in the park. Yet, Zelic was embracing it.

Ironically, however, it was seeing a news story about dominating Sydney-based women’s soccer team The Flying Bats, who have trans women in the team, while at the park with her children and husband, former professional footballer Corey Gameiro, that changed the course of her career.

For years, Zelic had covered female sport’s fight for equality. She recalls speaking to Matilda’s players, who were in tears because they couldn’t afford to play for their country any more.

“I rode that wave with them,” she says. “And then to be a parent and to see that (transgender athletes in female sport) was presenting itself as an issue, I said to my husband, ‘I can’t take this any more’.

“I wanted to say something because I can see that this level of injustice is occurring and that people are being cancelled, but also that women are being forced into silence.

“They’re being called transphobes and Nazis and bigots if they dare to put their hand up and say ‘I don’t agree that biological males should compete in women’s sport’.

“Why is that so controversial?”

Zelic and her on-air partner Craig Foster when they won a Logie for the Most Outstanding Sports Coverage in 2019. Picture: AAP Image

Having been bullied for something as innocent as her excellent soccer coverage, Zelic knew voicing her opinion about this emotionally charged issue could ruin her life and career. However it was her previous harassment experience that prepared her for her new fight.

“I didn’t want to come into the industry being Miss Popular and get a car endorsement and a brand deal. I wanted to just do a good damn job.

“I got to the point where I realised I can’t do this if all I’m trying to do is please everybody,” she says.

“Now, operating in a very volatile space where I’m having a lot of criticism levelled at me and people saying that my career is dead, that just rolls off the duck’s back because I think ‘I’d be fine packing shelves at Woolworth’s tomorrow’.

“I don’t derive my self worth from my employment any more.

“I’ve never in my life copped as much criticism or had so much anger and hatred leveraged against me. And the irony is, I’ve never felt more liberated or more comfortable. Because I’m speaking my truth.”

Zelic has slowly stepped back into the media area, although only when it works with family life; this lunch had to be scheduled between school hours.

She’s a weekly regular on Clinton Maynard’s Afternoon programs and also appears on Sky News.

Laughing, she says she’s swapped staying up late to watch European soccer matches to catching up on Question Time.

She’s been inundated with supporters urging her to run for government. It’s something she’s ruminated on, but decided, “It’s not for me. Part of why I’ve enjoyed this period of my life is because I’m not beholden to anybody now.”

Zelix says criticism now rolls off like water off a duck’s back ‘because I’m speaking my truth’. Picture: Thomas Lisson

She says she’s been hurt by former colleagues who have attacked her stance, but on the flip side she’s also been offered tempting full-time work opportunities.

All of which, she’s said no to. Because her main focus is her family.

“When I look back in 10 years time, I will never regret being there for my children. I will never regret this. I will, however, regret choosing a career over children,” she says.

And because it seems everyone is outraged about something these days, she’s also been labelled a “trad wife”, a sometimes derogatory term given to a woman who practices traditional gender roles and marriages.

“They are saying I’m this backwards, non-progressive woman because I want to stay home and look after my own kids,” she says.

“Shame on you idiots! The pendulum has swung so far that we’ve gone from this ideology of women only belonging in the kitchen and that’s all that they were good for, to, ‘Hang on a minute you only want to be in the kitchen and you only want to look after your kids!’

“We’ve just become outrage merchants.”

And just like before, this too is water off a duck’s back. Because for Zelic, the only thing that truly matters is her family.

When asked what she’s most proud of, it’s an easy answer: “My kids, it’s nothing to do with career.

“I think that it’s so easy to allow your ego to dictate things. Like, what awards have I won? What have I been recognised for? Do the public like me?

“But I will never, ever derive satisfaction from it because I know it’s only fleeting. And it can change on a dime.

“So you have to be that sure enough within yourself and what you’ve created in your own core walls to feel like ‘OK I’m good here. If I’m good here, whatever happens outside of that doesn’t matter’.”

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