New Athletics Australia president Jane Flemming laments handling of Peter Bol’s drug scandal
Jane Flemming has only just stepped into the hot seat at Athletics Australia, but she’s already made a firm statement on the handling of Peter Bol’s drug testing process.
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New Athletics Australia president Jane Flemming says no other athlete should have to go through the “horrendous experience” Peter Bol endured in the EPO drug scandal.
The two-time Olympic heptathlon star said the drug testing process was “broken” in Bol’s case and it needed to be fixed to ensure other athletes aren’t falsely accused of taking drugs.
Bol was provisionally suspended in January after a positive test to EPO but he was then cleared to return to the track a month later after the B-sample came back inconclusive.
Sports Integrity Australia continued to investigate Bol before officially closing the case, and exonerating the Tokyo Olympic 1500m finalist, on August 1.
Flemming said AA would have more to say about the injustice down the track when they weren’t bound by red tape.
“God forbid any of our other athletes have to go through the horrendous experience that Peter has gone through,” Flemming said. “Definitely something was broken during that process that needs to be fixed.”
In the fall-out from the scandal, a divide between Bol and the federation formed with the 1500m champion reluctant to engage with AA officials at the recent world championships in Budapest.
“I think a new year and an Olympics (in Paris), you need to despite what he’s been through which is as I said horrendous, but hopefully he can start to look forward rather than back,” she said.
“For his sake, we only ever wish him and all of our athletes success and try to clear the pathway, and make the pathway as best possible to enable that.”
Flemming says she has hit the ground running in the president’s chair, 50 years after she first started in the sport which has dominated her life.
“I started with Little Athletics when I was eight years old and my involvement hasn’t really stopped 50 years on,” she said.
As a competitor she became a household name, winning two gold medals at the 1990 Auckland Commonwealth Games. She finished seventh in the heptathlon at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
In retirement Flemming became a highly regarded commentator and athlete manager while also forging an impressive business career which included being the director of the community health initiative Live Life Get Active.
She joined the AA board four years ago and has served as vice-president for the past 18 months.
“One of the things I have said is I hope that our organisation reflects the attitude of athletes where they pull in a whole lot of experts and take on constructive criticism all the time just with performance in mind,” Flemming said.
Her aim is to have track and field stars household names in the lead-up to the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games, just like they were before the Sydney 2000 Games.
“In the five years leading into the Sydney Olympic Games we probably had five to 10 household names,” Flemming said. “There was Cathy (Freeman), Melinda (Gainsford-Taylor), Nova Peris at the end … this whole group of athletes who were really well known in the community.
“Hopefully that will start to happen and so much of that comes from having good commercial partners. The more we can educate commercial entities, and the general public, about our sport and how athletics is head and shoulders above all other sports.”
Flemming says athletics is the most “gender equal sport” on the globe and is a long way ahead of rivals when it comes to celebrating the achievements of women in sport.
“Women have always competed at the same time at the same venue for the same prize money,” she said. “So we don’t even think about that at the world athletics championships.
“It’s also the easiest, or the least barriers financially to participate in of any sport. It’s accessible to everybody and there’s something for everyone.
“I love that you can be a big, huge, strong person and throw a shot put or you’re a little twig and run long distance or you can be like me a jack of all trades and master of none.
“We also don’t have women’s athletes and men’s athletics, we just have athletics.”
WHY ‘NEXT CATHY’ QUIT ATHLETICS, AND WHAT DRAGGED HER BACK
A coffee catch-up has saved the career of the runner dubbed “the next Cathy Freeman”.
Bendere Oboya had walked away from athletics two months earlier. She was cooked.
The sport in which she had represented Australia at the world championships and Olympic Games was now her enemy.
She hated running.
But when Craig Mottram reached out, something inside her stirred.
The former middle-distance champion was on a fishing exercise. He was in the middle of establishing the On Athletics Club for Oceania and intrigued about what had happened to Oboya.
He also had his business hat on as the director of Elite Wellbeing, which runs athletics programs at schools and is always on the lookout for good coaches.
“My initial catch-up and conversation with her was two-fold,” Mottram said.
“It was just to get an update on what she was doing but also to see if she had any interest in coaching in the schools.
“After a few lead-in questions about what she was doing, why she decided the sport wasn’t for her, I think that planted the seed which may or may not have been a bit of a motive for the catch-up.
“I think we both went into that with an ulterior motive but no one really wanted to put it on the table upfront.”
Oboya said something clicked during the coffee catch-up in May.
Oboya had been “retired” for two months after walking away from her training group, which included Olympic star Peter Bol.
“We had a meeting at a cafe and Craig was like, ‘What are you actually doing?’” Oboya recalled.
“That kind of fired me up and I needed that. I’m glad I took the break because it allowed me to be a normal person for a bit.
“It had been years and years of stuff which had built up, of not liking the sport and just forcing it too much.
“This year I cracked and I was like, ‘I’m done’.
“I wanted to get away, I really wanted to, but as soon as I had that meeting with Craig, everything changed. I was like ‘I’m ready to go to work’.”
The 23-year-old has thrived in her new team environment and is ready to resume her career on Saturday night at the Zatopek:10, which is being rejuvenated under the global running brand banner as one of its five On Track Nights.
The series spans three continents and five cities, including London and Los Angeles.
Oboya has just returned from a two-week training stint at Falls Creek and is aiming to break Tamsyn Manou’s Australian 600m record in her comeback race.
She drew comparisons to Freeman when she burst on to the scene as a teenager in the 400m at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
However, Mottram believes his new charge is better suited over 800m, the event in which she will be looking to qualify for the Paris Olympics next year.
“She was too good of a talent to not be in the sport,” Mottram said. “This season is all about timing with her and keeping her in one piece.
“It’s obvious she still loves the sport. She seems to be fully engaged in what we are doing and has a real passion for it again.”
Oboya laughs when she thinks about how quickly her life has changed since the coffee catch-up.
“I think when you go from the lowest point of your life and now you are the happiest person, it just makes everything so much better,” she said.
“The running is great, everything is good and it just shows how it does (turn quickly).”
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