The radical funding plan that could get Australian sport’s ‘best kept secret’ to the LA Olympics
Emelia Surch is the best kept secret in Australian sport – and good judges rate her a genuine medal chance at the LA Games in four years time. And a radical funding plan could give the public a shot at sharing in her Olympic dream.
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It may be the most innovative investment opportunity in Australian sport.
You won’t see a cent in financial return but you could ‘own’ a share in an Olympic medal one day.
Heptathlete Emelia Surch is a virtual unknown to most Australian sports fans, yet her manager and architect of the unique quest’s business model, Cameron Richardson, believes she’s our best kept secret.
“She’s going to go somewhere, this kid,” he tells CODE Sports.
For $75 a year for the next four years anybody can become shareholders of the ‘Surch for Gold’ campaign via the Australian Sports Foundation.
The plan is to get 400 paid up members for the journey towards the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, resulting in $30,000 of funding each year to make a medal push possible for the twenty-one year old.
It may all sound like hyperbole for an athlete that didn’t make the Australian team for Paris.
Yet 1984 Olympic heptathlon gold medal winner and Surch’s coach, Glynis Nunn, says her chances are serious at the seven-discipline event.
“I think she can shake a few boats over there,” says Nunn, who has been coaching her protege since she was fourteen.
“If you look at the last results of the heptathlon in Paris, the only events that she needs to improve on are her throws and maybe the 800, which is improving all the time.”
An athletics insider first alerted Richardson to the potential that could be unlocked in Surch last year.
“At the national championships last year I was told ‘this is the best put-together young athlete in the country,” he recalls.
The issue for her, like so many young Aussies in highly competitive Olympic sports like athletics, is being able to train like rivals in the US who are supported by college scholarships and funding programs.
A look at Surch’s life before the crowd-funding concept confirms why. The Gold Coast local was completing a heptathlon of sorts every day.
At 4:30am she started work at a Coles bakery, then at 8am she’d jump in the car and head to university to study for a nursing degree.
After her day was done she’d head to the track and train into the night.
There was homework and assignments waiting for her when she got home.
Then rinse and repeat.
“I was always super tired,” Surch tells CODE Sports.
“I was always in fight or flight mode, Glynis was having to change training because I was so tired and I was pretty much half-assing sessions.
“It was not beneficial at all. I wasn’t really getting much out of training and that was a reflection of my competition performance as well.”
Yet without any sponsorship or funding that was the only way.
Last December Richardson kicked off the campaign and the first shareholders signed up via his sporting networks.
Almost overnight $18,000 dropped into the bank and allowed Surch to quit her job at the bakery.
The improvement was as dramatic as it was immediate.
Surch’s results in hurdles, long jump, and 200 metres have improved to now have her tracking with the world’s best.
Her camp believes that with the new-found time and funding for coaching expertise, she can make a similar improvement in the rest of the event.
That there are seven disciplines with separate coaching experts located in different cities makes it tricky, yet the shareholder funding makes it possible.
Triumphant the last time the Games were held in LA, Nunn can see parallels with her own career.
“I was a teacher, so I resigned from teaching to go out and be able to train,” she says.
“People are happy to support you after you do something, but until you do something, there’s no support.
“So it’s a catch-22, you need support on the road so that then you can actually take the time to train and to put in the effort to get the results.”
Which is what makes the ‘Surch for Gold’ simple but so effective.
It gives her a chance.
Surch was initially “overwhelmed” by what was happening, but Richardson assured her that this was simply another version of what other sports do in selling hope.
“I’m a football supporter and I’ve owned memberships for the Western Bulldogs for 50 years,” he says.
“They let us down every second week, but we still keep doing it. We do it for a sense of belonging.
“It’s the same as what we’re doing here.”
More than one hundred shareholders are currently members of ‘Surch for Gold’, including a bunch of sporting names such as past and present cricketers Nathan Hauritz, Darren Berry, Jemma Barsby and Erica Kershaw.
Every one of them has received a personal video message of thanks from Surch.
“She’s a gem like that,” says Richardson.
“Now these people are connected to the story.”
Surch doesn’t have personal sponsors as yet, yet is eminently articulate and marketable. It would seem incongruous that the momentum of the LA journey doesn’t get others on board.
The bottom line is that she, or anyone trying to succeed at this level requires it to keep the dream alive.
“If I didn’t get the support I probably wouldn’t even still be in the sport because I would be still so disappointed with my performances and training.”
While stressing that the Surch family are by no means poor, Nunn says that the funding handicaps when compared to some overseas rivals are significant and unrealistic for most middle-class families without support.
“It means you’re in the bank of mum and dad all the time,” she says.
“And that’s tough on parents because you haven’t just got one child in the family.”
Surch admits that the presence of her new support group has helped sharpen her focus on the Olympic dream.
“There’s a hundred people now, which is pretty cool.
“Every training, I’m feeling more motivated that there’s more people behind me.”
And if she gets to Los Angeles in 2024, the thought of having 400 ‘shareholders’ in her corner is another source of strength along that four year road.
“If I do get there, which I’m hoping for and feel like I definitely can, it’s going to be
crazy the amount of people that might even just book a ticket and say ‘I have to get there’.”
There’s also another motivation that relates to the coach that she refers to as “ a second mum”.
Following Nunn’s giant legacy is a privilege she’d like to honour.
“She’s such an inspiration to me. It’s pretty special and I’m very lucky I have her.”
2028 will be 44 years after Nunn’s gold medal win in the same city, and there could be a whole team of supporters backing Surch to repeat history.
“I definitely would love to win a medal.”
Originally published as The radical funding plan that could get Australian sport’s ‘best kept secret’ to the LA Olympics
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