Patrick Carlyon: What Ash Barty’s choice can teach us about life

Ash Barty and Shane Warne have shown that the public has little place in the lives of our stars. By being true to themselves, two of our sporting heroes have set an example for how to live.

Ash Barty describes herself as a person, not an athlete. Picture: Getty Images

Ash Barty appears to have set an unusual sporting example. She says her happiness does not depend on sporting triumphs. She describes herself as a person, not an athlete.

To retire at 25, when most of us are still stumbling for markers in aspiration and intent, denotes a special brand of self-awareness.

Barty has won three grand slams; there was no obvious reason why she could not win 10.

From afar, it had been assumed that she would pursue convention, and exhaust her talent, like, say, once great footballers who keep playing when they are no longer great.

We assumed that her great success – and the attendant adulation – would fuel her pursuit of greater success. That more is more.

Her decision has been called brave. It is, in the sense that it upsets the orthodoxy. She will chase her own dreams, not the dreams of her fans on her behalf. She has summited her mountain – not ours. She wants new peaks to climb.

Ash Barty will chase her own dreams, not the dreams of her fans on her behalf. Picture: Getty Images

She is telling us, in the most winning of ways, that we, the public, have little place in the lives of our stars. That it’s not all about us, and our expectations, but theirs.

Shane Warne spent three decades trying to uncouple the spills of his personal life from his sporting greatness.

He has been warmly remembered in recent days. A pleasing acceptance has grown in his loss. His scandals are points of interest, naturally. Yet in death, his weaknesses have been judged to accentuate his strengths.

In Warne’s earlier years, when he was caught out for smoking and shagging around, he was often confused with a role model. He had squandered, it always went, his perch of influence. Little kids would get unhelpful ideas.

His foibles were treated as their own sport, to be pulled apart and demonised, because his personal choices were our business. Apparently, it was his duty to uphold standards, on and off the ground, which satisfied our standards.

When he erred, as he did often, he was said to disappoint us. Busted smoking in 1995, Warne was chastised by the Cancer Council for sending “the wrong message”.

Shane Warne may have been a chaos of mixed messages

But he never pretended to be anyone he was not.

Warne generally owned up to his mistakes, and in latter years regretted some of his poorer – and more explosive – choices. He didn’t say he’d let us down. He said he’d let himself down.

If there was a life lesson in Warne, it was more subtle, buried deeply in his much decried approach. Warne was a larrikin and all the rest. But he was also kind to kids, an inveterate teacher prone to random acts of generosity. He was the most loyal of friends, despite commanding so many friendships. He made them – and us – feel special in his company.

Warne may have been a chaos of mixed messages. But he never pretended to be anyone he was not.

Chastised in 2015 for asking a winning Australian team about their post-match drinking plans, he replied: “Do-gooders get stuffed. Straya is the best place in the world, not politically correct, keep it real”.

If anyone understood the nefarious zeal of do-gooders, and the vaulting hypocrisy of their preaching, it was him.

Barty describes herself as a person, not an athlete. Picture: Getty Images

Barty, obviously, is less tangled. There are few barnacles on her boat. She’s easy to like. She eschewed the theatrics of her chosen sport. She was about the game, not gamesmanship.

Yet even she copped the glare of the morality police. After winning the Australian Open this year, when she good naturedly swigged a beer in a post-match interview, some were moved to criticise this example.

She ought to have known better, went the line. The so-called “Barty beer debate” even prompted a (failed) complaint to the Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code.

Our heroes serve to please us, certainly. But they also fall prey to a misplaced sense of ownership that their deeds bring about.

They are scrutinised because of their elite talents. If they drive too fast or let loved ones down, they should not be condemned for also letting us down. They are people, like the rest of us, who do both good things and bad.

If Warne was a role model, it was as a cricketer. In this, he stands alongside Sri Lanka’s Muttiah Muralitharan, who has so far racked up zero sex scandals. Warne’s legacy lies in his talent, and his dedication to its craft, as well as a zest which occasionally seemed misplaced.

Do what makes you happy – until it doesn’t. Then do something else. Barty says it. Warne lived it.

Be who you are, not what people expect you to be.

What greater example could be set by two of our greatest sporting stars?

Patrick Carlyon is a Herald Sun columnist