Olympic gold medallist Steve Hooker chats with Hamish McLachlan

STEVE Hooker was the first Aussie male to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics for 40 years. The former champion pole vaulter talks to Hamish McLachlan

STEVE Hooker became a world champion, and then Australia’s first male athletic Olympic gold medallist in 40 years. We talked about terrorism, commitment issues, Carlton, drugs in sport, Usain Bolt, Olympic gold medals and a fear of vaulting.

HM: Your mother was an Olympic long jumper, your father ran in the Commonwealth Games — you’re effectively by Lonhro out of Makybe Diva! Were you always going to be an athlete?

SH: I guess the numbers say I was a reasonable chance. I’m one of four. My older brother Andrew was pretty athletic; he did gymnastics when he was young. He wasn’t competitive by nature so he didn’t really pursue it. My younger brother is probably the most physically talented out of the four of us. He played footy and got rookie-listed at Collingwood. He got injured and it didn’t work out. He played in an era when we didn’t know how to treat osteitis pubis, so that cost him. He was a real freak. My little sister Katie liked sport but was more into music and socialising. Even when you’ve got two parents like that, I guess it’s not a foregone conclusion, though.

HM: How good a footballer were you?

SH: All right, but I was always a better athlete. I had a decent engine. I’ve played with some pretty decent footballers —
I played with Luke and Sam Power.

HM: You’re a Carlton fan?

SH: I am.

HM: Lean spell, but you seem in good hands now.

SH: I would say it’s been like a character-building annuity system in recent years, but I think things are turning.

HM: Your mother went to the Munich Olympics Games, which were overshadowed with terrorism. Have you ever spoken to her about that?

SH: We spoke about it a lot back when 9/11 happened in 2001. The next day, I woke up to my mother coming into the bedroom saying that the world had just changed overnight and it wouldn’t be the same for a long time. She was really emotional about it. I think it stirred up a lot of memories for her. It affected me too, I guess, as that day, I was supposed to go to university, but just couldn’t get my head around what had happened at all, and stayed at home and talked to Mum. She told me about how Munich took its toll on her, and the effects the terrorist attacks by the Palestinian group Black September had on her. After we talked, I wrote a letter to the editor that day. I felt like I had to do something just because of what she had said to me. It got a run the next day. I’d never done anything like that before.

HM: Life as a civilian now: how has the transition been from a self-absorbed, single-minded, world record-chasing athlete, to husband, father and 9-to-5er?

SH: The transition wasn’t easy, and has been significant. Off the back of the London Games where I had struggled to make the final and then didn’t make a height, I moved to Arizona to carry on with a professional sporting career. The plan was to get my vaulting back on track, which I had been really struggling with, and then push on to Rio. It was an expensive thing to do — pick up your whole life and shift to America — and a big risk given where I was at mentally. Katya and I married in 2012, and then our son, Max, was born in June 2013. I did a competition the day after he was born and, in the end, that turned out to be my last competition. It just became very clear to me that I had to reassess what was important. It was no longer about finishing on a high. Life was suddenly more about the future as a family, and what would be most important to us, rather than what was important to me.

HM: Life now consists of business interests and media. You’re tackling the start-ups you’re involved with like you did your athletics career?

SH: I’ve actually really enjoyed the last couple of years trying to figure out what I want to do. I’ve spent some time in the corporate world, and have also started some businesses from scratch. The start-up thing appeals to me — I think it reflects an athlete’s life a lot more. In athletics, you do small campaigns, if it doesn’t go well, you make changes, big or small, and have another crack at it. It’s about building something again. I built an athletics career, and I liked building it. No one starts by being the best, and that’s similar in business. I currently have a couple of restaurants in Perth (Bib and Tucker/May St Larder) with partners Eamon Sullivan, Jamie Dwyer and Scott Bridger. I’m also working on a Telehealth start up with a great team in Melbourne called drme.com.au

HM: Pole vaulting — I’ve heard you say “it’s like solving a puzzle”.

SH: Every day at pole vaulting, you are trying to solve complex problems that are all linked. In simplest terms, you are trying to jump over a bar higher than your competitors, but there are about 1000 different variables and machinations that need to come together in order to do it. You have to find the path of least resistance needed to clear the bar. Having done that multiple times every day, you get addicted to the process of working out all the different variables, assessing where you are weak, and then deciding what you want to focus on. You try it out and see if it works, you look at the results and discuss what you need to do next, change strategy if needed, and have another go.

HM: So it’s all about the process, no shortcuts.

SH: I don’t think there are any in life, are there? That’s the process at training, and the same thing happens at competition, but the stakes are much higher. It’s a way of thinking that you end up adopting, and I guess I have taken that process-driven, problem-solving mentality into everything I do, whether it’s trying to get my kids to eat or sleep, or trying to solve a business problem. I really enjoy going through the analysis and solution process.

HM: So many variables. What effect can the elements have — wind, rain, humidity?

SH: Huge. In fact they can change things mid jump — that’s where you do need a bit of luck in the sport. In a 100m race, there are eight people running at the same time, all the same conditions. In pole vault, you don’t get that. The difference between being an Olympic Gold medallist and not is minute. Tiny.

HM: In Beijing, four of your five heights were passed at the third and final attempt, including the Olympic record. When you are on your third and final jump, what was your mental state? You are one small mistake away from being out of everything you’ve trained your entire life for.

SH: I was always good on the third attempt.

HM: Why?

SH: I’ve tried to process it and I am not entirely sure. There are people in that situation that would think “I’m one step away from being out of this”, but I never thought that. One of the most important things to do as an athlete is to trick yourself. Put yourself somewhere mentally where you have an advantage, and one that you have over everybody else. I would always say to myself that “I’m good on the third attempts, time to perform, I will lift for this, this is where I am at my absolute best.” It was always an opportunity, that is how I approached it.

HM: In Beijing you cleared 5.90m to win gold, and then managed to jump 5.96m and break the Olympic Record. You became the first Aussie male to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics for 40 years. How does your life change when that happens?

SH: You have a life as a person and as an athlete and they are intertwined. As an athlete I was thinking: what is next, what can I go and achieve now? It gave me great confidence, which is something that changed me. What happened in the subsequent two years reflected that newfound confidence in myself. As a person, the fundamentals don’t change, your friends and family are still the same people and they still all treat you the same way. More opportunities open up to you, and you can do with those what you want. Everything changes, but not nearly as significantly as you may think.

HM: You became no.1 in the world in 2006. A Commonwealth gold medallist. An Olympic record holder. Hard to believe that pole vaulting could hold fears for you like it did, and cripple you mentally.

SH: The mental side of sport … now that is significant! I developed a fear of take-offs, which isn’t ideal in pole vaulting. There is what we call “a commitment moment” in pole vaulting, and I couldn’t master it for a while. I came fourth at the World Junior Championships in 2000, then came back and set a PB in the Nationals. Essentially, the main variable in the sport is your take-off. You have to be within a range of only about 10cm, in terms of distance from the box, when you take off. That’s the same as a long jumper hitting the board, but for us, there is no board to see. If you’re a little bit injured, it can really jam your back up, so that becomes an issue. You need to be in exactly the right position to take the force that the pole exerts. If you’re running at pace and things feel a little off to you, that becomes more and more of a mental battle. Questions start to creep in and as soon as you say no a couple of times, it becomes harder and harder to say yes. It’s a negative spiral that can paralyse you into feeling lost on the runway.

HM: What is happening up top when you are running straight under the bar and not taking off?

SH: Paul Burgess, who I used to train with, put it best. He said: “Some days you can stand on the runway and you can see yourself running and jumping the bar, and it seems as simple as breathing, and other days, it’s like you’re standing on the beach looking out at the ocean, and there’s just this nothingness in front of you”. When it’s like that, it’s almost impossible to achieve anything, and I was seeing too much ocean!

HM: The power of the mind! You engaged a hypnotist when you were on the verge of quitting back in the early days. What did they do?

SH: We did a “psychological consult”. We did a normal psych session where you try and get to the root of the problem. You do a hypnosis session after that, where you get into a deep state of relaxation, and where you suggest things that may solve your issues. It can be helpful. I was talking to someone who wasn’t invested in the sport, not my family or a coach. You can really talk openly about all the things that influence you. It was a good process to go through. It was actually a family friend who did it.

HM: At one point there was only one man on the planet who had jumped higher than you — Sergey Bubka. When you jumped 6.06m, did you know you were close to doing something remarkable?

SH: Pole vault is interesting because performance can’t be a flash in the pan. You can’t just suddenly jump half a metre more than you ever have. You have to have built a foundation, and then it is incremental. To have an exceptional performance, you need to have had a whole series of things ticked off, and then structure a whole competition perfectly to get that result. You have to build your way through a competition, set your height, and know that it is going to happen. It also comes down to how you structure a season.

HM: So you will know walking into a competition whether you are right or not, and about how high you will jump?

SH: Yep. There has been so much training and planning that goes into the point where you are actually standing at the end of the runway, ready to jump. By that stage, you kind of know whether you are ready for it or not. That’s a great feeling — if it is right. Daunting if it isn’t. On those big jumps, if you are in the zone, something else takes over and you get to enjoy the whole process. You pick up the pole and you don’t say it’s time to go, your body sort of takes over, and everything is in sync. Your mind is almost switched off before you have thought about it. Clearing 5.90m at the Olympics was like that, so was 6.06m in Boston; it is almost like riding a wave. You have put yourself in the right competitions leading up; you have cleared the heights; mentally and physically you are in as good a shape as you can be — it almost feels like a foregone conclusion at that point. You feel a deep sense of confidence underpinned from the work you have done in the lead-up.

HM: The world championships in 2009: you had an adductor injury and were told not to jump.

SH: It was risky…

HM: You knew you wouldn’t be able to make many jumps?

SH: I didn’t even know that; I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to jump at all. I assumed that I probably could and wanted to give it a go.

HM: How do you win a world championship from that physical and mental uncertainty?

SH: You have to get through two qualifying sessions first. I was confident that I could jump the height needed to make it through to the final. I wasn’t sure how I would pull up from it, and to be honest it wasn’t good after the first one but the second session was better. It hurt but settled down within 24 hours. Renaud Lavillenie had been jumping really well and I thought he’d probably be able to jump 5.90m and take gold and I didn’t think I could get that height. I thought 5.8m might be good enough to take silver.

HM: So you kept passing on the lower heights?

SH: I did. I hadn’t even taken a jump in the warm-up, all I had done was put out the cone where I thought I would start my run up from. We had the sign off from the IAAF that I could have a medical break where I could get an anaesthetic put in. I was waiting for the bar to get to 5.7m before we did that. There was still too many people in it at 5.8m so I passed again to 5.85m. Most of the field were eliminated at that point. I took a bigger pole than I had in the qualifying round and just ran in. I’ve looked back at the footage of that jump — the thing that blows my mind is the scorecard, mine just had dashes all the way through. I think I had only lost one competition that year and was in a really good headspace. Anyway I ran in and missed, I cleared the bar really well but clipped it on the way down. I hit the mat and thought that I was done, but after talking to Alex I decided I had done well enough to give it another go. At this point Mesnil, the Frenchman, cleared 5.85 so it was in for a penny, in for a pound. We passed on 5.85 and jumped 5.9 to try and get the win. Luckily I got the job done.

HM: Leading into the Beijing Olympics, you had a chart on your wall where you would monitor 10 key areas and every day give each one a mark out of 10. What was your pass mark?

SH: If I scored 80 I was doing all right, and below that, in my mind I hadn’t done enough in the day to be the world’s best.

HM: What were the fields you measured?

SH: Lots of people do this now, I’m not sure if anyone else was doing it at the time. Alex (Parnov) wanted me to do foot exercises every day before I’d even gotten out of bed; if I did that I’d get 10 points. Alcohol was one, so was nutrition, worklife balance, recovery. This was up on the wall in my bedroom. It was just something I was doing without putting too much thought into it.

HM: It seems logical now. It actually seems logical for everyday life, but I’m not sure how many people do it. I know I don’t.

SH: That’s an example of how closely you monitor things as an athlete, but in life it’s not a normal thing to do. I suppose I still do it today, but only internally now, not up on the wall. I think food is the one I pay attention to most now — I can track carbs, fats and proteins pretty well. Dinner can quite often be the equaliser, that is when I can abstain and make up for what I’ve eaten during the rest of the day.

HM: Disciplined. Maria Sharapova has been suspended, the Russians are under a cloud. What is your broad outlook on the cleanliness of sport now?

SH: Broadly speaking, it is far cleaner than it has ever been in the modern era. The testing and monitoring is far greater today. I’m pretty sure that 99 per cent of the people I competed against would have been clean. It’s a challenging one. There are always going to be people that go out there and approach their sport in a different way. I think that is a hangover from previous eras, there are coaches that have been in previous systems around the world that don’t know any other way to get a result. Their livelihood is based on continually getting results, which will drive the way they coach and prepare their athletes. It’s a different moral system and a different moral code on making those sorts of decisions. It is a complex set of variables that lead to a result either way.

HM: “Far cleaner” intimates “not squeaky clean”. Do you think there are systematic regimes being undertaken around the world now?

SH: There are still athletes testing positive around the world, and no doubt there are still athletes around the world partaking in practices that are creating an uneven playing field that are not testing positive. This is the unfortunate reality. My hope is that things continue to become cleaner and more transparent. No doubt big sports like cycling and athletics are far better off in this regard than they were as recently as five years ago.

HM: Any reason why Usain Bolt can’t do the “triple triple” — the 100m, 200m and 4x100m gold — for the third Olympics in succession?

SH: I suppose the biggest risk is the 4x100 because there are variables there that can’t be controlled by Usain himself. In terms of the 100m and 200m, I don’t see how a fit Bolt can be beaten at this stage of his career.

HM: Is Usain as cool as I assume he is?

SH: Yep. That’s a straight up yes. No grey. He was the same outrageous and larger-than-life character when he was coming third or fourth in the world championships back in 2007. He is Mr Cool.