Carrara should erect a statue to commemorate one of the great Commonwealth Games’ sporting gestures

GIVEN Australian sport’s love of a good statue, how about one featuring four female athletes out the front of Carrara Stadium?

GIVEN Australian sport’s love of a good statue, how about one featuring four female athletes out the front of Carrara Stadium?

Olympic and Commonwealth Games organisers are always big on legacy projects and permanent recognition of the sporting spirit shown by three Australian women would not cost as much the Gold Coast light rail system.

Australians Celia Sullohern, Madeline Hills and Eloise Wellings waited after they finished their 10,000m final to applaud over the line Lineo Chaka, a Lesotho runner who had been lapped, lapped and lapped again. Chaka finished 5min10sec behind the Ugandan winner, Stella Chesang.

Lineo Chaka of Lesotho is greeted by Eloise Wellings of Australia, Madeline Hills of Australia and Celia Sullohern of Australia as she finishes the Women's 10,000 metres.

It triggered a memory of a singular moment of Australian sportsmanship. On March 11, 1956, at Olympic Park, Melbourne, future multiple world record holder Ron Clarke came crashing to the track, clipped by a heel, during the Australian mile final.

Victorian John Landy, the second man to run a four-minute mile, dodged the fallen Clarke, but his spikes gashed the young man’s arm.

Landy stopped, while other runners raced past him, and went back to the prostrate Clarke to ask how badly hurt he was. He resumed the race, with Australian sports historian, the late Harry Gordon, estimating the gesture may have cost him 7 sec. Landy unwound a long chase and, as would happen in fiction, won the race.

Madeline Hills of Australia congratulate Lineo Chaka of Lesotho.

A statue depicting Landy’s inquiry after Clarke’s health stands on Olympic Boulevard, Melbourne, near the AAMI Park stadium which replaced the old park.

Sullohern was sixth, the best placed of the three Australians on Monday night, but a medal would not represent the goodwill they brought on themselves and their sport, especially coming so soon after cricket’s ball-tampering misadventures.

The three women even showed another old-world Australian value: that of the bashful star.

Efforts on the day after the race to have Sullohern, Hills and Wellings do interviews together _ or apart, we didn’t mind _ were rejected.

Other than Sullohern’s post-race interview and her comments later after her second event at the Games, they didn’t want to talk much about being good sports.

They just wanted to be good sports.

The Ron Clarke and John Landy statue in Melbourne. Picture: Tim Carrafa

While Australian sport so often over the years has taken a pride in being hard boiled in approach, goodwill of some temperature can be seen at the end of almost every race or match.

There was rugby league’s most famous image of Arthur Summons congratulating Norm Provan after the Sydney 1963 grand final (even though it emerged Summons was complaining about the refereeing, as we found out years later).

Rod Marsh told an umpire in the 1977 Centenary Test that a snick from a well-set Derek Randall had not carried when the English batsman was on his way to the dressing-room.

Adam Gilchrist’s penchant for walking when he nicked to the keeper earns him respect to this day, even if some teammates would have preferred he let the umpire do the job.

At the 2004 Olympic swimming trials, Craig Stevens qualified for the 400m freestyle at the Athens Olympics. But under not so subtle pressure from all and sundry in a medal-crazed country, he vacated the spot in the Olympic event for Ian Thorpe, who had false-started. Stevens, at least, emerged with credit, and the consolation prize was a reported $130,000 fee for a tell-all interview with Australia’s Olympics telecasted.

Originally published as Carrara should erect a statue to commemorate one of the great Commonwealth Games’ sporting gestures