Olympic selection can humble tennis brats Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic

A STINT at the Rio Games could be just what Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic need to bring them back from Planet Me, writes Robert Craddock.

I AM yet to meet one person who could care less if Australia snubs Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic for Rio Olympic Games selection.

But I’ve met plenty who cringe at the prospect of them going and I’m one of them.

Behaviour wise, there is not a single redeeming feature about either of them. If chef de mission Kitty Chiller decides to veto their Games selection, many fans will give her the type of ovation normally reserved for torchbearers entering the Olympic stadium.

If Chiller does go this way, there will be just one regret. Not a game changer, just a niggling thought.

It’s that a stint at the Rio Games could be just what those two unlovable characters need to bring them in touch with the real world they left behind many years ago when they floated off to Planet Me.

There is no point trying to lecture them. That failed long ago.

Many Grand Slam winners such as Pat Rafter have tried and felt their words made about as much of an imprint as a raindrop on a roof tile.

But the Olympic Games village is a different world, one which delivers its own subtle messages.

It is a world where it does not pay to have a look-at-me swagger because there is every likelihood people will find someone more famous than you to look at in the same room.

Nick Kyrgios argues with an umpire in Madrid.

For all the big names, the real joy of the Olympics is not the superstars but the battalion of battlers surviving on a budget so thin it makes a shoestring seem thicker than an anchor rope.

Every one of them has something to learn, from the penniless to the big stars of lesser know sports.

Kyrgios or Tomic, who played at the last Games, might just end up sitting next to hockey great Jamie Dwyer and what an insightful experience that would be.

He could tell them how his team have to give up everything and move to Perth if they want to play for their country in a side where every player gets the same wage.

Dwyer might also tell them about the 11 players currently in a squad of 27 who moved to Perth a couple of years ago to try to make the Olympics but were squeezed out when it is pruned to 16 a few weeks before the Games.

That truly is sport’s Heartbreak Hotel.

Maybe the tennis boys might go down to team laundry, as liaison officer Steve Waugh used to in the London Olympics, and see Anna Meares riding her stationary bike for hours on end at bizarre times of the day and without complaint.

After talking to Chiller about the tennis bad boys at the Gold Coast in March, I left thinking she was deeply disturbed about the prospect of having the duo disgrace their country at the Games.

On Saturday her stance was even stronger as she branded Tomic’s recent behaviour “appalling.’’ Hours later Kyrgios tweeted back calling her “that Kitty Chiller’’.

How rude is that?

For Chiller the obvious question is “how do you control the uncontrollable?’’. The obvious answer is “she can’t?’’

Bernard Tomic was accused of tanking in Madrid.

She has spent two years crisscrossing Australia lecturing athletes about good behaviour.

One of her key messages is that she considers behaviour as important as medals in a Games where Australia is trying to repair its image after standards sagged in London.

If the duo do go to Brazil they might run in to athletes such as pole-vaulter Jamie Scoop, equestrian Sue Hearn and wrestler Connor Evans who turned to crowd-funding site GoFundMe to help them to the Games.

Some of them have raised as little as $2000 but every penny helps in a sports scene where the penniless often seem rich and the rich often seem to have nothing.

Originally published as Olympic selection can humble tennis brats Nick Kyrgios and Bernard Tomic