One Olympic moment stays with Kieren Perkins and it’s not a golden one

Kieren Perkins famously won gold medals in the 1500 metres freestyle at both the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games and a silver at Sydney 2000 behind Grant Hackett. He is now chief executive of the Australian Sports Commission, administering the distribution of $400 million a year for grassroots and elite sport in Australia. I spoke to him on Thursday evening (Paris time).

Fitz: Kieren, I presume you’re at the Olympic pool?

KP: [Laughing.] No, I’m actually back in the apartment at the moment. We don’t have tickets to the swimming tonight. So we’ll be catching it on TV.

Kieren Perkins now runs the Australian Sports Commission. “The taxpayers are the most significant contributor to the success of this Olympic team.”

Fitz: I confess my amazement. You haven’t got tickets to the swimming?

KP: It’s one of the realities of the Olympics that being an Olympian does not guarantee you access to all areas and particularly not the swimming because it’s so popular, that it’s always a ticketed event.

Fitz: When you make your quadrennial trip to the Games, is it a little like visiting your homeland, in the sense of “Olympia” being the place where you had your defining moments?

KP: Absolutely. But it is actually quite extraordinary to be drawn into the environment again because I still have these moments of, “Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m here because I haven’t, you know, worked for it”. It’s quite surreal. It’s not quite an “imposter syndrome” thing, but you just know what all these athletes in the Olympic Village have gone through to get there and you know you have not paid the same price, this time.

Fitz: Looking back on your own stunning Olympics performances, what’s the moment that comes to you?

KP: It was at Sydney in 2000, walking out onto the pool deck for the 1500 metres final and the noise – the noise in that arena from the crowd was extraordinary, like a physical force. I’d never experienced that before, and I think – because it was my third Games – I was at that stage where I had more self-awareness about what it all meant. And so I did actually take a moment on the way out to the blocks to pay attention to what was happening around me instead of being completely closed, focused in my little head bubble. But I’ve never felt energy like that and it just went through my chest. I know I’ll never forget just the way that it made you feel to know that you’re in this space, in your home country, with your own people cheering for you. It was incredible and I’ll never forget it.

Fitz: And the moment when you came in just behind Grant Hackett in that race, to get the silver ...

KP: To say “just behind” is very generous – it was five seconds. For me, it was always knowing that when I touched the wall, I’d done my best regardless of the result, knowing that I could not have given more. That was the case in Sydney, so when I touched the wall it was awesome. I felt really proud – and I was able to very happily retire after that moment. And I think the fact that I was beaten by Grant probably made me more relaxed than I might have been because I think if I’d have been beaten by an American for instance, I may not have been able to be so magnanimous, as the gold stayed safely in our hands. So that was all OK by me.

Perkins (right) and Daniel Kowalski celebrate an Australian one-two in the 1500m at the Atlanta Olympics.Credit: Reuters

Fitz: I’ve got two favourite quotes from you. One was something you told my friend Konrad Marshall from Good Weekend about the impact on you of your extraordinary feat at Atlanta in 1996, when you started the final in the outside lane, as the slowest qualifier, and went on win gold. (When I was stuck in a traffic jam 10 minutes away but don’t get me started.) You said, “I absolutely carry a custodianship of that moment – this memory that helped inadvertently create part of Australia’s sense of identity in sport and who we are. I’d like to think I would not do anything in my life subsequently that would diminish or undermine that. It’s a very big driver of who I am, what I am, and where I am today.” What did you mean by that?

KP: It is: I take this responsibility of being a role model in sport so seriously, that it’s not necessarily about me personally, it’s bigger than that. Like, what other industry gets the coverage and has the impact and the influence on the community to the level that sport does, relative to its size? It’s incredible. So I would hate to do something that damaged that. It’s that custodianship of the reputation of our sporting legacy that I hold to more than anything.

Fitz: The other quote I love is from something you told me when I interviewed you after you won gold as a young man in Barcelona in 1992. I asked you a non-swimming question and you said to me, “Peter, you’ve got to understand that I spend six hours a day with my head in a bucket of water staring at a black line”. From that level of focus, was it hard when you retired to make the transition back to the real world, to join the rest of us?

KP: Absolutely. I don’t think anybody transitions easily. You go from dedicating 100 per cent of your life to something while surrounded by people who totally support you in that pursuit. And the day after you retire you literally wake up and all of that purpose, all of that direction, all of that team support is gone and it’s a very, very hard thing to navigate. I definitely went through some significantly low periods and it was beyond difficult to deal with.

Perkins (right) with Grant Hackett after the 1500m final at the Sydney 2000 Games. “The fact that I was beaten by Grant probably made me more relaxed than I might have been.”Credit: Craig Golding

Fitz: If it’s too personal a question, ignore it, but would you say you had depression afterwards?

KP: I certainly had periods of time when I just did not know what life meant, how I was going to continue on. There were certainly periods where you wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning because you’d think, “Well, what’s the point? I don’t know what I’m going to do”. It was actually only after eight or nine years, when I joined NAB and moved back into that kind of structured, supported environment – and I hadn’t really thought about it this way, before this moment in talking about it – that I felt comfortable again because all of a sudden I was in a space where there were guidelines, there was structure and there was support to deliver what you needed to in that environment.

Fitz: And now here you are as CEO of the Australian Sports Commission managing precisely that kind of environment, working out how to distribute to best effect hundreds of millions of dollars to grassroots and elite sport and managing the AIS. Now, I speak on behalf of the Australian taxpayers, who are giving you bastards $400 million a year! Have we got return on our investment, so far, in these Olympics?

KP: Absolutely. It’s probably one of the things that I’m most responsible for and focused on: making sure that the money that is being spent is responsibly deployed and that all of those athletes who are here because of the largesse of the Aussie taxpayer are absolutely doing Australia proud. And they are, so yes, it’s something that every Australian should be proud of. It’s the taxpayers who are the most significant contributor to the success of this Olympic team.

Fitz: One thing you recently put your weight behind was when you spoke out against the hate mob trying to whip up hysteria on transgender athletes in sport. You said as ASC CEO, that the whole idea of hordes of men trying to compete in women’s sport in order to destroy it was complete bollocks “and not at all supportive of an appropriate nuanced conversation we need to have about a sector of society which is significantly at risk”. Bravo.

KP: Thank you.

Fitz: But did you groan, as I did today with the issue of the Italian woman boxer abandoning a bout against an Algerian woman who had failed a gender eligibility test last year, but was accepted by the Olympics this year? This is not a transgender issue because the Algerian is not transgender, but – as I understand it – born with elevated levels of testosterone. And yet, it will unleash the hate against transgender athletes at all levels anyway ...

KP: I think it will be all too easy to throw out the usual tropes, but that is not a very productive management of the issue. Certainly, we’ve got to do what we can to try to make sure that everybody’s safety is assured and the integrity of all the events are well managed. But let’s not confuse the need for appropriate and humane support of parts of our community that are isolated and not well treated, with this issue. I don’t know the details of the athletes specifically involved in their event today and what testing has or hasn’t happened, but at the end of the day, elite sport has very clear guidelines about how we manage and maintain safety. As long as everybody follows those and does the right thing, we really shouldn’t have an issue. If those guidelines haven’t been followed, that will emerge. But picking on that community to drive a headline is not humane.

Fitz: Allow me to say, you’ve come a long way in wisdom from a man who used to have his head in a bucket of water for six hours a day.

KP: Well, you know, I am 50. It’s been a while since I’ve done that swimming thing.

Fitz: When was the last time you did 50 meters in a chlorine pool?

KP: I’m going to say seven years ago and only know that because when we first moved to Melbourne, I had my last bout of “Geez, I need to get fit, I better do something, alright, I’ll go swimming”. And I swam a couple of times, only to realise how worn out my shoulders, neck and back were after decades of doing it and so now I really am happily retired.

Fitz: Now here is the big question. Let’s say you are seriously crook on one side of the river and need just one of the Dolphins swim for your life – to make it across the river before the crocodiles go into a feeding frenzy, tie the doctor to a log and pull the doc back over the river by a rope held between the teeth ... who would you choose, and why would it be Ariarne Titmus?

KP: [Laughing.] Well, you’d say Ariarne but then, after watching Cam McEvoy today and knowing how wide the Seine is at 50 metres, I’m thinking he is probably my best bet. Holy-moly, he is fast. But yes, overall, I’d go with Ariarne Titmus and Kaylee McKeown. The way they have defended their titles is extraordinary. As you might imagine, I have a bit of an inkling of how difficult that is to achieve, and I’ve got incredibly deep respect for them because not only did they do it, they did it in absolute style. So, those two for sure.

Fitz: All right, and when you are around the athletes now and presumably every now and then they are saying the meals are too vegie-heavy, the rooms are too hot, and the beds are too small, are you tempted to say, “Looxury! In myyyy day in Barcelona, we used to dreeeaaaam of having a bed; had to kill our own rabbits to have a meal, and fan ourselves with the pelts to stay cool”?

KP: [Laughing.] It is incredibly tempting but then I remind myself of how I was at their stage, when the last thing I wanted was some old bastard going on about how hard it was back in their Games. So no, I don’t do that. But I do note that with the scale of the event, when you’re trying to house and feed ten-and-a-half thousand athletes, the Olympic Village is not the Ritz-Carlton, nor should it be. But the village is still magnificent. I actually had that thought today when I was in the village looking around at all the athletes in the environment. I thought to myself, “Geez, when I was here, I really did not get it and appreciate how amazing this was.” But then I thought, “Thank God I didn’t, because I focused on my bloody sport and did well.” I’m OK with, being that athlete who was boring and focused, because they were very small moments in time that I had the opportunity, and I had to take them.

Fitz: And look at you now. Thank you.

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