Australia ushers in new green and golden era at Paris Olympics
The current crop of athletes, headlined by Jess Fox and Ariarne Titmus, are on the cusp of taking their place alongside the legends of the 1950s and 60s.
Australia is entering its second Olympic golden era, driven to glory by a group of athletes queuing up to claim their places alongside the sporting legends who dominated their events through the 1950s and 60s.
Heading into the Paris Games, Ian Thorpe, in Athens in 2004, was the last Australian Olympic athlete to reach a tally of three gold medals in individual events, winning a second 400m freestyle title and the 200m freestyle.
Thorpe joined track runner Betty Cuthbert and swimmers Dawn Fraser, Lionel Rose and Shane Gould – the last of whom is the only Australian in history to win three individual gold medals at the one Olympics.
Already in Paris, Ariarne Titmus has joined this illustrious group with gold in the 400m freestyle early on Sunday (AEST) to add to the 200m and 400m freestyle titles she won in Tokyo.
Now on the brink of following in Titmus’s footsteps are Jessica Fox, the girl with a golden paddle and a story like no other, who finally took gold in the K1 slalom at her fourth Games attempt early on Monday (AEST); and swimmer Kaylee McKeown, who won double individual gold in the backstroke in Tokyo three years ago.
Fox, one of Australia’s flag bearers in Paris, has been a star of these Games and her profile will spiral to stratospheric heights if she wins her next two events: the C1 slalom early on Thursday (AEST), when she will line up as the defending Olympic champion and the kayak cross, where she could confront her younger sister Noemie.
Although Emma McKeon and Thorpe have a record five Olympic gold medals to their names, including relay events, it is the individual events that athletes cherish most.
Cuthbert won gold in the 100m and 200m in Melbourne in 1956 and followed up with victory in the 400m in Tokyo eight years later. She and Gould are the only Australian athletes to win gold across three events, with Gould claiming gold in Munich in 1972 in the 200m and 400m freestyle, along with the 200m individual medley.
Fraser famously won the blue-ribbon 100m freestyle at three consecutive Games in Melbourne, Rome and Tokyo, while Rose won back-to-back 400m freestyle gold medals in Melbourne and Rome and the 1500m freestyle in Melbourne.
Fox could take Olympic sponsorships back to the heady days when Kieren Perkins and Thorpe earned megabucks before the market shrank to half its size in the wake of the global financial crisis. Fox would never see it this way but she is bigger than her sport. It’s not even close. This is a very rare and special story.
Already sponsored by Toyota and Red Bull, Fox doesn’t paddle for money but there is no doubt the win will have a multimillion-dollar dividend. Her manager Josh White from Always Human was in the stands to see her victory. He would not comment on specific dollar amounts but did concede the medal would take her into a new orbit.
“There really has been a lot of interest in Jess and it goes to the next level with a gold medal win,’’ White said. “We are talking to a couple of big brand partners after the Games. And to existing ones because some sponsorships tend to be multi-year ones during the Olympic period which expire after the Games. Then of course there are bonuses (for medal wins). Things have really taken off for athletes who are credible and women athletes are getting a lot more interest.’’
Fox’s win was dripping with flavoursome storylines. Her French-born mother and coach Myriam chased gold in this event at two Olympics but bronze in Atlanta in 1996 was the best she could do. Such was the box office nature of Fox’s race that a group of middle-aged Australian officials were seen galloping over vacant land outside the venue in a desperate attempt to see her – and that was just the semi-final.
Yet for all the cheering of a crowd that celebrated her French connection, all the drama of having to wait for seven paddlers to come after her, and, finally, the raw emotion that left her speechless when she claimed her heart’s desire, she never let the victory run away with her.
When she looked up in the press room and saw her father Richard, who competed in canoeing for Great Britain at the 1992 Barcelona Games, she quietly said “oh, hi’’ gave him a quick hug and an even quicker selfie.
But there was no sense that either of them was about to do a cartwheel.
That’s the Fox family. Sincere, unpretentious and grounded. Richard would have loved his daughter’s reaction because his mantra is don’t get too high or too low – just move on.
Some athletes tremble at the thought of pressure. Fox has thrived on the challenges. Or at least tries to.
“I think, yeah, it’s more I have to, otherwise it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and feel oppressed by maybe the magnitude,’’ she said.
“Tokyo was huge for that for me, because it was the first time I really felt that much pressure and expectation.
“And so coming into Paris, I think I was expecting that. And so it was about leaning into it, embracing that and yeah, I think there’s good energy to be found when you use it as fuel.”
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