Our oldest Olympian Gordon Ingate is an old salt still shaking things up

Gordon Ingate, 98, is Australia’s oldest living Olympian. Come spend a couple of hours with him. You won’t regret it.

Gordon Ingate, OAM, at his Sydney home this week. Picture: Britta Campion

Superstars are reciting the Australian Olympians’ Oath.

Raelene Boyle: “For the honour of representing Australia …”

Patty Mills: “With acknowledgment and respect for the ancient Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories ..”

Jess Fox: “And their ongoing connection to the continent, water and seas …”

Ric Charlesworth: “For the pursuit of excellence in every endeavour …”

Steph Catley: “With gratitude to those who make it possible …”

Jack Robinson: “For the Spirit of sport …”

Emma McKeon: “For my fellow Olympians, whom I respect and support …”

Mel Wu: “Since Edwin and forever …”

Gordon Ingate: “Once an Olympian, always an Olympian …”

Sir James Hardy, left, with Ingate in Sydney in 2019. Picture: AAP

I nearly fell off my seat when I saw and heard Ingate on the video released by the Australian Olympic Committee this week. I’m no yachtie. I didn’t know he sailed at the 1972 Games. Nor that he skippered Gretal II in the America’s Cup.

He won the Brittania Cup and the New York Yacht Club Cup and a million other cups, most of which are paraded in his Sydney home, the one he built himself, when his most reliable labourers were his wife and mother-in-law. I didn’t know his nickname was Wingnut, nor that he received an Medal of the Order of Australia.

What I recognised in Wingnut, OAM, was a bloke saying his lines with all the sincerity in his blood and guts and bone and 98-year-old heart. The well-weathered face, the oceanic eyes, the authoritative voice – Wingnut, OAM, isn’t looking at the camera. He’s staring it down. Once an Olympian, you better believe it, always an Olympian.

We’re in his living room. Crikey. I’ve never met a character quite like this.

Mate, what’s the secret to a long life? He laughs, “Girls!”

Mate, how’s your health? He grins, “Very foolishly, I had a later night than usual. I stayed up and celebrated the State of Origin. Have you ever seen a first half like that? I had some wine and a little whiskey.”

Mate, what did you want to call the book you wrote? He says,” ‘I wanted to call it ‘Every Time I Bend Over a Rainbow Comes Out My Ass.’ The publisher said no.’

Wingnut, OAM, is a straight-shooting, fun-loving old salt. Hello, sailor, he’s in good nick. Won his most recent trophy on Sydney Harbour in May. Are you joking? He punches my arm and says, “I’m old. I’m 98. My movements are getting slower and I’m not anywhere near as active as I used to be. But I kid you not. That trophy is from this year.”

Ingate with the Prince Philip Cup for dragon-class yachts on the River Derwent after success in 2008 with his yacht Whim at age 81.

The Olympic career of Wingnut, OAM, was far from plain sailing. He qualified for the London Games in 1948. Hopes of competing ran aground.

“I went to the trials and won the right to become an Olympian,” he says. “There were no aeroplanes. I was in my first job at the time and my boss was pretty tough. It was different in those days. I’d have to pay out of my own pocket to go. Those was no such thing as being paid to be an Olympian.

“It was so amateur I had to give back any trophy I had that was worth more than $10. Anyway, I went and asked the boss for time off so I could go to the Olympics.”

Wingnut, OAM, figured the trip by ship to London would take six weeks. Another six weeks to get home. All up, he reckoned he’d be away for six months.

“I asked the boss for some time off,” he says. “He thought it was for one weekend. I told him, ‘I need a minimum of six months.’

He said, ‘No way, son! Get back to work!’” Once an Olympian, not yet an Olympian.

He qualified again for the 1952 Helsinki Games. Still only 26 years of age. He had the same boss, same job. Receive the same reply.

“Exactly the same thing happened! Exactly!” Ingate grins. “I’d still have to go by ship. The boss told me, ‘I’m not giving you time off to go and enjoy yourself. ‘Get back to work, son.’

The next Games was in Melbourne and I thought, ‘Well, I can have a go at that.’ Our trials were held in Botany Bay and it blew like the clappers. I came third and that was the end of that. It was a bit heartbreaking but I was young and you-know-what, and I could cope with it.”

Ingate celebrating after the trials for the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, for which he earned a spot on the plane to Germany.

Fast forward to the Munich Games. Wingnut, OAM, was 42. “Finally, I had the chance to get to an Olympics,” he says. “I was working for myself so I was able to afford it. If you wanted to be an Olympian in those days, it came out of your own pocket. It was quite a stretch. It cost me $5000, which was a significant amount of money at the time. Strike me pink, the boat was damaged on the trip over.”

He adds: “It went by container ship and the mast was slightly bent. A fellow crewman said, ‘Don’t worry, Gordon! I’ll straighten it!’ He got hold of my racing mast and put it between a fork in a tree. He leant on it to straighten it … and busted it. I was going to buy a new boat in Germany. Two of the other Australian yachtsmen campaigned new boats and they both won gold medals.

“I had to use the old boat because the bloke I’d beaten in the trials complained that I had to use the same boat or he should be allowed to compete. That man is still alive. I have no desire to share a cup of tea with him. It wasn’t good.”

Wingnut, OAM, came second-last in the dragon class. “I beat the Prince of Siam,” he laughs. “What a nice guy! He entered the Olympics because he could.”

Ingate, in 2015, regularly fought out the Prince Philip Cup for Dragon-class boats.

Mate, was he much of a sailor? Properly chuckling, Ingate says, “No! Not at all! The poor bugger! I had this old boat and this old racing mast. I don’t know how I would have gone in a new boat but I would have gone a lot better than second-last.”

The Munich Games is famous for two wildly different reasons. The splendour of 15-year-old Shane Gould’s three swimming gold medals in three world record times. And the tragedy of Palestinian terrorists killing two Israeli athletes in the Olympic village as well as the nine hostages killed during the botched airport rescue attempt.

In the living room of the home of Wingnut, OAM, is a giant panoramic photograph of the opening ceremony. There’s gotta be 100,000 people in the frame. He picks out one tiny figure among the thong of athletes and says, ‘That’s me! I was crying.”

Ingate says of Munich: “Shane Gould really was the best. She was very quiet, very shy, the exaltation she got from the media – wow, she had a great deal of trouble coping with that. She was fantastic. Incredible. But I felt sorry for her.

Ingate on board Caprice.

“Here I was at 42 years of age, with my crewmate, the two of us were the oldest, the tallest, the heaviest, the best looking – and we had a ball. It was an unbelievable experience. To be involved in an Olympics is something you never forget. The Germans were putting on a fun Games. We knew we weren’t going to do very well with our damaged boat, so we decided to have a ball instead. And we did. They would have sent us home if they knew exactly how much we were enjoying ourselves.”

Once a good old salt, always a good old salt.
Mate, what’s the secret to a long life? He suggests, “Girls!” A beautiful one is in a photo frame right here in front of us. His favourite girl, his late wife, Sally, who died in 1998.

“I sailed a boat called Jasna in the 1950 Sydney to Hobart,” he says. “I was teaching the family who owned it how to sail. I was 24. Tongue in cheek, I said to the owner, ‘Can I put the boat in the Hobart race? He said yes. I thought, ‘Cor blimey!’ He said, ‘Gordon, the condition is that you take my daughter with you.’

“She was a natural sailor and doing quite well. She was 19. I knew she was engaged to a medical student at Sydney University and I had no interest in anything other than our sailing.”

He adds: “We came third. We had a really rough trip. We finally got to Hobart on New Year’s Day, 1951. We arrived at six o’clock in the morning after a struggle up the Derwent River. Against the current, no wind. We had no engine, no electrics. Six of us were on board. We were young and fearless, I suppose.

Ingate, right, in 1972.

“As we were being towed into the dock by a motorboat, a good friend of mine was having a pee off from the stern of the boat he was on. He yelled out, and I can hear it to this day, ‘Why don’t you marry the girl?’ She was sitting right alongside me. I said to her, ‘What do you think of that for an idea?’ She said, I think it’s a very good idea. Let’s do it!’”

Wingnut, OAM, says: “I sent a telegram back to her father. I still have a copy of it. ‘Had a hard trip. Not very much damage to the boat. Looking forward to being home. By the way, may I marry your daughter?’ The reply came back in a couple of hours: ‘Which one?’ He had another daughter. We got married. Forty-eight years later, she passed away. I still have Jasna and I still race her.”

Wingnut, OAM, hasn’t seen the AOC video in which he steals the show. I give him my phone. Tell him to hit play on the clip. He offers a lovely, quiet grin at Boyle, Mills, Fox, Charlesworth, Catley, Robinson, McKeon and Wu. For the first time he watches himself saying, “Once an Olympian, always an Olympian”. Bloody oath, mate! For the first time in two hours, he goes quiet. Is that a tear in your eye? “Yes,” he says.