Stewart McSweyn is flavour of the month on King Island
The menu at the King Island Hotel this week includes the Go for Gold Stewy Parma and the McSweyn Golden Sunset cocktail.
The menu at the King Island Hotel has a couple of special items for sale this week. If you can spare $20 or so, you can get your hands on the Go for Gold Stewy Parma. For about half that, you can savour the delights of the McSweyn Golden Sunset, a cocktail adorned with a slice of pineapple.
Both are in honour of a bloke who is fast becoming King Island’s most famous export. The King of King Island they have taken to calling Stewart McSweyn, who will line up in the 1500 metres on Tuesday morning among the favourites to win a medal.
Anything less than the final would be a disappointment for McSweyn, who has been running especially hot in recent months. He smashed the national record for the 1500m a month ago at the Diamond League meet in Oslo.
He has run the fourth fastest time in the world in 2021. He is fifth in the world rankings. It is a big moment for the place of his birth, an island which sits about 80km off the northwest coast of Tasmania in the Bass Strait, has a population of about 1500 and measures 64km and 24km at its longest and widest points.
McSweyn’s parents still run an Angus cattle and merino sheep farm on the island, where their son is literally the flavour of the month.
“I think that is pretty normal with any small country area,” McSweyn’s father Scott said.
“People like watching the Olympics anyway. Some of them saw him grow up as a young kid, some people went to school with him.
“Even some of the older people knew my parents. It is just a good story.”
The heights of Tokyo are a far cry from McSweyn’s humble beginnings, where he and twin Angus — Stewart arrived two minutes ahead of his brother — played a myriad of sports as children on the family’s 1500-acre property.
They would use hay bays as a wicketkeeper when they played cricket. They would mow a green in the paddock and practice their golf. They would kick a footy around the vast, open spaces. And they would run, or at least Stewart would.
“When we were younger he pretty much played every other sport under the sun,” Angus said.
“By the age of nine or 10 we did some cross countries on King Island. He was coming second or third in them and the PE teacher was like, maybe you should give this a bit of a go.
“That became his thing. We lived at the end of a gravel road. So he used to do tracks up and down that. Then he would do a few runs around the farms and paddocks as well.”
Father Scott added: “His twin brother is one of those types of people who can do things easily while Stewart was almost like the normal person — most people struggle to do something and then get a bit better all the time.
“I always said if I could combine the two, I would have a fantastic athlete. Angus walked at nine months and Stew didn’t walk until he was 14 months.
“He has always been a slow developer. Stew is quite angular, yet surprisingly when he was a young kid he was very small. He didn’t start growing until he was 16 or 17.
“He has been a late developer. He was always good but he wasn’t top of the list. He has gradually got a little bit better all of the time. When him and Angus used to play tennis, Angus had great trick shots and all the skills, but Stew used to grind people into the ground.
“It was like hitting a ball against a brick wall. Normally they send the kids away to the northwest coast for a primary school cross country and he came second in that — he got pipped on the line.
“The plane was late, the bus was late, they didn’t know what the course was or how far it was. The next year he went over and won it quite easy.
“We found out there was a state championship and he came second and made the state team.
The first time he ran on a track he made the qualifying standard for the national primary school championships and made the team. He was the only kid running in sneakers.”
McSweyn’s life changed when his parents made the difficult decision to send him and Angus to board at Ballarat Clarendon College. McSweyn started receiving coaching and eventually found his way into the hands of the country’s distance guru Nic Bideau, a man who has presided over the careers of some of the country’s greatest distance runners and is now part of the Australian coaching ensemble.
“When we went away to school he started to be involved in those circles,” Angus said.
“That was when he got a proper coach and started to compete more on state and national level. He wasn’t winning any of those, but he was always competitive.”
McSweyn grew taller, got stronger and his results accelerated. His ascent in recent years has helped him find a place among the sports elite and raised hopes that he could make his mark in Tokyo, where he will look to chase down and go past the best in the world, headed by Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot and Norwegian Jakob Ingebrigtsen.
“He is a very simple, pretty humble bloke,” Angus said. “He is not fazed by much. His day to day life, he doesn’t let too many things ruffle him. He is not too stressed by everyday life.
“But when it comes to running, he is very dedicated.”
It’s that humble nature and dedication that perhaps endears him most to the people of King Island. Now based in Melbourne, he still heads home when he isn’t navigating the globe and dicing with the world’s best.
“Even when he comes back for a holiday, you still see him running around the island,” said John Smith, the manager of the King Island Hotel.
“He is very well liked here on the island and everyone will be cheering for him. There is no question about that.”
The only challenge might be the television reception. The island has been battered in recent weeks and reception at the hotel has been dodgy. That won’t worry Scott — he and wife Jacky plan to watch it unfold from the family home.
Regardless of the result, the population of King Island will savour every moment.
“The main thing is that he gets to go and run at an Olympics,” Scott said.
“He has put the work in for over a decade and you have to grab those opportunities when they present themselves.
“I hope he makes the final and is towards the pointy end — but just because you want something to happen (doesn’t mean it will).
“I want our Tattslotto ticket to come good but it doesn’t. It is really up to him and what happens.”
Angus added: “He does have a bit of a following down there (on King Island). I think it is something small communities hold onto.
“The longer-term thing about it shows that if you can do something like that, those small country towns and kids who grow up in those kind of environments, you are not limited by your opportunities and you can succeed.
“Hopefully those are the kinds of messages that come out of it.”
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