ABC Grandstand's Unsung Sporting Heroes

by ABC Grandstand

  Patrick Senior enrolled his son in different schools along the coast of northern Queensland: Magnetic Island, Cairns, Mackay and Bowen. Patrick Junior did not miss a day of school. He participated in school carnivals and won races but his prodigious ability as a runner only emerged when he was thirteen years of age: in Cooktown he would race against older men, for fun and for orange juice that his dad would give him as a prize.

  But while a life of changing schools and living on a boat offered many positive experiences for a young boy, it also had its difficulties, so an alternative was sought. It came in the form of a scholarship to attend Aurora College in Moss Vale, a boarding college established for overseas students. From there, he moved to Canberra to study at the Australian National University (ANU).

  Patrick didn’t have a background stemming back to Little Athletics. He had effectively no experience in competing in organised competition beyond school carnivals.

  It was only after being badgered by friends who had witnessed his speed in social touch football games that he decided to try running at the Australian University Games in 1996.

  Keen to work out what was needed to run fast on the track before the Games, Patrick approached fellow students Garth Livermore and Rupert Sakora at ANU, seeking assistance on the finer points of sprinting. They were sceptical. Patrick, at twenty-four years of age, was deemed to be too old for a novice, especially in the explosive short sprint.

  Any thoughts that they were wasting their time evaporated at their first training session, when he beat them both over 200 metres. Three weeks later, he was lining up in the heats of the 100 metres at the University Games at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) track.

  It was an incongruous sight. Patrick had shoes two and a half sizes too big, was wearing bike pants and using borrowed blocks, courtesy of the track and field office at the AIS.

  He appeared to be cemented to the blocks at the start and didn’t hit the lead until the final fifteen metres. His time of 10.70 seconds was one of the best by any runner in the country that year. He went on to better that time, winning the final in 10.47 seconds.

  By chance, looking out through the thick glass window at the AIS was sports scientist Esa Peltola. This fortuitous glance has since become track-and-field folklore. He immediately realised that Patrick had the potential to rock Australian sprinting. Peltola quickly negotiated the concrete stairs down to the track and introduced himself to the lean Aboriginal runner, who by this time was hunched over, struggling to breathe.

  Peltola wanted to know as much as possible. He thought he knew everybody in sprinting in Australia, and before his eyes was an unknown runner who had the potential to be the greatest of them all. Peltola wanted him on scholarship at the AIS as quickly as possible, but it would take some fast talking.

  Unbeknownst to Peltola, Patrick had also caught the eye of North Queensland Cowboys’ coach Tim Sheens, who, while in charge of the Canberra Raiders, had witnessed Patrick’s speed on the touch football field first hand, and invited him to try out for a rugby league contract. The day after his blistering run in the final of the University Games, Patrick was on a plane to Townsville for the trial. Thankfully, for the sake of Australian athletics, they didn’t pass him the ball that day and it became obvious that track and field would be his future.

  Two weeks later, Patrick had a scholarship at the AIS. He copped plenty of sledging from some of his fellow athletes, who questioned his right to be in their presence. The banter which may have rattled a younger runner was taken on board by Patrick as motivation. The critics wouldn’t have to wait long to see whether he was up to it.

  Esa’s role cannot be understated, given that he was dealing with a novice sprinter who had no regulated training base. The danger would be to overtrain, to make up for lost time. Peltola’s patience, as it turned out, would be one of the keys to breaking through the ten-second barrier. It’s fair to say, never in Esa’s wildest dreams could he have imagined taking Patrick into the world of sub-ten second sprinters. But the journey was far from smooth.

  In 1997, at Western Australia’s Perry Lakes Stadium, Dean Capobianco was the hot favourite to take out the 100-metre sprint despite coming through a year from hell after testing positive to a banned drug prior to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But this was his home track, and Capobianco was expected to be the conqueror. He was, after all, up against runners he had consistently beaten; although he wasn’t sure about the sprinter in lane seven. In the mad dash that is the 100 metres, Patrick beat Capobianco in a time of 10.27 seconds, wind assisted.

  There was a furious scramble to find out more about this runner who had emerged from nowhere to defeat the local hero. Patrick said he found the whole experience bemusing and suffocating. He had to become accustomed to this level of competition quickly. With Esa’s help, Patrick learned to deal with many aspects of elite sport.

  Four years after his first appearance on the track in 1996 at the University Games, Patrick managed to qualify for the Sydney 2000 Olympics in the 100 metres, 200 metres and the 4 x 100 metres relay. The relay team was disqualified in the semi-final, and Patrick was placed thirty-second overall in the 100 metres, and twenty-eighth in the 200 metres. He only made it through to the second round in both races, and the Olympic experience left him in a quandary.

  At first glance, Clive Stephens appears an unlikely saviour. The Indian-born engineer immigrated to Australia in 1982. In his country of birth he ran a company specialising in reducing flyash emissions from coal-fired power stations. A master’s degree in technology management beckoned at ANU and he found himself living in Canberra.

  Two months after the dust had settled on the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Clive was walking through Garema Place in the heart of Canberra’s city precinct when he noticed somebody he thought looked familiar. He had been a keen observer of the sprint events at the Sydney Games, and to come across one of the runners he had seen on television was a shock.

  Patrick Johnson was not in good spirits. He had been eliminated in the early rounds of the 100 metres in Sydney, and was questioning whether to continue in the sport.

  The two struck up a conversation, and Clive was surprised to discover that Patrick had so little to show for his running prowess. Unknown to Clive at the time, Patrick was sinking fast. Even though he had a scholarship at the AIS and was working part-time at the Department of Foreign Affairs, his debts were mounting. There were none of the million-dollar sponsorship deals that many associate with elite athletes. Patrick had been helped by friends Russell Taylor and Richard Jamieson who offered good personal support, but Patrick was finding it hard to get financial help without quality performances on the track.

  Clive and Patrick parted company after their lengthy conversation — but not before Clive gave Patrick his business card and told him to call if he needed anything.

  Several weeks later that call came. Patrick was in trouble and didn’t feel that he could raise his concerns with those who had helped him in the past. He was in danger of being evicted from his apartment in Belconnen near the AIS, and needed help. He remembered the conversation with Clive and felt that he could seek advice from him.

  Within a short period of time, Clive had paid the rental arrears and the relationship was established.

  Clive discovered that Patrick’s car was about to be retrieved by its sponsor, unhappy with the state of the car after Patrick had lent it to friends. Things were about to get worse before they got better.

  After negotiating to buy the car from the sponsor, Clive soon realised that Patrick didn’t have the capital to repay the loan. It was as if Patrick had been living in a bubble, concentrating primarily on his training. It became obvious to Clive that Patrick had no means with which he could support himself. He had a large credit card bill and his phone had been cut off. The situation worsened when the Australian Taxation Office informed Patrick that he would be prosecuted if he didn’t file a tax return. He hadn’t filed one since 1996. The situation was spiralling out of cont
rol.

  Bankruptcy loomed as a real possibility. Clive then took the only action possible to stave off the creditors. He and partner Raz re-mortgaged their home to ensure the tax debt could be repaid. As he sought to reorganise Patrick’s life, Clive was adopting a management model similar to the one he used while running his company in India. Cutting costs was his first task.

  Clive’s main task was to get Patrick running properly again. With Clive handling his affairs, which became essentially a full-time job, Patrick was again focused, with Esa putting into place a program which had him running even faster.

  Less than three years after that chance encounter on a Canberra walkway, Patrick would run a race that has cemented his place in Australia’s history.

  On a converted rice field in Mito, Japan on 5 May 2003, Patrick knew he was ready for the race of his life. He felt as though his body was catching up with his mind after the initial struggles with weight training. In February that year, Patrick had run 9.88 seconds in Perth, but it was wind assisted. At least he knew his body was capable of travelling that fast. Several months later, in the humid air in Mito, at a low-key meet without any big-name runners, he ran 9.93 seconds with a legal tailwind of 1.8 metres. That race was the highlight of his career.

  It was the first time a runner of non-African descent had legally broken ten seconds. Only thirty-seven people had achieved this feat before him and he remains the oldest to have ever done so. It is obvious that without chance encounters — with Clive Stephens, Esa Peltola and Patrick’s two university training friends — his latent talent would have remained untapped. If this had been the case, Australia would be without another quiet achiever who was the first Australian to clock less than ten seconds in that most prestigious of events, the 100-metre sprint.

  A small stage

  by Dave Mitri

  BEFORE HE WAS an unsung sporting hero, he was my arch-nemesis.

  Terry Martino and I met at St Joseph’s Primary School in Melbourne’s south-east. We were in Prep class. It was 1990. The same year I started barracking for Essendon.

  Directly above my bed was a football tipping chart and fixture list; at the bottom of the chart were six blank squares. The idea being that when a team was knocked out in the finals, you would put a sticker with your team logo in the square. I thought Essendon had the coolest logo and colours, which was why they were my team of choice.

  Terry’s love for Carlton was born out of more traditional circumstances. His family were Italian migrants who had made the successful switch to Melbourne. They had spent some time living in the Carlton area before moving down south to open a pizza shop. So Terry had inherited a die-hard attitude that Carlton was the only team to barrack for. He seemed physically repulsed by the fact that I barracked for Essendon.

  Living in the shadows of Moorabbin Oval, Terry could forgive the St Kilda supporters in the class, but not the Bombers — he hated all three of us and didn’t miss a chance to bag out the Bombers throughout primary school. Terry hit hardest when new kids entered the school. He would corner them in the classroom as if he was a salesperson for an energy company in a busy shopping centre: ‘Hi, how are you going today? I was just wondering if you support a football team? Have you considered making a switch?’

  He was a missionary, inviting kids into the House of the Navy Blues. And he wouldn’t discriminate — he would go after the smelly kids, the kids who always had their hands in their pants and the kids who couldn’t spell their names. His job was to ensure that they all knew that Carlton was the best team of all and that I was not to be trusted because I barracked for the enemy.

  Terry cut deepest in 1993. Kevin Sheedy’s Baby Bombers knocked over Carlton in the grand final. I spent the entire second week of the September holidays counting down the days for school to return. I longed to tell Martino to his face that his team sucked, and was worse than my team.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Terry scoffed when I finally told him. ‘Didn’t you hear? Carlton felt sorry for you because we beat you the last time we played in a grand final. We decided to let you win.’

  To this day I’m still not sure if Terry was clearly delusional or doing some big-game fishing and trying to hook a red-and-black flathead. Regardless, I had taken the bait. My anger kept me from sleeping. I would spend my nights thinking of rational arguments to oppose his stupid belief that Carlton had let Essendon win.

  He became my enemy. We didn’t hang out. He wasn’t invited to my birthday parties. He wouldn’t share his scissors and glue with me. We would deliberately not look at each other if we had to sit adjacent in class and we would avoid each other on the playground.

  This wasn’t always easy, as the playground was unofficially segregated according to what class you were in. The Preps and Grade Ones hung out in the sandpit and school gardens. The Grade Two and Three boys played sport on the basketball court. Everyone in Grade Four and above had the yard. The yard was roughly sixty to seventy metres long and twenty metres wide, covered in black asphalt, with four bins, two at each end, to represent goalposts. In summer, they would get rid of two of the bins and draw wickets on the others.

  To us, the yard was the MCG, Wembley and Lords all rolled into one. It was a sacred site that, in 1990, we had no right to be on. The bigger kids owned the yard at recess and lunch or, as we called it back then, playtime.

  The yard was divided in the same way that a local football side had seniors, reserves and under-eighteens; it was possible for a talented big kid to be invited up. A tall Prep could be asked to play basketball with the Grade Threes, and a fast Grade Three kid could be asked to play on the yard.

  Terry and I had the same sporting ability, but what separated us was our interest and application. I loved sport. Sometimes we played basketball; other times we played soccer or cricket. It didn’t matter. I was there, shooting air balls, bowling no balls and falling over a lot. The court was concrete. I went through lots of school pants.

  Terry was just as bad as I was at sport, but it didn’t matter, because he chose not to participate. While I was letting goals go through as keeper, Terry was braiding the girls’ hair.

  Terry didn’t mark, kick, shoot or shepherd. He hula-hooped, danced, gossiped and did gymnastics.

  Sometimes Terry was just mean. He would mock the girls he hung out with for not being able to do the splits. He would convince a girl to confess to him which boy she liked, and then he would loudly tell everyone and attempt to push the crying girl into the boy and make them kiss. To him, this drama was part of his daily lunchtime fun. So it goes without saying that Terry was blissfully unaware of our envy of the older boys and their ownership of the yard.

  The day finally came when we graduated to Grade Four and inherited the right to play football in the yard with the other kids.

  At recess we would play ‘Jack in the Pack’, which I believe in other parts of Victoria is referred to as ‘Markers Up’. Then we would do the draft. We would all line up, two captains would be chosen and they would pick players for their teams.

  Terry never nominated himself for the draft. He was always too busy convincing teachers to sponsor him in Jump Rope for Heart. Or so we thought.

  At the end of each lunch, as we wandered back to class, the arguments would start.

  ‘We smashed you guys!’ one kid would say.

  ‘No you didn’t, we won! We kicked way more goals.’

  ‘What game were you watching?!’ someone else would reply.

  One day, one of the chief debaters turned to me and said, ‘Well, Dave, who do you reckon won?’

  I replied with honesty: ‘They did. They scored sixteen-fourteen, which is a hundred and ten, and we only scored twelve-seventeen, which is eighty-nine. Our kicking for goal is what cost us.’

  Blank stares followed. My teammates were incredulous at what appeared to be betrayal.

  I have this thing where I have to count. I can’t stop. I am not popular to play golf with. ‘Actually, Simon, you had five shots …
not four.’

  After some time, though, my incessant counting was appreciated. People would ask me the score in the last minutes of play and try that little bit harder to get their team over the line.

  It was sometimes pretty subjective, of course. We had one slight rule change to AFL which impacted on my ability to score accurately. Whether you kicked a goal or a behind, the other team would kick in from our makeshift goal square. That meant that sometimes I would have to make a decision on a goal from fifty-five metres away, knowing that I couldn’t ask any of my teammates, as they lacked my capacity to make honest decisions. There were no goal umpires, no goal reviews — all decisions rode on what I thought I saw. It should also be mentioned that two years after I finished at St Joseph’s, I started wearing glasses for short-sightedness.

  This led some people to complain after close losses, although one day these complaints suddenly got more frequent and annoying. The little Grade Twos ran up to me and stamped me on the feet.

  ‘You cost us the game! You can’t count!’

  Hang on a second, I thought. Why are the Grade Twos even playing with us? I turned to the basketball court.

  The basketball court was no longer — it was now a netball court. Terry stood in the centre with a clipboard. He was teaching all the girls how to play. He had given them all positions that he thought were fair and changed the teams over after quarters. He had all the matches timed. It seemed that all that time we were busy waiting to play in the yard, Terry had been waiting for the basketball court.

  In two weeks, Terry had managed to organise the most professional sporting competition that St Joseph’s had ever seen. He had made our non-adjudicated, tiny-goalposted, rule-modified football look like a joke. He even managed to convert a few; the idea of playing mixed netball with girls appealed to some of the older boys who didn’t really care about football. I’ll admit, after a grilling over a one-point-after-the-end-of-lunch-bell controversial cliffhanger, I took a hiatus from football and joined the netball circus too.