City of Gold ! Our Magnificent Seven !

WORDS: Steve Hunt PHOTOGRAPHY Brian Usher, Simon Trew, Delly Carr / Swimming Australia, AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts, Gian Mattia D'Alberto/LaPresse,

Celebrating The Gold Coast’s Magnificent Seven – why are we so good? And what should we expect in the Brisbane 2032 Olympics

There must be something in the water on the Gold Coast. A quick tally of gold medals won by Gold Coasters at the Paris Olympics shows our streets are, metaphorically speaking, paved with it. 

Take this in – of the 18 gold medals won in Australia’s record-breaking gold medal tally haul, eight were by Gold Coasters. If we were a country, we would have finished 13^th on the medal tally.

Add silver and bronze, and our total tally of 18 medals secured by the city’s athletes represents almost a third of the 53 medals won by our all-conquering Aussies on the way to fourth on the global medal tally.

Our gold medallists have come from every nook and cranny of our diverse city. Our glistening ocean, golden sands, majestic waterways and concrete skate bowls have all been playgrounds for their success. For all our city’s faults, it’s time to award ourselves a gold medal.

And a big gold medal to all the parents who drag their kids out of bed to swim the white line, paddle the city’s waterways, or visit the nearest skatepark to allow their kids to fulfil their Olympic dream.

 

Enter our Magnificent Seven – our golden athletes who have etched their names into the Gold Coast’s already rich Olympic folklore.

Arisa Trew, a former Palm Beach State School student, Australia’s youngest ever gold medallist at 14, winning the Olympic skate park title after honing her skills at Level Up Skate School at Currumbin.

Keegan Palmer, the 21-year-old former Kings Christian College student and now back-to-back gold medallist skateboarder after his success in Tokyo.

Tallebudgera’s Saya Sakakibara, who took out the women’s BMX title – overcoming the adversity of the near death of her champion brother Kai to take gold and win our hearts.

Benowa’s Cameron McEvoy, who couldn’t take a trick in his first three Olympics so he threw out the rule book, radically altered his training with a mix of callisthenics and weight training to win swimming gold in the marquee 50-metre freestyle.

Our golden girl swimmers – Emma McKeon, winner of the women’s 4 x 100m freestyle relay; Kaylee McKeown, who won two gold medals with wins in the 100m and 200m backstroke; and Lani Pallister, who was part of the all-conquering women’s 4 x 200m relay.

So, where does our success come from?

Our 300-plus days of sunshine in the sub-tropics only tells part of the story. Let’s just say it hasn’t happened overnight and it hasn’t happened by accident.

Years of meticulous training, development, energy and investment has enabled the Gold Coast to build on what another of our local legends, former Olympic swimming champion and local girl Giaan Rooney, says is our natural inclination for the Great Outdoors.

“Most Queenslanders just want to be outside,” says Giaan, the 2006 Olympic champion in the 4 x 100 metre medley relay and now Channel 9 presenter. “From a very young age, we have been swimming in backyard pools, the ocean and the great outdoors. It’s just in our DNA from a very early age.” 

Believe it or not, The Australian Institute of Sport, which provides the pathway for many athletes to build into elite programs, has been on the Gold Coast since 1991 at Pizzey Park, beginning with the canoe sprint teams. 

Just think Ken Wallace – a homegrown surf lifesaver who frolicked in the ocean as a nipper on the beaches in front of the Tugun Surf Life Saving Club and went on to win Canoe sprint gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Think of Wallace’s current Gold Coast proteges, Jackson Collins, Pierre Van Der Westhuyzen, Riley Fitzsimmons and Noah Havard – the K4 500 team made up of predominantly local lifeguards – who almost upset the dual Olympic German champions in Paris.

Since 2012, the AIS facilities have expanded to include elite training programs for triathlon and BMX, providing elite pathways for kids aspiring to achieve the Olympic dream.

And while we’re at it, we should also give a wrap to the Gold Coast City Council, which has added the skate park infrastructure to provide us with two gold medallists in Trew and Palmer. 

And let’s not forget surfing. We can also claim Jack Robinson, the former West Australian who secured after silver medal in the men’s surfing final at Tahiti’s Teahupoo. Robinson has called the Gold Coast home for some time and is a regular in the line-up at Duranbah and Snapper Rocks on the southern Gold Coast.

Giaan says while the backbone of our success may be our inclination for the outdoors, there is one hidden secret – parents and loved ones who have quietly supported athletes in their Olympic dream. “Parents and partners are the heroes in all of this,” she says.

“Elite sport can be very selfish and all-consuming, and everyone around you does everything they can to help you fulfil our one-minded goal of succeeding. That can be very challenging because when you are training you are coming home physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted.”

Rooney credits her parents with her success and offers words of encouragement for others eyeing off Los Angeles in 2028 and Brisbane in 2032.

“My parents were awesome – they were the perfect support for me without being pushy,” she says. “They, like many parents, had no idea how to support an elite athlete but they quickly figured it out. They took it in turns to drive me to the pool each morning, but they had two requirements of me: it had to be my alarm going off early in the morning, and my education had to be of equal importance. If my grades dropped, my training would drop. It had to be my dream and my drive.”

 

Steve Titmus, a local Gold Coast anchor for Channel 7 and father of two-time Paris gold medal swimmer Ariarne, concurs with Rooney that the Gold Coast is a lay-down misère to continue its rich Olympic tradition in forthcoming Games.

Titmus says the Gold Coast is unique in its ‘passion’ to excel based on our love of the outdoors. “There is a real passion for a balanced lifestyle which includes plenty of outdoor activities, and that has undoubtedly contributed to our success,” he says.

Titmus knows. His daughter’s rise to become one of the greatest gold medallists in Australian Olympic history didn’t come overnight, and like countless others, it came from the grassroots.

Originally from Tasmania, Titmus relocated his family – wife Robyn, Ariarne and Mia – to Queensland. “There is no greater sporting thrill than watching your child compete at an Olympic Games. It is a surreal experience,” says Titmus.

“For us as a family, it was the culmination of a journey over many years. “We like to say we made choices, not sacrifices, and we have always been parents, not the coach. There are literally hundreds of ordinary mums and dads out there helping to provide their children with the same pathway to success, none more so than on the Gold Coast.”

Moving forward to 2032, Titmus says there are young, aspiring Gold Coasters we have never heard of who will bring Olympic glory to the city in eight years’ time. But he has a warning – if we’re going to replicate the success of Paris in Brisbane 2032, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

“Right now, we have an underwhelming vision from the State Government for the Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Paralympics,” he says. “We must not be half-baked in the staging of Brisbane 2032. The government and private enterprise, if possible, must commit to new facilities and then do the big sell.

“We need to replicate the Paris Olympics where venues were outstanding and access to them via public transport was outstanding. As a community, we need to unite in building the city of our dreams. Aim high, be audacious, future-focused on the 2040’s, be innovative and creative.

“I support the upgrading of the Southport Aquatic Centre to a standard that can successfully host world championships. A new pool north of the current one with a removable roof and retractable floor would enable the complex to seat at least 15,000 and be able to stage sports such as NBL (basketball) and within hours be returned to a swimming complex for community use.

“Pizzey Park provides first-class facilities and investment should be continued. We also have natural assets that will showcase to the world our lifestyle. Surfing at Snapper Rocks – you can’t get any more Aussie than that – and the same with beach volleyball on the Glitter Strip between Broadbeach and Surfers Paradise.

“Plus, why not Carrara as the home of cricket for 2032? How about the Green Heart being used for Olympic Equestrian and Coomera for rowing and canoeing? All this supports the Brisbane Bold Plan that includes Victoria Park, a globally significant precinct that would see the creation of the world’s best sports to include 60 hectares of urban parklands and a city green line, all within 1.5 kilometres of the CBD.”

Titmus says the highlight of Paris was transport. “We never waited more than three minutes for a train and then it was a short walk to venues,” he says. “Paris made the most of its natural surrounds which are historic, and it has had a metro train system since July 1900. We don’t have such a system, so there is a lot of work that needs to be done to get it right.

“Light rail on the coast to the airport is crucial. The Olympics will attract potentially 15-plus million tourists. The Gold Coast will need to host five million of them, the Sunshine Coast 2.5 million and Brisbane around eight million. That’s a lot of people in a relatively small space. Plans need to be made now and quickly implemented. The Games are still eight years away, but it will come around quickly.”

Giaan Rooney agrees. She says the Brisbane 2032 Olympic infrastructure must involve creating an ongoing legacy for Queensland. “We need to create legacy projects that allow us to stage World Cups and world championship events in the future,” she says.

“The Olympics in 2032 will offer us a wonderful opportunity to showcase Australia not only for the incredibly beautiful country that it is, but how special a nation we actually are because of such a high ratio of talented athletes. For a country of 26 million people to finish fourth on the Paris Olympic medal tally is testament to this.”

There is nothing to stop us from going better – after all, there’s something in the water.