Gold Loses Lustre With The Passing Of A Year

The Age

Monday August 2, 1993

John Huxley

Twelve months after their golden days at Barcelona, Australia's world- beating Olympians are enjoying mixed fortunes.

JOHN HUXLEY reports.

A year ago Gillian Rolton was riding high. Her smiling face peered from the front pages of every newspaper in Australia, as she and her teammates celebrated after having received Olympic gold medals from Princess Anne for the three-day equestrian event in Barcelona.

``It was a fabulous, fabulous moment," she says, ``one I will never forget.

Last weekend was more mundane. Rolton celebrated her ``golden anniversary" by carting hay and mucking out stables as usual, competing in a local gymkhana at Yankalilla, near her home in Adelaide, and working out whether she can afford to keep the golden Holden Commodore she was awarded as one of Australia's gold medallists at Barcelona.

``Right now, it looks like the car will have to go if I want to compete in Europe next year. It costs $12,000 to transport a horse to England, and I just don't have that sort of money.

``People think you are rich if you ride. Quite the reverse: we are poor because we ride.

Rolton is not complaining: like Australia's other Olympians, she cheerfully accepts that the glittering moments must be paid for by months of hard work and sacrifice.

Each of the 12 gold medallists who competed in the individual or team events among Australia's tally of seven shared $400,000 under the Olympic Dream ``money for medals" scheme and each received a car.

Since Barcelona, prominent swimmer Kieren Perkins has reportedly earned almost $500,000 from sponsorship and endorsement deals with companies as varied as a bank, a dairy, a television network and a line of swimwear. He has also been at the centre of a protracted wrangle with swimming's ruling body, the Australia Swimming Incorporated, over the right to organise his own promotional activities. Apart from the so-called ``goldfish", though, none of the other Barcelona winners has reaped the rich rewards promised in the post-Olympics euphoria.

``It was all bullshit, all hype," says one half of the ``Pocket Rocket" double scullers _ Peter Antonie, 35 _ who returned to work as an investment adviser with a bank immediately after Barcelona and is now completing a degree. ``Good luck to Kieren, but I've come up with an absolute zero. Not that I'm bitter, it's just a fact of life.

Fellow sculler Stephen Hawkins, Tasmania's only gold medallist, has done slightly better. He still works as a carpenter, but now also lectures in schools for the Drug Offensive scheme and has helped launch a clothes shops chain called Everyday Heroes. The equestrian team of Rolton, Andrew Hoy and Matt Ryan, which also won an individual gold medal, have picked up only limited sponsorship.

From his European base in Little Coxwell, Oxfordshire, where he says he is ``happily still rather a nobody", New South Welshman Ryan said he was ``a little better off than before Barcelona". That is because he now promotes a variety of horsey products, including worming powders, riding gloves and saddle air-bags.

Canoeist Clint Robinson, 21, who returns to the Uncle Toby's ironman competition soon following a nose operation, has done better financially than he expected.

It was reckoned that the Awesome Foursome, who joined such megastars as the Pope and Greg Norman on the books of IMG, could earn half a million a man. ``I wish," snorts Mike McKay, 28.

Still, he admits, they have not done too badly. Although the four have not rowed together since the 1992 Games, they have been crowned Melbourne's Kings of Moomba, promoted beer, canned fruit and a soft drink, and been in constant demand for speaking engagements.

McKay believes the foursome could have cashed in more successfully had they continued competing together. Instead, they decided to take a break. ``The dollar has never been our motivation," says McKay, who works for a hospital benefits association and coaches at a Melbourne college. ``We're basically amateurs doing it for the fun, and we want it to stay that way.

Of his teammates, Nick Green is also coaching, James Tomkins is studying for an economics degree, and Andrew Cooper is ``doing a bit of laboring". Some time later this year, says McKay, the four will reunite and ``go for a bit of a paddle". Then they will start focusing on the Atlanta Games.

Alhough few will be able to match the performances of Perkins, who is back in the pool breaking world records, most of Australia's other gold medallists have never stopped competing. Cyclist Kathy Watt, went straight from Barcelona to the national championships in Adelaide, where she won three gold medals, and has been training and racing ever since.

At the weekend she was training at altitude in Colorado Springs in preparation for the world cycling championships in Norway later this month. ``She is amazingly dedicated and single-minded," says Tim Ward, head of the cycling program at the Australian Institute of Sport.

Like Australia's other gold medallists, Watt has enjoyed the sudden, often unexpected, celebrity born of Barcelona. ``Sometimes it can be a bit embarrassing. One day I was out cycling near Tullamarine ... This woman followed me in a car for miles, leaning out of the window and yelling and cheering me on. But on the whole it's been tremendous fun.

Rolton, too, says: ``It's wonderful to have people ask for your autograph or come up to pat Peppermint Grove (her horse). It's great to think you're some sort of role model for the 12-year-olds from the local pony club who can think,`I could do that."' But all agree that sooner or later the celebrations of past glories, the promotions and the public appearances must stop and the hard work of training begin again. According to Rolton, ``I guess it's a matter of learning to be a little selfish again.

McKay agrees: ``We all recognise we have obligations to the public, but really people expect an awful lot from you at times. I'm afraid after a while it all becomes a bit of a hassle.

While none of the 1992 gold medallists will forget Barcelona, they are looking forward rather than backwards.

What happened to the other golden Holden Commodores? Watt sold her car after accepting sponsorship from Toyota. Robinson, who is sponsored by Ford, converted his Holden to a race car, which he has already run in trials at the Lakeside track on the Gold Coast.

Peter Antonie, Mike McKay and Nick Green traded up. Stephen Hawkins sold his because he ``already had a good car". Of the others who retained their prizes, English-based Matt Ryan still has not driven his car, which awaits his return to the Hunter Valley.

For many, the golden Holden was their first new car. Says McKay: ``The car is the one thing that really changed my life after Barcelona.

Before, I used to get around in a beaten-up 1966 Valiant.