The Sports Factor

Athletic excellence aside, Olympic organisers want the games safe and secure. Ever since Munich in 1972, securing the safety of all participants is paramount. Australian Olympian Graham Windeatt competed in '72 and has followed the changes in the Olympic experience.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Mick O'Regan: Hello and welcome to The Sports Factor, here on ABC Radio National. I'm Mick O'Regan.

This week on the program our focus is fixed on Beijing because, well, the moment is upon us. And to paraphrase the bingo caller it's three fat ladies, eight, eight, eight.

At 8.08 pm tonight on 8th August, 2008, the fuse will be lit on the Beijing Games, and the four-year Olympic cycle will culminate with the igniting flame.

Though all this talk of lighting fuses and igniting flames will only get me into trouble because, apart from sport, if there's one thing defining this Olympiad, it's security.

The organisers have had quite enough controversy with Tibetan independence activists disrupting the torch relay and pesky foreign journalists wanting unfettered access to the internet. What a nerve!

So from now on, it's accreditation passes to the front and no joking with the guards.

But it wasn't always like this.

The single event which transformed the nature of Games security occurred 36 years ago in Munich when 11 Israeli athletes and team officials were murdered by Palestinian terrorists.

Australian swimmer Graham Windeatt was there as a competitor in the 1500 metres freestyle, and went on to compete and work at the next five Olympiads.

Graham Windeatt: Munich in 1972 was the first most globally significant event that West Germany hosted since the Second World War itself. So they tried to do everything right, the facilities were absolutely wonderful, the atmosphere and environment that was there, it was the best it could be. There was a criticism by the media that in fact at the time that security was too intense, there were lots of people with guns standing around security, I know we'd come out of the pool of a morning and sort of rush up the hill, taking the short way round, and rather than go the long way round, and the guard used to yell out, 'Australien, Australian, nein, nein, nein!' Well about the third day we did that, there were a couple of fellows with machine guns at the top of the hill, so we decided to go the long way that day.

Mick O'Regan: Very convincing.

Graham Windeatt: It was very convincing. So there was some criticism that security was in fact too tense. I don't recall that ever being relaxed, but certainly it was very relaxed compared to subsequent Games, up to the point in time of course about midway through the Games where the unfortunate massacre happened.

Mick O'Regan: And Graham, we'll come to those terrible incidents in just a moment. But just to stick with what it was like pre the events that have now traumatised and made Munich so infamous, a couple of weeks ago on the program the veteran Australian Olympic reporter and commentator, Harry Gordon was actually reminiscing about Percy Cerruty, Herb Elliott's coach, quite an eccentric man but who when he wanted to get into the athletes' village when he'd been told not to, would simply put on a tracksuit and jog through with a group of athletes, which to think of the security around the current games, it almost seems bizarrely naïve.

Graham Windeatt: Certainly. It was from a better time, could I suggest, because it was so much nicer in those days. The only large international event I'd competed in before Munich was the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1970, and it had a very much different feel; early on in Munich it had a very much different feel, and in fact there were some parents that were snuck in to the village, parents of the athletes snuck into village to dine with them, simply by donning a tracksuit top and being kept in the centre of a group of people as you sort of rushed through the guards, effectively. But when that all changed the passes were very closely scrutinised, even to the point of seeing if they'd been split open to change photographs etc.

Mick O'Regan: So a complete turnaround. Can I ask you, Graham, about what your personal memories are, when you first heard of the tragedy that had unfolded between the Palestinian terrorists and the Israeli athletes. Where were you, and how did you find out?

Graham Windeatt: Yes, that was on the last night of the swimming. I was in the second-last event on the last night of the swimming, 1500 metres freestyle. And because I was a Medallist, it was off to be drug-tested where you have to rehydrate for a urine test, so it took a little while to do that. So I got back to the Village about midnight. Apparently the terrorists came in in the early hours of the following morning, so only a few hours apart from where I entered the Village.

So in the morning I got up, went around for breakfast, and the cafeteria hall where all the athletes ate probably sat 2,000, 3,000 people I suppose at tables of eight. And my memory of it is that for every two tables one way, and for every two tables the other way through this entire facility, was something like 200, 300 tables, was a fellow with a machine-gun. Had anything ever happened we would have all died in the crossfire. But that was a stark change from the day before, and with communications in those days, no mobile phones, there was so little known about it that really it was just confusion. No-one really knew what had happened. I saw two tanks come through an exterior wall; they just pulled down the fencing and brought two tanks in. It was just sort of in the early stages, mass confusion.

Mick O'Regan: And a complete and utter transformation of the idea of what it is to be in an athletes' village.

Graham Windeatt: It was. I think there was a sense of vulnerability. A good friend of mine, a swimmer from Hong Kong was actually a floor or two above the Israelis and so he woke to the noise and it altered him forever. He actually saw people that had been machine-gunned to death because the design that was like a step-verandah type system to the architecture, so you could actually look down on the verandah below, and he was forever altered for that, and he was actually caught in his room for I believe at least two days, because they just froze the movement of the athletes in that area. They were showing it on TV and they were bringing snipers and the like in, and they were dressed as athletes. So everybody, the tourists were dressed as athletes, the snipers were dressed as athletes in the first stages, so everybody, through loud-hailers, was just told to stay in their room. And I talked to that fellow at the closing ceremony and yes, he was forever altered.

Mick O'Regan: Did you ever catch up with him subsequently?

Graham Windeatt: No, no it's one of the things where you just meet people at the Games and you go the separate ways, and in those days there was no email address, and so many things have changed.

Mick O'Regan: Indeed. So if we move four years forward to Montreal in Canada, a Games I think a lot of Australians like to forget, in fact, but if we look at Montreal, tell me about what that was like then from that security element, obviously arriving would have been completely different to your initial days in Munich.

Graham Windeatt: That's correct. We were told, we were briefed very efficiently in regards to the security measures early on. We were told things like if we were in a restricted area, if we were pulled up for being in a restricted area that we were to stand facing the guards or whoever pulled us up, palms forward in an open stance. That was a signification that perhaps things had changed; we'd never had a briefing like that.

There wasn't too much significant about the Games in Montreal that was different to Munich and the security. But what we did notice as the Games went on, if you actually came through one of the lesser-used security gates, I witnessed this and you couldn't believe, but I came through a gate and the guards were drunk, towards the end of the Games. One of the difficult things I think for organisers is actually not to be lax over the entirety of the 2, 2-1/2 weeks of the Games, and that's a concern as the Games progress because familiarity just breeds that level of contempt.

Mick O'Regan: Absolutely. And I suppose once the focus of your event, once you've competed and that focus lifts form you, it's a party for the athletes there. Suddenly you're a young person, surrounded by other fit young people, your sporting commitments are over and then it's just time to hang loose and have fun.

Graham Windeatt: It's true. That's one of the most difficult things of being in an Olympic village is this transition right from the very, in fact some people are knocked out before the opening ceremony because there are some events now before opening ceremony, but of the people that attend, there might be 5% who are Medal chances, and from that very first day, people are finishing their events. And that makes it difficult for the rest because people get loud and relaxed and happy, and for many, many of the people that don't have an opportunity to compete at that very, very elite level for Olympic Medals, they're there for enjoyment effectively, after their Games finish. So it does make it difficult for the athletes to rest and prepare for their events, particularly if you're one of the last events. And also for the security elements.

Mick O'Regan: Now I know that you went to the 2000 Sydney Games, I don't know that you had an official capacity there, but the Games that were branded in the way that Melbourne in '56 was branded as a 'friendly Games', I think Sydney also sought to have that moniker applied to them. Tell me about the tension between trying to maintain absolute first-rate security at the same time as you engender the event with that spirit of openness and friendliness, because it's quite a contradictory path.

Graham Windeatt: It is. Sydney did it wonderfully successfully, because the most significant element that I've noticed and I was privileged to work in the '84 and '88 Games in Los Angeles and Seoul, and Sydney was the first Games that I'd attended out of the five that I attended, where there wasn't someone with bullets wrapped around their chest standing there with a machine gun. Every Games up to that point that I had attended, arms were very obvious and sort of the military-type presence, even in Seoul, it was more commando-style. I was part of the media contingent team there, and I'd be out doing interviews or whatever with say, US coaches or something, and returning to the village at night for every guard that was standing out in the open in Seoul, there were two or three with balaclavas hiding in the bushes. And that took a little bit of getting used to, because you really didn't know whose side the people in the bushes were on.

Mick O'Regan: So as you were coming in, I mean there's obviously people in their security uniforms whether they're military or police, with the insignia indicating their association with the Games, but then there are other people that you can see sort of in combat fatigues?

Graham Windeatt: These guys were just all black in the bushes; they had black fatigues, black balaclavas, with guns, yes.

Mick O'Regan: And obviously you see them but don't acknowledge them.

Graham Windeatt: Well one doesn't know what to do at first.

Mick O'Regan: Not the sort of people you can ask, 'Do you know where the Australian Centre is?' or 'Can you help me find the exit?'

Graham Windeatt: There was certainly no taunting entering my brain at this stage, no.

Mick O'Regan: Discretion's the better part of valour. But in Sydney I remember elements of the profile of the volunteers and one of the things that sticks in my mind is how the massive inclusion and the participation of volunteers gave an almost unofficial quality to the Sydney Games. There just seemed to be so many happy people in lurid clothing wanting to help you. That I imagine is important in creating the friendly atmosphere that then the security can sit discreetly behind.

Graham Windeatt: Fundamental. It was just wonderful to see. It was an environment where it really did make you feel very proud of what Sydney accomplished. What I read in the media after that was that Sydney had all the security measures, with train guards SAS or equivalent, there at the ready. But I had quite a trained eye, and it wasn't obvious to me, so Sydney accomplished something that no other Games that I'd been to put into effect, and it was a full compliment to our country and to the people who got the Games here, and how it was carried off.

Mick O'Regan: Now of course Beijing, there's been great attention in recent weeks to the ramping up of security that's occurring in the Chinese capital. They have identified some internal threats, such as people, advocates of the Falun Gong movement perhaps who have maintained quite a high profile protest against the policies of the Chinese government. There are also Muslim ethnic Chinese people from the western area of the country that now seem to be coming into literally, the cross-hairs of the Chinese security system. Do you think that these Games will be more overtly security conscious because of things for example like September 11th?

Graham Windeatt: I think they will. By nature of the country, of the status of China, I think it's significantly different. You could see a little bit of this in Seoul with this presence in mind, and a presence in distance of course of North Korea, but the Seoul Games were the first time I'd ever seen people moving around a city be corralled into security areas for metal detector or bag searches. I've seen this going into venues in every Games but Seoul had a different bent on this where you could be walking just down the main street and be cordoned off and this happened block after block, so in one day just in the general conduct of your business up there, you could go through half a dozen security searches. I believe China with the way it's positioning, will be something similar. And this does dent the sporadic or the lively nature of the celebration that a Games should be. Was, up until the Munich incident. But by nature of China I think it potentially will not be as forthright as Sydney was.

Mick O'Regan: Former Australian Olympic swimmer, Graham Windeatt, my guest this week on The Sports Factor.

[Excerpt of 1972 Olympic Commentary].

Mick O'Regan: Graham Windeatt, competing in Munich, where he finished a valiant second to US's Mike Burton's world record 1500 metres swim.

In Beijing our Grant Hackett will be seeking a third consecutive Gold in the event, an Olympic first in distance swimming.

So, in Graham's opinion, can Grant do it?

Graham Windeatt: Yes.

Mick O'Regan: Good, I'll let him know.

Graham Windeatt: Well look, he is the best on the world stage in time, he certainly can swim the event in a style and technically with his incredible early speed, his maintenance of consistent pace, he has the whole arsenal at his ready. I was very happy to see him not make the open water swimming team, it just would I felt have been a distraction to what the main game was. I was very happy to see him not concentrate on things like the 200 metres freestyle; although he's a fine 200 metre freestyler, he's not in the same calibre as himself in the 1500 as he is in the 200 against his - he's just not that elite of the elite.

So it was great I think that he's not focused on that. And just looking at the 400 and 1500 metres, the difficulty of that is the 400 is early in the Games, the 1500 distance being late in the Games, so it's hard to get ready for both, and I just hope that he's linked towards getting ready for the 1500 metres in the best possible way, even at the sacrifice of his 400 metre performance.

Mick O'Regan: Now Graham, just talking about 1500 metres, I have some limited familiarity with 1500 metres running, and it is very much my favourite athletic events at the Games, partly because it's a short-ish race, where people have to run fast but it's long enough that strategy and tactics and really thinking through the race are critical. Is that the same with 1500 metres swimming? Because obviously you're not jostling or swimming right up beside another competitor the way the runners are, but can you take the listeners and me through the sort of technical side of swimming a great 1500 metres?

Graham Windeatt: Sure. The dynamic in 1500 metre swimming is you just don't have that significant change of pace, as you see in running. So it's a much more tactical event to see really what you've got left in the last 500 metres, and then as you progress. So basically the pace is set over the first 500 metres, some people swim it in different ways, some people swim it in 3 by 500 metres, but the very, very good people really look at individual split times for each 50 metres, and where you see people now like Grant will probably not try and break the field early but he will dictate the pace early on, so if you want to be in the Gold Medal hunt you'll have to go with Grant because no-one's going to have the significant change of pace to make up anything more than 2 to 3 seconds in deficit.

So it'll come to the 1,000 metre mark. What they normally do from 1,000 to the 1,300 metre mark, they will up the pace a little bit depending on who is around them, but because of the specificity that's been used in training, there is good change of speed in these athletes over the last 200 metres. And by that I mean that they may very well be swimming at 58, 100 metre pace, but it's not surprising to see them come home in 53 or 54 over the last 100 metres.

Mick O'Regan: Which I find that's incredible, just in terms of the stamina you must have, that to swim that last couple of hundreds faster than you've swum the middle part of the race is indicative of the extraordinary fitness, isn't it?

Graham Windeatt: It is. And look, the first time that this was used probably significantly in the 1500 metres was Stephen Holland. I mean Stephen Holland was by far for three years the premier, world's best 1500 metre swimmer. He broke the 800 metres, the 1500 metres world records repeatedly over three years. And we were in training camp with Steve for the '76 Olympics, and I saw him do incredible things. The thing that Stephen didn't have and the coaches weren't aware of at the time, was change of pace. Stephen could swim even in training, do a short rest, 100 metre repeats, go a minute, minute, minute, minute, but he couldn't do a 57 to save himself. And that was the way he was trained, it was no fault of Stephen's he was by far the premier 1500 metre swimmer of his day.

Brian Goodell of the United States had this incredible change of pace, and he came home the last 400 metres as I recall, in something like 3.55 when the world record for the 400 metres was 3.53 or 3.54, and it was this change of pace that just Stephen couldn't respond to.

Nowadays there's more specificity in training, a lot more people have got change of pace. In my day, I used to do 25 kilometres, between 20 and 25 kilometres a day training.

Mick O'Regan: A day! When physically would you do that?

Graham Windeatt: Morning and afternoon.

Mick O'Regan: But hours at a time, obviously.

Graham Windeatt: Yes, it was during the peak of the mileage was done during school holidays of course or in training camps. Of course we had extended training camps in those days because we didn't have the access to international travel, we really only had Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games and that was it, and then towards the end of my career World Championships came in and of course now you have World Cups, World Championships, short-course, long-course, there's so much more focus now the racing specificity as well.

Yes, so it was one of these things were miles made champions; that's how I came up, Stephen unfortunately was on the tail-end of that miles made champions, but with the specificity of change of pace, this is what Grant is very, very good at. And so are a few other people in the world now. So people up the tempo, up the tempo, until you probably only have one or maybe two people, and it's going to be that last 200 metres and it will be how much has been taken out of both athletes up to that point in time to see what change of pace they've got over that last 200 metres, 100 metres and of course down to the final lap.

Mick O'Regan: Well let me come back again to that comparison with the 1500 metres track event. Runners like Herb Elliot or Ron Clarke or even say Sebastian Coe had that unbelievable capacity to burn a competitor off, so if they were leading the bunch, someone would challenge them, they would simply up their pace and over the next 50 or 60 metres they would just sustain an increased pace that their rival couldn't maintain and then they'd cut away again. Does that same thing apply in swimming? If Grant Hackett is aware that his closest competitor suddenly looms on his shoulder, will he simply burn that person off by upping a pace that they can't maintain?

Graham Windeatt: He won't do that until the last 200 metres. To go too early you know, the subtle differences between running analogies and swimming analogies is that running you're exposed to all your competitors, you can see everyone all the time, you often see runners running down the straight now looking at the scoreboards, picking up the vision of the TV, watching the competitors behind them. With swimming, if someone goes early in a tactical race, and it usually doesn't happen because usually there is enough awareness of the competitiveness of the other individuals to sort of say 'Well, I know what pace I'm swimming at, I don't believe he's going to maintain that pace', so you often don't see people go with them, you often see early leaders that run last in 1500 metre swimming, unfortunately.

But it will be one of those things where Grant will really back himself to swim a time, and it's that time that he will have focused on in training, it's that time that he will have reasoned that his competitors can't reach, and if you end up with choosing a time that you feel your competitors can't reach and you feel, and there is an exposure to the pace clock, so you can sometimes see the scoreboard, depending on where it's positioned, where something like the Los Angeles Olympics with Kieren Perkins, it was a Lane 8 sort of get out under the radar and try and stay there, and I've seen that done in World Championships in different events as well in swimming.

But I think on this occasion we're going to end up with the two or three top swimmers in the world in the two or three centre lanes of the pool, all exposed to each other all the time, and I think Grant with the experience he's got, will be picking a time, believing that he can do well, and in that last 200 metres, it'll be in for all.

Mick O'Regan: Well talking about being in for all, what's your sense of the rivalry between the American swimming team and the Australian swimming team. Is it, as one person suggested to me, our women versus their men, as far as Medals are concerned?

Graham Windeatt: Look at an individual level you really don't think of that. That's more the bow that's drawn by others. Mostly the individual swimmers are focused individually against each other. So Stephanie Rice will be focused on one or two people from the US team, Grant Hackett will be focused on one or two people. Swimming, while it is a team, it is a very individual sport. But however, it's very important that the Australians get away early to a good performance. It's something that can lift people that otherwise don't see themselves as finalists, that otherwise don't see themselves as a Medallist, and they start to believe in their group dynamic, and I've seen that happen both ways.

In Montreal, to give you the absolute reverse, the entire contingent was the worst to ever represent Australia and we single-handedly I might add, created the Institute of Sport out of that, because the Institute was created as a response to the dismal performances. And there were people probably that had better performances in them than they otherwise put into the competitions, but the dynamic of that team went the other way. There was a disbelief in what we could achieve. So having a belief and getting away to early victories will lift the people in the middle, it doesn't really affect the very top people, but the people that can either perform very well, well, or not so well, it could very well get them into the very well category.

Mick O'Regan: Well look, I don't think you should feel too bad about Montreal, you know, heroic failure seems to be an emblem for Australia, that you know, we celebrate Gallipoli more than we ever have, and if that's not heroic failure at some basic level, I'm not sure what is.

Graham, a final question, just about one of the all-time sporting records which of course is Mark Spitz' haul of 7 individual Gold Medals. Do you think that Michael Phelps from the US team is a realistic prospect to either match or beat that record?

Graham Windeatt: I think he is. He has the flexibility of event much greater than Mark had. When (and I say this in the nicest possible way) but Mark for 7 Gold Medals only swam 4 events, or 4 types of events. He swam the 100 metres freestyle, the 200 metres freestyle, the 100 metres butterfly and the 200 metres butterfly. He just happened to be in the 4 x 100 medley relay team, 4 x 100 freestyle relay team and the 4 x 200 freestyle relay team. So he won 4 individual, where Shane Gould at the same Games won 5 individuals. So Shane, on a direct comparison of individual events, really out-performed Mark Spitz.

Phelps on the other hand has tremendous diversity in his event structure. He has the relays, he has butterfly, he has backstroke, and he has medley. And he is such a cut above the world in some of those events that he can get through heats and finals without really going all-out. He can certainly get through every heat without going all-out. Where a lesser swimmer really has to strain, and even though that his event load during the Games is enormous, he has trained for it, he has diversity of events, so yes, I think he can.

Mick O'Regan: Well it will be fascinating to see how he goes. Graham Windeatt, thank you very much for speaking to The Sports Factor here on ABC Radio National.

Graham Windeatt: Thank you very much, Mick, and thank you for having me.

Mick O'Regan: Graham Windeatt, a proud Australian Olympian.

And that's our show for this week.

But make sure you're tuned into Radio National this Sunday morning at 7am for Encounter, when Kerry Stewart will explore sport and spirituality both at the Olympics and at community level. A program called 'Bells and Whistles'. Don't miss it.

Thanks, as ever, to the production team of Andrew Davies and Peter McMurray, and also thanks to Sabrina Lipovic in ABC Radio Archives.

I'm Mick O'Regan, thanks for your company. I hope you'll join me again in the future for another edition of The Sports Factor here on ABC Radio National.

Guests

Graham Windeatt
Former Australian Olympic swimmer.

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies