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Neil Mottram will choose brother over wife in Beijing. Mottram, whose basketball career is in limbo after the collapse of the Sydney Kings, will be a busy spectator at next month’s Olympics.
His wife Jenni Screen is a member of the Australian women’s basketball team which is hoping to go one better than their silver medal performances in Sydney and Athens.
And his older brother is champion distance runner Craig Mottram, one of Australia’s leading track and field medal hopes in the 5,000m.
A scheduling clash looms on the penultimate day of the Games on August 23, when the women’s basketball and men’s 5,000m finals are on at the same time.
Craig Mottram said his brother – and their parents – had already confirmed they would be at the athletics track, rather than the basketball court, if he and Screen were both in action that evening.
“They’re coming to watch me, we’ve already decided that,” Mottram said yesterday from his training camp in St Moritz, Switzerland.
“I spoke to my sister-in-law yesterday and she said Neil was going to come and watch me run, which is good.
“He’ll be over there watching her all through the Games so for that one night he’s being gentlemanly enough to come and watch me run.”
Neil Mottram missed selection in the Boomers squad for Beijing, although he was a member of the national team which won gold at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.
That also presented him with some scheduling issues, as the gold medal match against New Zealand clashed with the heats of the 1,500m.
“They won and he got all his team to come across and supposedly watch me win the 1,500 and we all know what happened there,” said Craig Mottram, who was pushed over in the final after finishing a gallant second in the 5,000m earlier in the Games.
“So he’s the only one with a gold medal at the moment.”