Murray Rose was Australian sport’s original golden guy. Everything about him glittered – his fair hair, his smile, his Hollywood looks and the medals around his neck.
Some rate him our greatest swimmer ever, and not because they are looking back through Rose-tinted glasses.
Rose did everything anyone else did, only he did it first, for love not money, and in a manner that remains a benchmark for humility, grace and sportsmanship.
He was the Adonis of Australia’s first Olympics, at Melbourne in 1956, in the way that Ian Thorpe became the glamour boy of the second, at Sydney almost half a century later.
It was the first televised Olympics, and Rose was made for it.
Many have called Rose the Ian Thorpe of his day, but it is truer to say Thorpe was the Murray Rose of his day.
Rose, who died this week of leukemia aged 73, was the first man in Olympic history to successfully defend his 400m title.
This feat, achieved at Melbourne then Rome four years later in 1960, was not matched until Thorpe won back-to-back titles in 2000 and 2004.
It’s Tokyo to a brick that Rose would have won three in a row, too, had Australia’s swimming officials of the day not had the flexibility of a steel-reinforced concrete pylon.
By that stage he was studying in the US, and still swimming world record times.
But Australian swimming insisted on him returning to compete in selection trials for the 1964 Games in Japan, something exams prevented him from doing.
“So he missed out (on Tokyo) and we missed out on getting a gold medal because he wasn’t in our team,” said fellow great Dawn Fraser.
“He had the same sort of problems with Australian swimming that I did,” said Fraser, whose golden career was marred and prematurely ended by differences with officialdom.
Only by one significant measure – Olympic gold medals won – does Thorpe touch out Rose as Australia’s most successful Olympian.
Thorpe won five and Rose four, the same as Fraser and athletics golden girl Betty Cuthbert.
But another 400m gold in Tokyo would have set that record straight, too, putting him on the statistical pedestal now occupied by Thorpe alone.
Rose, a 17-year-old at Melbourne, remains the youngest Australian Olympian to win three gold medals at one Games.
In addition to the 4x200m relay and the 400m freestyle he won the 1500m.
In the specialised modern age could anyone have imagined Thorpe winning the 400m then taking on Kieren Perkins or Grant Hackett over the metric mile?
Rose came close to successfully defending his Olympic long-distance title, too, but had to settle for silver in the 1500m in Rome behind fellow Australian John Konrads.
Rose was a pioneer in and out of the pool, especially where diet was concerned.
He was a vegetarian in an age which wasn’t quite ready for vegetarians.
“He was so dominating as far as his swimming went, and here he was doing it on carrot juice and vegetables, which was unheard of in those days,” said Fraser.
“We’d all be eating steak and eggs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but he wouldn’t have any of it.”
“Murray wasn’t an iconic figure of Australian swimming, he was an icon of world swimming,” said his Melbourne relay teammate John Devitt.
“His performance in Rome in the 400m freestyle I would put up there with one of the great moments of Australian Olympic competition.”
Konrads calls Rose one of the greatest swimmers of all time, noting that other 1500m greats had much more assistance.
Two-times Olympic champion Hackett, for example, enjoyed strong financial support from sponsors and the Australian government, and Russian Vladimir Salnikov, the first swimmer to break the 15-minute barrier, had the Soviet system of the 1980s behind him.
“Murray did it all on his own in a sport and an event that needed long hours in the water training,” Konrads said.
“That’s hard to do when there’s no money in it for you.
“In the amateur era he was the greatest long-distance swimmer of all time.”
Hackett called Rose “one of the true greats of the sport and a major inspiration to me”.
The head coach of the US swim team at Rome, Gus Stager, this week declared Rose “the greatest swimmer who ever lived, greater even than Johnny Weissmuller”.
Swimming Australia President David Urquhart said Rose’s achievements were the stuff of legend.
“He was part of the swimming DNA in this country,” he said.
“His success inspired a generation.”
Australian Olympic Committee President John Coates said Rose was one of Australia’s greatest Olympians, “not only as a four-time Olympic champion but also because of his support and promotion of the very best Olympic values and because of the way he conducted himself”.
Rose also won four gold and two silver medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth.
He was one of a special eight chosen to bear the IOC flag at the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony.
His name lives on in an avenue in the Olympic Park precinct, in the record books and in the memories of all who saw him swim.
It’s a pretty good time to be a Tasmanian sports fan right now. After years in the sporting wilderness with not much to celebrate,…
World record-breaking Australian swimmers Mollie O'Callaghan and Kaylee McKeown have headlined the honours as their sport dominated the AIS Performance Awards. Swimming won six…
Kaylee McKeown has completed an extraordinary weekend in Budapest with a third race win and the title of overall women's World Cup champion bringing…
I have always enjoyed watching running and swimming global championships as my two favourite racing sports covering sprint to long distances without the aid…
Australia's Ariarne Titmus has reclaimed the women's 400 metres freestyle world record with a stunning victory at the world championships in Japan. Titmus emphatically…
The jam-packed month-by-month quiz full of 2022 sports trivia!
