OK, Kieren Perkins, I get it. I see where you’re coming from when you call for Australian swimmers to focus on their sport rather than being “celebrity show ponies”. I do.
I get that our elite swimmers have gotten up to a bit of mischief from time to time. I know that they have not always respected time-honoured principles of etiquette and decorum.
I accept that on occasion, some of our fine, sleek superfish have perhaps had a drink too many, stayed out an hour too late, played the odd juvenile prank, taken a few more Stilnox than was strictly necessary, been just that bit more moronic than experts recommend.
I don’t dispute any of this, and I know that it’s possible that their busy idiocy-centric lifestyle may have negatively affected their performance and the performance of those in close proximity to them who have mental ages above thirteen.
And I accept that Kieren Perkins was a mighty champion of Australian sport, an athlete who changed the way we thought about hairless men holding their breath for extended periods, the man who came to show us just how inadequate Glen Housman really was.
I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about when on the subject of focusing on swimming performance – he did it, after all, for a terribly long time himself, and nobody has ever been more ideally suited to selling cereal.
But he’s neglecting one very important fact in his criticisms, a fact that really puts all the hotel shenanigans and curfew-breaking and sleeping-tablet-gorging into perspective and suggests that maybe, just maybe, we could cut these guys some freaking slack.
And that fact is this: swimming is really, really, really boring.
Unbelievably boring.
Inconceivably tedious.
Irredeemably dull.
And I don’t just mean for spectators. Of course we all know how deathly monotonous it is to watch competitive swimming: that’s why we never really do, except for every couple of years when a major event comes around and we grit our teeth and put it on out of a sort of grim, hopeless sense of patriotism.
But if it’s bad for us, imagine what it’s like for those poor bastards in the water.
Splashing away, flapping their way to the end of the pool, and then turning around and flapping to the other end, and then turning around again, and doing it about a hundred times every day while a nasty middle-aged troll in shorts yells at you from the side, and swallowing nasty chemical-y water, and having to do it all while wearing incredibly unflattering outfits and horrible tight caps that pinch your ears.
Think about the dreadful warping effect that must have on the psyche.
Unless you’ve spent a lifetime staring at that black line, breathing to the left and wondering why the hell they took up swimming as a child when they could have taken up football or hockey or some other sport that doesn’t hold training sessions at 5am, you can’t understand the soul-crushing boredom that is the swimmer’s lot.
Do you think they want to be out there, spinning their arms around and kicking their big surfboard feet and wriggling around underwater like special-needs dolphins?
Do you think they enjoy learning how to do tumble-turns? Do you think they consider goggles fashionable?
Of course they don’t. They’re not doing it for pleasure, they’re just doing it for us. They know that we derive a sense of pride and joy and vicious irrational nationalism when they touch the wall first, and they are slaves to duty.
Bred in the hothouse of professional government-funded sporting institutions, they know nothing but service to the greater good, and they slog away in that cold, unforgiving water for the reward only of doing their bit for the cause of proving which country is the best country.
And given that, isn’t it only fair that we let them “blow off a little steam” from time to time? Shouldn’t we be willing to excuse the odd late night or Stilnox binge as the youthful high spirits and natural hi-jinks of young people tethered to life of nightmarish surrealism with no chance of escape?
Can’t we allow them a bit of bad behaviour in the interests of making their torturous lives a little bearable, if only for a few hours at a time? After all, it’s not as if they’ve murdered anyone or set fire to any animals the way that footballers do pretty much every weekend with our blessing. All they want to do is have a bit of fun, in a small and really kind of pathetic way.
So enough with the condemnation, Kieren. It’s easy to tell people to “grow up and just swim”, but the fact is any reasonable person who followed that advice would attempt to drown themselves halfway through their first training session.
Is that the kind of blood you want on your hands?
They have no lives. Let them have their sleeping pills. It’s the least we can do for the poor sad fools.
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