Greatest sporting debuts by Australians

Regardless of how successful a debut is, every sportsman remembers them and, of course, there have been some brilliant maiden efforts in sports history.

Eddy Merckx won the Tour de France in his first attempt in 1969.

Frances Ouimet, Keegan Bradley and Ben Curtis won golf majors in their first attempt.

Wilt Chamberlain scored 43 points and collected 28 rebounds in his first NBA game.

What are the most impressive debuts by Australian athletes? These five performances are hard to beat.

Edwin Flack
Edwin Flack was Australia’s first Olympic athlete. In fact he was the only athlete from Australia to attend the Athens games in 1896.

Flack reached Athens plagued by sea sickness after a rough boat trip.

On the opening day of the Games he won his first race, the first heat of the 800 metres, to qualify for the final.

On day two he beat American favourite, Arthur Blake, in the 1500 metres final and then won 800 metres title on day four.

‘The Lion of Athens’ also competed in the Marathon and led with 10km to go before passing out.

He was third in the men’s double tennis, but didn’t receive a bronze medal as they weren’t awarded in 1896.

John Coleman
John Coleman had been training with Essendon for three years before he actually played a full senior game.

He was deemed too young to start as a 17-year-old, but was always going to play eventually – he’d kicked 296 goals in 37 games over two years for his club side, Hastings. In one game Coleman kicked 23 goals!

In his 1949 Essendon debut, aged 20, Coleman kicked 12 goals, including a goal with his first kick in senior football as the Bombers thrashed Hawthorn by 63 points.

In his first season Coleman went on to kick 100 goals and win the Premiership.

An honourable mention for greatest debut in VFL/AFL history goes to William James. James’ only match for Richmond was in their maiden premiership triumph against Collingwood in 1920.

James kicked a late goal in a 17-point victory. He later shot himself in the foot while hunting and never played football again.

Betty Cuthbert
Betty Cuthbert thought she had no chance of being chosen to represent Australia at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, so she bought tickets to attend the games as a spectator.

However not long before the event she broke a world record in the 200 metres and then became the ‘Golden Girl’ in Melbourne.

Cuthbert first reached the finals of the 100 metres, setting an Olympic record of 11.4 seconds in her heat, while Australian World Record holder Shirley Strickland de la Hunty was eliminated.

Cuthbert, as expected, won the 200 metres title in a time of 23.4 seconds and then ran the final leg in the 4 x 100 metres relay, which the Australian team won in a new world record.

Cuthbert, in her first major international event, aged 18, became the first Australian to win three gold medals at a single Olympics and remains the only individual from athletics to do so.

The track events in Melbourne preceded the swimming, at which Murray Rose won three gold medals on his Olympics debut.

Bob Massie
The 1972 Ashes series was shared 2-2; it remains the last Ashes series to be drawn.

In the second Test at Lord’s, Australia won by eight wickets thanks in large part to debutant Bob Massie.

The right arm fast-medium bowler took match figures of 16/137. He sneered 8/84 in the first innings and 8/53 in the second.

The only English batsman Massie didn’t dismiss was Brian Luckhurst. Otherwise his supreme swing terrorised a batting line-up that included Geoff Boycott, Tony Greig, Basil D’Oliveira and John Edrich.

Massie held the world record for best match figures on debut for 16 years until he was passed, by one run, by India’s Narendra Hirwani.

Massie’s figures are the fourth best bowling figures in a match of all time and still the best by an Australian.

An honourable mention goes to Charles Bannerman, who scored 165 out of 245 in the first ever Ashes Test. His innings made up 67% of Australia’s first innings total, still a record for the highest percentage of runs in a Test innings.

Ian Thorpe
In 1997, at the age of 14, Ian Thrope became the youngest male swimmer to ever represent Australia.

A year later at the World Championships in Perth he won the 400 metres freestyle to become the youngest ever individual male World Champion, aged 15 years and three months.

Thorpe, ranked fourth heading into the race, established the fourth fastest time in history and passed Grant Hackett after a large deficit on the final lap.

Earlier Thorpe was a member of the 4 x 200 metres freestyle relay team that won a gold medal, Australia’s first win in an international meeting in that discipline since 1956.

Thorpe would go onto enjoy an unbeaten streak of nearly seven years in the 400 metres freestyle. He broke the world record in the stroke five times.

At the Sydney Olympics, aged 17, Thorpe matched Murray Rose’s feat of three gold medals in the same Olympics.

Rose and Thorpe are the only Australian males to win three gold medals in a single Olympics.