Sadly, few of Tracey Wickham’s fellow ex-swimmers were surprised to learn yesterday that the former great is down to her last dollar and threatened with eviction from her Gold Coast flat.
Several years ago Wickham suffered the heartbreak of losing her daughter Hannah to leukaemia. If that wasn’t sufficiently life altering, she’d long ago donated several allocations of normal human vitality to the training pool with nothing but a pool exit sign to tell her where to find the rest of her life.
She is in fact part of a lost generation of swimmers who sacrificed an education to train like pros and get nothing back. Recent funding largesse which gave Ian Thorpe $100,000 while he prevaricated over a comeback wasn’t even a piggy bank’s wink back then.
Did I say Wickham received nothing in return? Make that less than nothing, because when she was thrashing the world by a good several body lengths in her pet distances of 400m and 800m freestyle, she did her patriotic duty and boycotted the Moscow Olympics.
That was two certain gold medals gone forever. Wickham took to heart the loud exhortations to boycott, even though the Malcolm Fraser government infamously left it up to the athletes themselves. Her perennial bridesmaid, Michelle Ford, who was perhaps advised by a more enlightened realpolitik, went to Moscow and came back with a gold medal.
Should any reader suspect that claims of monstrous miles in the pool are always overcooked, consider the following. Wickham is still the holder of a world record of sorts – for completing the most hellish training set ever devised by a coach to torture a swimmer.
Laurie Lawrence once set her 13 one-kilometre swims to do. Each one had to be completed under 12 minutes and she had to leave for the next one with just one minute’s rest. In case your jaw hasn’t bounced back off the floor yet to reboot your brain, that’s a 13-kilometre training session, not counting warm up and warm down, which, knowing Laurie, could have added several more kilometres. And then there were 10 more sessions left do that week.
That’s an important bit of trivia to prevent you trivialising Wickham’s sacrifices. It’s not like a potential Olympic rowing recruit where a coach wanders into a bar, sees a strong wench pulling a beer and leaves her his card for a tryout. Or a kayaker who begins swinging a paddle several times a week at age 14 to represent their country two years later.
No, swimmers are always the real deal. They start earlier and go harder and longer than anyone out there. That’s why no institute apparatchik has ever been able to wander into a school with a bunch of callipers and a head full of key performance indicators and walk out with a swimmer: it’s just too late for talent to make a difference.
And Wickham fell hook, line and sinker for Lawrence’s thunderous edicts to swim hard or go home, or whatever he said back then to make kids believe his words that they could go straight to sporting nirvana forever.
Under such a regime it must have been tempting to switch your day to idle and save the juice for training. But that’s what the best have always done. It’s called vitality prioritising. Wickham could do it better than anyone, that’s all. And there was only ever one priority.
Swimming Australia has a vested obligation to help Wickham, although she isn’t the only one of her peers to have fallen on hard times.
Tracey Wickham is a fighter and is still saying things like ‘I’ll get through this – I’m not a quitter’. But there’s a limit to all gutsy rhetoric and she shouldn’t have to go anywhere near hers.
eloise
Guest
Wake up Simon, Tracey has had mental illnesses for years, that have led to her current plight.
Anita
Guest
I think its important to focus on the situation as it is for her now not meander off topic about the Olympics? So how do we help Tracey? Unequivocally Tracey is still suffering unresolved and complicated grief, this is something unless you have endured it..the layman cannot understand nor make any comment on, not even me, someone who IS suffering unresolved complicated grief, Ptsd...watching your daughter die? would cause Ptsd without doubt. When someone you love is dying tragically and horrifically, so are you...it feels as though you are dying alive. To have had a such a severe Pyschical accident as well and being the spine? its the core of all our mobility, as humans that type of injury and the merry go round of getting no where medically but enduring the chronic pain and medications lead in itself to depression. I am a sufferer with chronic lower spinal damage...For me Tracey's story resonates on many levels. Printing a story of her plight is only helpful if it raises an awareness that offers her practical, useful and realistic help in all the areas where she is ailing. I know from my experience that what I felt most is Isolation and a desolation entirely hard to explain. She cant help herself. What I learned was what we/my children and needed was practical help, someone steering the wheel and driving us literally towards resources and support or bringing it to us. Tracey needs, support and relief in whatever form needed. Having the fear and anguish of financial problems, wondering where you're going to live in a month or how to pay bills or eat? Is it any wonder people in this situation Suicide? of course not! its a means to an end when you are living with absolutely NO hope. Its very real for many people who suffer in silence. I can only offer support. How does one send her support, it can make all the difference.
Professor Rosseforp
Guest
Not meant to be mean, Simon, but meant to contradict the implied claim that athletes who went to the Games were not patriotic. I did not say that Tracey took the money, and made sure not to comment on her personal circumstances ; I was correcting the point made, that people stayed away from the Games due to patriotism. People were enticed to stay away by a cash payment ; some took it, some didn't ; some did not heed Mr Fraser because they thought he was wrong for involving sport and politics. This does not reflect on her, but may on Mr Fraser. I was taking aim at social issues that have a medical foundation ; you or I don't need medical qualifications to look at the number of people in gaol, on the streets, or in institutions, who have psychiatric or psychological problems, and to see that the medical system -- not medicine itself -- is not working for these people. In some cases, medical practitioners shy away from particular patients because they are notoriously difficult to help. I have direct experience of this, and have read the literature on the subject. I am as saddened by Ms Wickham's plight as anybody else, who does not know her personally. I'm saddened by the thousands upon thousands who are in the same position. As a society we could do better, and should do.
Simon
Guest
Mean commentary given the individual circumstances, and you have no specific evidence that Tracey "took the money" Very untrue that a lot of great swimmers came from a middle class background.What about Rowers, Fencers,Archers and Shooters? Them too? Asinine and lacking magnanimity, even taking aim at medical issues despite your lack of medical qualifications.
Simon
Guest
As a fellow former Homebush Boys High School student some years below you, I was always in awe of your ability in the pool Brad, we all were during the 1970's and I just want to say how well written and spot on your article is.We need to keep track and ensure Tracey is treated well by the system as she truly deserves it, for she did us all proud so many times over with her grit and courage, and the time comes when we need to pay back.
Professor Rosseforp
Guest
"she did her patriotic duty and boycotted the Moscow Olympics" -- surely you are not suggesting that those who competed were not patriotic? Opinion was divided, but many saw this as a political stunt to appease the Americans on behalf of Mr Fraser. And you would know very well that Mr Fraser did not "leave it up to the athletes". He lay cold hard cash on the table to convince athletes not to go to the Olympics, and many took the cash and gave up the glory. Nobody doubts that swimmers work extremely hard, and do so from a very early age. A lot of good swimmers did not become great because their parents didn't have the time, money or inclination to invest in the sport. In those days, most swimmers for Australia came from a middle class background, or a working class background that made a lot of sacrifices. Their success does not give them any guarantees for financial security, and certainly did not in those days. Ms Wickham has had her fair share of bad luck ; all of us have, if we live long enough. Australia has a pretty good social security support system, to which Ms Wickham is presumably entitled, although it may mean a reduction in living standards. I think her plight also highlights the problems of our mental health system, which is good at treating some forms of illness, and very poor at treating more difficult cases. Although I am not a diagnostician, I have seen plenty of people with the impossible-to-treat psychological/psychiatric problems, and these are usually at the core of their social, emotional and physical dysfunction.
Johnno
Guest
Brad you know a lot more about swimming than me, but was Tracey Wickham despite missing the Olympics, in reality, was she as great as Susie O'Neil,and in Stef Rice's league of swimming status. Johanna Griggs is another one we'll never know how good she might have been too, as chronic fatigue ruined her career.
Worlds Biggest
Guest
Very sad to read this, hopefully Swimming Australia amongst others can lend some support.
SM
Guest
I'm sure you think you're really clever posting a comment like this.
pjm
Roar Rookie
Are you lettinf her stay at your place?