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Watching Sunday’s French Open first round encounter between Lleyton Hewitt and Gilles Simon, I was fervently hoping Lleyton could pull off a minor miracle and win.
Of course he didn’t, but he came very close and for that reason I was filled with pride. Pride for a first round loss…
When I was young I used to despise Hewitt. His arrogance and showmanship irked me. But that was at a time when I could pick and choose which Australian sports stars to love or loathe.
Now there seems to be such a lack of genuine Aussie talent on the world stage that every winner is a cherished star I cannot take for granted.
We never dominated the world so to speak, but for our small population, we were always represented so strongly across most sports. Have we since diminished in quality, or has the rest of the world slowly caught up and overtaken us in sporting prowess?
Growing up during the turn of the century to the mid 2000’s, I had an abundance of teams and individuals to follow in their success. My memories go as far back as 1999 when we won some World Cups, and 2000 where we won a heap of Olympic medals and I had heroes like Ian Thorpe, Cathy Freeman and Grant Hackett to adore.
Following on from there we had the Wallabies under Eales and Gregan (minus the Jonny Wilkinson World Cup); Waugh’s record breaking test team; our 2003 Davis Cup winners; the Socceroos golden generation; and our omni-present, all conquering swim teams.
In comparison, our transition since then has been painful.
When you think of the Wallabies you get the much maligned Quade Cooper; we have a cricket team that has been labeled one of the weakest ever; Bernard Tomic has untapped potential but poor attitude (and don’t get me started on the John Tomic/Damir Dokic comparisons); our Socceroos under Holger Osieck are struggling to qualify for the World Cup, with many players stagnating in mediocre leagues; and our swimming team is synonymous with behavioral shortcomings.
Yes, when I think about it, it hasn’t been all that bad. Sally Pearson and Anna Meares respectively hurdled and cycled their ways to gold medals; Cadel Evans and Adam Scott were the first Aussies to win the most prestigious events (Tour de France and the US Masters) in their respective sports; and Sam Stosur won the US Open.
But it is the sports we traditionally participated in so valiantly throughout the early 2000s that we now struggle in the most. Are our next generation of potential sporting heroes becoming couch potatoes? Are other governments investing more in sports than Australia is?
The situation can be best summed up by Hewitt’s ‘C’MON’ celebration. Once a roar of triumphant arrogance, it has now descended into a war cry of futile defiance.
Are we in a sporting drought? Have there been worse before? Or did I simply take for granted being raised in an era of perceived excellence abroad?
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