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Petria's memory lane

By Geoff McClure
August 18, 2004

Petria Thomas is competing in her third Olympic Games, but this is the most special of all, not least because she won her first gold medal in Saturday night's 4x100m medley relay, followed by her first individual gold in the next night's 100m butterfly.

But it's what happened three hours after her Sunday night triumph that she will probably cherish more than anything. It was about 11pm, after more interviews than a normally media-shy Thomas would have thought possible, that she headed for the aquatic centre's exit. The short trip that required her to walk on to the pool deck just one more time. Nobody has a picture of what became a very emotional moment for her because nobody else was there; not one of the 10,000-plus crowd who had earlier roared her to victory, not an official, not even a cleaner.

"I was with her until we reached the door on to the pool but stopped there when I could see what was about to happen," Australian swimming's media boss, Ian Hanson, told us yesterday. Suddenly realising that she was alone, that the pool deck was deserted and deathly quiet, Petria just strolled across to her lane (five) and stood there for three, maybe four minutes and soaked up what she had achieved.

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"It was a very special moment for me," a misty-eyed Thomas told Hansen when she rejoined him, before returning to where she posed for some happy snaps with Hansen, and a few others, all of whom have become friends from years of travelling on the international circuit.

Look what I've got

It had been a teary night for the girl who for years lived in the shadow of Australia's most famous butterfly swimmer, Susie O'Neill, and at one stage even had to overcome shoulder reconstructions in pursuit of gold. Earlier, in between her media commitments, and with the gold medal around her neck, she emerged from one of her interviews right into the arms of her husband, Julian Jones, an Australian Institute of Sport coach, the pair bursting into tears the moment they spotted each other.

Tonight Thomas will be back at a packed aquatic centre, for two of her remaining three events, but in particular eyeing the 200m, the event that she had said before these Games was her best chance of glory, hopefully from lane five - although lane four would do - and hopefully for yet another gold medal.

Who's a wimp now?

If Ian Thorpe read every word written about him he would need an extra day in his week. Mind you, given his home country star status he'd probably get sick of all the glowing tributes anyway. But here's one that might cause him to raise an eyebrow, not from Australia though, but from the United States. Before Monday night's 200m freestyle showdown with the American star Michael Phelps, a Baltimore Sun sportswriter, Stephen Kiehl, was moved to compare the two. He noted that the gulf between them was as wide as the distance between their hometowns, Baltimore and Sydney.

Kiehl wrote: "Phelps is the loveable, goofy kid who plays video games with his friends. Thorpe, on the other hand, has rock star hair and matinee idol looks, plus his own underwear line." All of which is pretty harmless stuff, until Kiehl went searching for the reason why Phelps entered the 200m race, even though he was not favoured, "just for the chance to take on Thorpe, yet Thorpe withdrew from the 200 metre individual medley, in which Phelps is favoured". And the sting? Kiehl said: "How do they say wimp in Australian?" Given the events of Saturday and Monday nights I wonder if he's still asking the question.

Golden dreams

So what does an Olympic gold medallist do with her precious haul in the first 24 hours after her moment of glory? Well, in trap shooter Suzy Balogh's case the only time it left her neck was when she showered, and even then she gave it to her physio to look after it. The 31-year-old said yesterday that she even slept with it on. "I was a bit concerned I would end up with a black eye - or strangle myself," Balogh joked. "Actually I didn't really sleep much at all. I was too pumped."

What a bummer

Olympic Games are about winning medals - but unfortunately it can also be about not achieving your dreams. The weightlifter Maosheng Le, of China, didn't quite make it, not only failing at this attempt in the men's 62 kilogram category but ending up on his backside in the process. As for the French fencer Brice Guyart, he struck problems in his bout with Italy's Salvatore Sanzo. Talk about being foiled.

Move over, princess

Princess Anne may be royalty but even she takes a back seat to the superstars at the Olympics, although she's a former Olympian. Better make that loses her seat. On Monday night at the swimming she took her place in the stands next to the former Olympic boss Juan Antonio Samaranch. But at one point she left it and later returned to discover that the American icon Mark Spitz had moved in, getting friends to take a picture of him beside the great man. Unaware that the princess was standing behind him waiting to reclaim her seat, Spitz chatted for a while and then, to return to his spot two rows back, even planted his big left foot on the chair, requiring Anne to have to brush it before she sat down again.

Silence is golden

One of the accommodation problems facing Seven's Athens contingent is that its staff cannot get the network's Olympic feed beamed into the media village. Well, they could have - had management been prepared to cough up the cost of doing so - $10,000. We at the Herald know all about that because, just like at the village, our main press centre office also only gets supplied with mostly commentary-free coverage. And when we asked how much to have the dulcet tones of Bruce McAvaney and Co piped in we were quoted the same price.