I was invited to give a keynote speech in Melbourne, Australia for their Sporting Integrity Conference hosted by the Victoria Police. It was at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Club. I spoke about the widespread corruption, match-fixing and the toxic nature of the “experts” paid by Qatar diverting much of the sports integrity industry. I will write later about those themes and why such a speech is impossible in Canada – because our fabulous athletes are constantly betrayed by our politicians – but for now, in honour of ANZAC day, the final part of the speech – The Spirit of Australian Sport

I arrived on Monday, exhausted, and tired after a three day journey from America. I won’t bore you with the details – myself and the organizers wanted to get me here in a way that respected the Australian taxpayers – but it featured a typhoon in Manila, Philippines and lots of long flights cramped at the back of the plane.

The Customs and Border Protection officer at Sydney Airport welcomed me with your casual but deeply warm way and asked me how my journey was. I told him it had been a long one and he said, “Fair on you, mate. Now you can enjoy yourself and stay a long time.”

“I am afraid not, I fly back in a couple of days.”

“What?! You came all that way and you are going to make a speech then turn around and go back. Why? Why would you come all that way to do that?”

I didn’t have time to properly tell him. It was not the time or place, so I just said a few words and went off to get a coffee but this is what I wanted to say to him about why I made this journey.

The last time I was in Australia I had to get up at 5.00 a.m. to go from Beerwah in Queensland up to Gladstone on the Coast of the Great Barrier Reef. I drove in the pre-dawn light along the iconic National Highway No.1 through towns whose very names are symbolic of Australia: Yandina, Gympie, Maryborough, Howard, and Childers.

It was the not the true Outback but it was still Country and in many of those small towns have seen far, far better days and are facing difficult challenges but in each place, at the very center of the community is a true sporting infrastructure.

In the early dawn, I saw a scene in front of one of the town’s swimming pools. A Mum, and her two daughters, they must have been about 10 and 12 years old. The mother was carrying two enormous bags of swimming equipment and one of her daughters who was running ahead to get to her practice had absolutely nothing in her hands. She turned and made a joke at her Mum. You could see in that brief vignette, the Mum who had gotten up probably far earlier than she had wanted to drive her children to swimming practice, festooned with her daughter’s swimming kit, she. She smiled back to her daughter and their entire relationship – like Bingo and Bluey four or five years later – encapsulated in that one happy moment of family life.

About an hour later, I drove into another town I don’t want to embarrass myself or show a lack of respect for I am not sure of the name of the place, but I do want to say that there was, in this small Australian town, a beautiful footie pitch. Its deep green grass was bathed in a golden light of dawn. There were half-a-dozen lads, perhaps thirteen, fourteen years old, hacking about with a ball – laughing and having a good time. There was one man standing on the side of the pitch having a cup of tea. You know him. I don’t mean you know that particular man but you know people like him. He was wearing a white t-shirt and shorts, his tummy bulged out over his shorts like a whale surfacing the sea. He was wearing a ridiculously wide sun hat – but you know that he had also gotten up early, gone done to the practice field and unlocked it – why? So the lads could play footie. No ulterior motive. Nothing of the subjects that we, sadly, have been discussing today. Just a good guy or as you say here, a decent bloke, sacrificing his own comfort so that the kids could play.

Those are the people that are the true embodiment of Australian sport. There are tens-of-thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of them in every community in this great sporting country. No one pays them. There is not some rich sponsorship deal. There is not a TV contract. When my friend and inspiration David Howman, who is here today, is fighting the good fight in the halls of the big sports organizations like the International Olympic Committee he does not see them there.

But this great nation of athletes is built on those people. The coaches, the parents, the referees, the officials, the umpires, the ones who don’t get paid. The ones who are doing it not for ambition or personal gain but just because it is the right thing to do – to spread the joy of sports to as many people as possible.

Because of those people, Australia is a great sporting nation.

They teach their people a particular, unmatched spirit that shows up wherever you are in Australia: the country towns of Queensland, the mining communities in Western Australia, or here in cosmopolitan Melbourne.

So what is that spirit of Australian sport?

Let me share a few stories that encapsulate the true nature of Australian spirit of sport.

The Proverbial Middle Finger

In 1912, the International Olympic Committee, finally, got around to allowing women to compete at swimming races at the Stockholm Olympics. Two Australian women promptly announced they were going to go compete. And just as quickly, the head of the Australian Swimming Association, a woman, announced that no Australian woman would ever swim in a pool in front of men. In response the two women gave the Association the proverbial middle finger and fund raised their own money, took passage on ship and traveled around the world with their sisters as their chaperons to compete in the first ever 100-meters Olympic Female Swimming event.

They won. They won the gold and silver medals.

Job done: IOC declares a new sport for women, Australian women travel around the world, and win the event.

Sixty years later, the ABC – the Australian Broadcasting Corporation – tracked down one of those women and asked what it was like to win the gold medal at the Stockholm Olympics and this, grandmum-type woman wearing a cardigan and glasses shrugged and said, “I just went to Stockholm and did the same thing at the Olympics that I did every day with my mates at Bondi Beach.”

That’s the spirit of Australian sport.

Losing Count

It was the same at the Montreal Special Olympics. Please forgive me. I am a man who is bad with the right title and the correct, current names but it was the first Olympics held for people who have physical and mental challenges. In the 10,000 meters there was a young woman who did not just win, she dominated the event. She was swimming laps ahead of the rest of the competition. The commentary of her final lap is the stuff of TV history. It went something like this, “The Australian swimmer is coming down to the final few meters, she has smashed the Olympic record, she has smashed the World Record, there she goes the winner of the 10,000 Meters – but she has kept going!!! She has lost count of her laps…”

Sure enough the young Australian swimmer, had forgotten how many laps she had swum and her coach and one of the Olympic officials were literally running down the side of the pool waving and flagging her down to stop. She does about three-quarters down the pool and her head emerges looking around to see what happened. Her coach is jumping up and down with joy and the official is giving her the thumbs up.

Now, if you watch the video on YouTube there are, of course, the negative comments – the stupid making very stupid comments about the swimmer and her challenges.

But not me – her guts, her determination, alone against the world, never giving up, her absolute refusal to never stop whatever happens – that’s the spirit of Australian sport.

Never an Easy Race

It was the same thing that I witnessed in 2009. I was in Rome on personal business. The World Aquatic Championship was happening in the Mediterranean port of Ostia. I deeply respect Italian history and culture but sometimes, as a man, I find their masculinity a little garish – the medallions around the necks, the macho swagger and boasting. The Italians were like that summer. I don’t blame them. Ostia was the same town where the Romans had established their connection to the sea over-two-thousand years ago. The Italians thought they had the keynote event – the 25 km sewn up. Their long-distance champion was the best in the world. Ostia was his place. The Mediterranean is an Italian swimming pool. It was going to be a nice, easy race.

But there was an Australian there. As the world knows, but the Italians forgot, it is never an easy race when there is an Australian there.

All of Italy was transfixed to their television screens on long hot day as the Australian swimmer turned that 25 kilometre swim in open waters into a sprint. The two men raced each other into the harbour after a race where first one and then and another had taken the lead.

Three years later, the same Australian swimmer came back to Europe to swim the English Channel and established the fastest time ever recorded – a time that still stands.

That’s the spirit of Australian sport.

A Sports Shrine

When you are an Australian athlete you walk in a long line of great athletes going back two hundred years who have manifested the spirit of Australian sport. Let us make no mistake – we are not standing alone in this room. We are surrounded by the spirits and great ghosts of those who have gone before us.

Because we are not in a business meeting, not in a conference room, not in a sports stadium but in a shrine. The Melbourne Cricket Club as you know better than me was built in honour of the 11 men of your nation that went to England on August 29, 1882 and took on the class-conscious English with all their own jokes about colonials, at their own game, in their own country, in their own home – their MCC, The Oval cricket ground – and beat them. Beat them so badly you made the sport your own.

That is why I am here – for the spirit of Australian sport.

That is why I sat at the back of the plane, in cramped and crunched circumstances – for the spirits of Australian sport.

Please, don’t tell me that there is not a single person in this room who would not have done the same thing for the sake of Australian sport.

Please don’t tell me that there is anyone in this room who if they got a call at 3.00 a.m saying that there was an athlete in trouble – would not get up and fight to protect the spirit of Australian sport.

Please don’t tell me that sport – wherever it is played – be it in your country, mine or anywhere in the world – is not worth that fight.

Please don’t tell me that all those sports scandals we have spoken about today: all those athletes who are betrayed by the conflict of interests, the corruption, the crime are not worth the fight.

This is our moment. This is our time and tide. It is our generation. From the failing hands of those who have gone before us are passed the torches to us now.

It is our job to protect sport. It can be saved. It should be saved. It must be saved.

Thank you.