Source :- PERTH NOW NEWS
When Glasgow was turned gold and green, awash with Australian medals in the pool, on the track and in the velodrome, it was easy to be seduced into believing this Commonwealth Games will be a springboard to glory at Los Angeles and even beyond to a home Brisbane Olympics.
Er, not quite so fast.
The most dominant Australian performance ever seen at the ‘Friendly Games’ carried caveats.
As Rohan Taylor, Australia’s swimming head coach observed rather brutally – but in no way dismissively, because he accepts the Games were an important stepping stone to the Pan Pacs, worlds and 2028 Olympics – Glasgow was “a lower-standard meet”.
Delightful, even exhilarating at times – but still lower standard.
That, alas, is becoming increasingly true of the Games. They’re still enjoyable competition for both athletes and spectators alike, they’re still worthwhile, but the inescapable feeling is they’re still an afterthought for the very best performers.
So top British athletes ignored the track to concentrate on the Euros, and leading Canadian swimmers skipped it to focus on the Pan Pacs.
Matt Richardson, once of our parish and now the UK’s top cycling sprinter, felt it was so humdrum he wasn’t even planning to fly in to Scotland until the day the track program started.
Alas, he had a crash and didn’t make it at all, though triple champion Leigh Hoffman’s “good riddance” comment suggested how much the Aussies really cared.
No, they were too busy being the ruthless Pacmen of these Games, gobbling up 76 medals in the pool all told, another 34 on the track and 28 more in the velodrome.
Yet how would those figures translate onto a ruthless ultra-competitive global stage?
Well, only two of those dominant Aussie performances in the pool – Cam McEvoy’s 50m freestyle and Sam Short’s 400m freestyle – would have been good enough to win gold at the Paris Olympics.
“And the Americans are going to be as tough as nails on home soil,” warned Taylor, making it clear Australia will be swimming with the sharks in LA.
At Scotstoun Stadium, too, not one Australian athletics performance, time or distance-wise, would have troubled the scorers in Paris 2024.
Yet for all the brutal reality of what’s to come, Glasgow was an event to keep Australian sport dreaming, an event to tantalise with the promise of what could be.
So we saw a young freestyler Flynn Southam seemingly ending one era and perhaps ushering in a new one when he became the first Aussie to beat the great Kyle Chalmers in international 100m fare.
Yet Glasgow wasn’t just a springboard for the up-and-comers; it had a welcome restorative effect on some golden oldies too.
So, the next day, ‘King Kyle’ rebounded to win joint-gold in the 50m butterfly, with his fellow ‘superdad’ Cam McEvoy teasing us all with the idea that the two old boys could still be around gracing the speed events, at the age of 38 and 34 respectively, in Brisbane.
If anything, the track and field revival is even more encouraging.
“What an unbelievable Games, fantastic performances across so many events,” enthused Andrew Faichney, Australian Athletics high performance manager.
“It was an opportunity for our athletes to deliver when there was a degree of expectation around them, and deliver they did; it was exceptional.
“We now have athletes performing incredible feats. Rose Davies’ double (10,000m, 5000m) was sensational. And 9.85 seconds for Lachie (Kennedy in the 100m) and under 11 for Torrie (Lewis) were just amazing.
“So young, and they made that next step up, and we’ll see that go on through to LA and Brisbane. They’ll be hometown heroes just ready to absolutely have an amazing Games.”
After Abbey Caldwell sped away from teammates, Jess Hull and Claudia Hollingsworth, to win the marquee mile in the final event of the track program, she was positively bullish about a blooming era of Australian women’s track excellence.
“It’s incredible to see us rocking up to Diamond Leagues with six females on the start line,” she said.
“You just don’t see that from any other nation. It really shows the incredible strength and growth that we have in the crop of athletes coming through.
“So I take a lot of pride in that, that we are able to get onto the start line together and show them what’s real.”
The blossoming of Australian women’s sport was in evidence, too, in both the gymnastics hall and at the velodrome where the women’s pursuit team, who’ve never won an Olympic gold medal, look as if they really could under new coach and former team member Ash Ankudinoff.
But gold at these Games didn’t have to be a bridge to the future; they were medals simply worth winning in their own right.
Just ask Mackenzie Little, who’s waited so long to have a major javelin gold medal to hang alongside her Doctor of Medicine diploma.
“It means the world,” she said before shooting back to another world. For Dr Little arrives home on Tuesday morning at 7am, will jump straight into an Uber and be straight at work as an ear, nose, and throat registrar at Sydney’s Northern Beaches Hospital at 10.
Now, that’s what you call a champion.
