Leigh Russell, Swimming Australia

The cancellation of the Olympics brings both heartbreak and opportunity.

“To be that close to a once-in-four-years moment, which you work for up to 80 hours a week to get to, is devastating. But for some athletes, having another 12 months [until the rescheduled date of July 2021] is actually an advantage – or they’ve turned it into an advantage. Sport encourages a real sense of resilience. It took a bit of recalibration of athletes, coaches and support teams but we basically told everyone, ‘Go home, reset. We’re not expecting you to train for a period of time.’ When we started to re-emerge, we had to figure out new ways of doing things. For swimming, it’s been really interesting. How do you keep people at a world’s best level when they can’t access water? It was amazing to see the ingenuity. You put a goal in front of athletes and no matter what it is, they’ll start to recalibrate to that goal.”

The mental health of our athletes is paramount.

“We’ve increased connections and check-ins and made sure athletes have access to the people they need. There’s also collaboration in that inner sanctum so that nothing gets missed. If, for example, an athlete is saying one thing to one person but another thing to someone else, that team’s working together to get the right information. And with the backing of the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport], we have a mental health referral network that means wherever the athlete is in the country, they can get what they need. Telehealth is much more normalised now.”

“It’s grit, it’s resilience, it’s knowing that when you’re in the moment you will remain focused and do what you have to do to get through. So you’re not worried at that point about the extraneous variables. To put it in COVID-19 terms, there’s a lot of noise and ifs and buts. If you’re coming from a high-performance perspective, that’s all just noise. What do you need to do to ensure that you’re looking after yourself while making the most of the opportunity? In every crisis, there’s opportunity.”

We can all learn from the athlete mindset.

“This has really exposed the fragility of how we’re funded. Sport runs on the smell of an oily rag – even at the high-performance level – and we make every dollar stretch. The challenge now is that everybody else is in the same situation, all our corporate partners and so on, and it’s a domino effect of downward pressure. The money is not going to be there and so the biggest challenge is twofold – we have to get through to Tokyo and give everybody the best chance of success. Then, looking ahead, how do we make a system work so we can continue to give Aussies the best possible chance of competing and being successful on the world stage? The Paris Olympics is only three years away [after July 2021], not four, so how do we make that happen in that period of time, perhaps with 30 to 50 per cent less revenue coming through the door? We are so reliant on our corporate partners and government support to make things happen.”

The greatest challenge is financial. Swimming plays a vital role in communities.

“The opportunity for the sports industry is to establish that we are absolutely important to the fabric of our communities, from a physical and mental health perspective. I think it’s been the greatest experiment, if you like, for communities to have none of those connections throughout COVID-19. People keep talking to me about the desire to get back to watching their kids play sport. As much as elite sport is great, we really need community sport to be strong for everybody.”

We need sport for physical and mental health.

“If there’s a lack of disposable income in households, is sport going to be top of people’s agenda? And how can government potentially play a role in ensuring that every kid who wants to play sport has the opportunity? We’re going to need to participate in community sport once we get out of this thing because the mental and physical health of Australians postCOVID-19 will be the next big challenge. Sport is too often seen as an afterthought when it should be an integral part of health and mental wellbeing. We’ve been talking for years about how we play a role in education and health. Hospitals are under siege with secondary issues, such as mental health and physical ailments, and people aren’t going to their doctors at the moment. How can we get people active and connected to their communities? Sport can be a significant driver of health in this country.”

“The mental and physical health of Australians post-COVID-19 will be the next big challenge. Sport is too often seen as an afterthought when it should be an integral part of health and mental wellbeing.”

“We’ve been doing the same thing for 100 years. Is this an opportunity to reimagine what the future might look like? It’s been really interesting watching the NRL and the AFL. [Their leaders are saying], ‘We have to get back to the big; everything is about big.’ But maybe it’s not – maybe it’s actually about quality experience at that community level to drive sport again in the future. Essentially the elite end is looked after – the challenges are always at the other end. For example, for the four million Australians who swim every week for fitness and fun and mental health, how do we provide something for them that’s a real value-add rather than them just doing it on their own? Can we bring them into the community so they feel part of the swimming experience as much as anything else?”

Swimming may need to change.

“I would love our Olympic team to do better than they were anticipating. My big hope would be that we get the momentum back. Athletes talk about a ‘flow state’ and there was a real flow to what we were doing. We were quietly excited and optimistic about our chances of success in Tokyo. I hope gold for the country means something significant in July 2021 and I hope there are moments when we can all share in that and recognise that we all made it through this period of time and turned it into something fantastic.”

The future will be golden.

“The intersection between personal and professional as a leader is a really hard road. You want to honour what’s going on in everybody else’s lives and try your best to buffer them from the impact. I’ve been going to bed at night totally emotionally exhausted. There’s a relentlessness when people are wanting information and clarity from leaders when really, I’m getting the same information that they’re getting. They want you to decipher it in a way that keeps them safe and I feel the responsibility of that quite profoundly.”

The leadership bind.