FORMER SWIMMING CHAMPION IN FINALS SNUB
A COLOURFUL Gold Coast swimming champion and three-time Commonwealth Games medallist is questioning being seemingly overlooked for a finals ticket.
Linda McGill, now 72, won bronze, silver and gold medals at the 1962 Games, and said she would have loved to have been asked to attend the swimming finals at next month’s Games.
The butterfly bronze medallist, individual medley silver medallist and medley relay gold medallist said she had contacted Games organisers to suggest it would be a good idea to have former champions dishing out the medals.
“I thought it would be a good idea for former gold medallists to be invited to those finals that they had previously won,” she said.
Speaking from her home yesterday, Ms McGill – who famously set long-distance swimming records by going topless to reduce drag – said she was still unclear whether she might be able to go to the medley relay final at the Aquatic Centre.
But if the response from a spokesman for the Games organising committee (GOLDOC) is any indicator, she shouldn’t hold her breath.
“In Australia alone there are some 4000 former Commonwealth Games athletes and it would not be possible to offer each one tickets to events that they took part in without reducing the amount of seats available to the general public substantially,” the spokesman said. “There are no free tickets to GC2018.”