The two women who will lead Australia's Olympic and Paralympic teams to Paris 2024 have joined hundreds of other high-performance personnel at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. The 'world-class to world-best' conference is looking at innovations and changes required to continue to drive the success of Australia's elite athletes.
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00:00 I've got both chefs de mission with me, Kate McLaughlin from the Paralympic team and Anna
00:07 Mears from the Olympic team.
00:10 You know, it's been so fascinating watching everything that's happening at this conference,
00:14 but one thing that struck me that you said, Kate, was about the challenges that everybody
00:20 faced in Tokyo and Beijing, the last two Olympics, which we're not going to have in Paris.
00:25 Paris comes with its own challenges because they want to be so environmentally friendly,
00:30 no plastic water bottles, no air conditioning.
00:32 That's not going to work for a Paralympic team, is it?
00:34 No, look, it's something we're working with the organising committee on because we've
00:37 got 30% of our team who don't thermoregulate because of their impairment.
00:41 So we've had to work closely with them to identify how we can actually make sure that
00:45 their environment that they're training in is appropriate.
00:49 So yeah, look, while sustainability is admirable, it's really important that we make sure accessibility
00:54 isn't left behind as a result of sustainability.
00:56 Which all comes down to the importance of communication and in both of your roles that
01:00 is vital.
01:01 And I mean this in the nicest way.
01:03 I always considered you as an athlete as a control freak because you have to be, right?
01:09 That's fair.
01:10 But when you're the athlete in one sport, now you're the chef de mission for what, 32
01:14 sports, 36 disciplines, something like that.
01:16 Do you have to give up that control freak in your nature?
01:19 Yeah, look, I'll probably be a terrible spectator, to be honest, of the sports.
01:24 But what I'm actually enjoying is the change of that really hard, narrow focus of being
01:28 an individual athlete within a sport in the environment of the Olympic Games to working
01:33 with the team to create the environment for someone else to have success within that environment.
01:37 So yes, I think my children have taught me to let go of control a lot since I've been
01:44 a retired athlete.
01:46 And my joy now is really putting the focus in on someone else and their success.
01:51 So that will help me relinquish control in some ways.
01:53 But my job is just to really support the team and the athletes as best possible.
01:57 You know, we often hear a lot of discussion about success.
02:01 And one of the great things about seeing some of the behind the scenes discussions with
02:05 high performance managers, executives, coaches and everybody else involved in the back end
02:11 of the machine where the pointy end is the athlete, is that you get an understanding
02:16 of the importance of all the stuff that happens in the lead up and that success is so fleeting.
02:22 You're always described as a highly successful athlete.
02:26 You had some great stats in there about your own career.
02:28 Give us those.
02:29 Yeah, a lot of people see me as extremely successful in an individual capacity.
02:34 I've won 11 world titles, but I've actually lost a further 29 attempts.
02:39 I have two Olympic gold medals, but I had nine events over four Olympic Games that I
02:43 contested.
02:44 So I've actually lost more than I've won.
02:46 And I retired from my sport the most winning.
02:49 So that says a lot that winning is actually really hard, really rare and is well worth
02:53 celebration when it comes.
02:54 But winning doesn't come at a full stop at the gold medal.
02:57 There are winning a silver, winning a bronze, winning by making the final, being a personal
03:02 best, great show of sportsmanship, sportswomanship.
03:06 And I think we even forget that making the team is a success.
03:10 It's an achievement.
03:11 It is a huge effort and over a long extended period of time, going through competition,
03:18 competing against the best in the world to just be a part of this team.
03:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]