Winning at the Olympics with SMH's Tom Decent and AOC's Strath Gordon

The Paris Olympics 2024 was one of the world’s biggest sporting events. Throw in strikes, scandals and security threats, and navigating the Games became an Olympian task for journalists and publicists. 
In October 2025, at a Newsworthy event, Strath Gordon, the retired head of public affairs for Australian Olympic Committee, and Tom Decent, the award-winning Nine Newspapers journalist, spoke to Newsworthy editor Alexandra Spring about the highs and lows of covering the Olympics, how they managed it and what they learnt about journalism and public relations along the way. 

Thanks for listening ! Follow Newsworthy on Instagram at @newsworthy_aus

Transcript

Alexandra Spring 0:00

Welcome everybody. Thank you for coming along. It's lovely to have everybody here at this event. Before we get into it, I'd like to acknowledge that we are gathered tonight in Esme Timbury's creative practice lab, and I would like to start by acknowledging the building's name. Name, sorry, namesake, Esme Timbury. Esme is a renowned Bidjigal shell artist from La Perouse. You'll be able to see lots of her work and the family work in the foyer. This country is Bijigal country, and we acknowledge the elders past and present, Indigenous elders past and present, and acknowledge that we are here continuing a legacy of storytelling, song, and dance that this land has seen since the very first sunrise. Always was, always will be Indigenous land. Alrighty. Thank you for joining us at Winning at the Olympics, a newsworthy event. I would like to start by saying that the Paris 2024 Olympics was Australia's most successful Olympic campaign ever with 53 medals. We were ranked fourth in the world. There's more than 460 athletes who competed in 33 sports. But behind all of those numbers, there were some incredible stories that came out of the Olympics for all countries and especially for Australia. Tonight we welcome two people who were right there in the eye of the storm, the Olympic 2024 storm, two people who can talk about some of the stories, what was happening behind the scenes, and what they learned about their industries, journalism and public affairs, respectively, while they were there. And we're going to explore some of the topics and really get into them. So please join me in welcoming Strath Gordon, the retired head of public affairs for the Australian Olympic Committee. Welcome. And Tom Decent, the award-winning sports journalist from the Sydney Morning Herald, who covered swimming, athletics, and other sport for the Olympics in 2024. Welcome, both of you.

Strath Gordon 2:09

Thanks to having.

Alexandra Spring 2:13

So we're going to get into all sorts of topics, which hopefully you will find both interesting and helpful for kind of for the things that you are studying. We're going to go through those and at the end I will have time for questions. So if you've got some questions, we love questions. Please save them up and we will get into them and we can ask Tom and Strath about their experiences. But let's start with an easy one. I it sounds like a great gig to get the Olympics gig for both of you. So I would like to hear about how and when you got the Olympic gig. Strath, I'm going to start with you.

Strath Gordon 2:49

Well, I have worked in public relations for about 30 years, and I was a journalist before that. And I was working previously with the Australian Rugby Union, and then I did a very strange career choice. I became the head of public affairs for the New South Wales Police Force because I liked a quiet life. And uh I was coming towards the end of that job. I started my life as a sports journalist, and the Olympic job came up, and I thought time to to jump from uh policing and all the the the that side of the world into into sport into a it really was a dream job, and and I got the job and uh went to four Olympic Games in the last uh seven years.

Alexandra Spring 3:29

So amazing. I mean so four Olympic Games in seven years, so that's the summer and the winter ones.

Strath Gordon 3:34

Yeah, two two summer, two winter. My my first was the was the winter games in uh Pyonchang in South Korea, and it was very cold.

Alexandra Spring 3:42

Yeah, I can imagine, absolutely fantastic. Tom, um how and when did you get the Olympic gig?

Tom Decent 3:48

Well, like my like Olympic dream like started in Sydney 2000, like I was seven, and that was my first experience of watching sport, and I just was obsessed by the Olympics and always wanted to cover them. When I was at uni in 2012, I wrote for a website um just at uni, just uh for the London Olympics, um just from the couch and sort of got the bug. I blogged the Rio Olympics in 2016 for the Herald. Was desperate to go to the one in Tokyo, but the pandemic crawled that to about I think four or five reporters could only go. So I was stuck back in. I wasn't covered with the Paralympics and then, yeah, mid-2024, sort of found out I was gonna go over for the Paris Games to cover swimming, which is obviously a huge sport at the Games, and um extremely excited for that.

Alexandra Spring 4:29

So was it was there a lot of competition in the newsroom for who was gonna go?

Tom Decent 4:32

We had Phil Lutton, who used to be our swimming writer, and he hung them up, the goggles up in probably 2022. So I instantly put my head up and said I'd want to do that. I covered the com games in Birmingham with him. Um so it was a natural progression, and pretty much if you're covering swimming for the paper, there's a pretty good chance you're gonna go on the Olympic team. So that was my like cheat code to try and get over there.

Alexandra Spring 4:52

Right. And it was it was always swimming that you wanted to do?

Tom Decent 4:55

I would do anything, you know. I cover rugby, cricket, anything that would get me to the Olympics, athletics, whatever it may be. Yeah, um, but yeah, clearly, like given Australia's you know, pedigree and swimming and the number of gold medals Australia wins, like that's a pretty good sport to sort of hone in on. And yeah, like I covered swimming in the sort of two or three year lead up, and it's not just about arriving on the day and writing about a race, it's about knowing all the swimmers very well, knowing their story, so then like when Ken McAvoy hits the ball, like you know that story like the back of your hand, and you can write that very quickly and and know everything that goes into that performance as well.

Alexandra Spring 5:30

Absolutely. Yeah, sounds like you were very well prepared. Um, it actually goes to the second uh section that I wanted to talk about, which was planning, because there is so much involved in the planning for the coverage on both sides of the coin uh for the Olympic coverage. Um, Tom, you won the Harry Gordon Memorial Award for your Olympic coverage. Uh, congratulations. One of the things that you said was a huge amount of planning went into our Olympic coverage, and it was both it was extremely rewarding to see it enjoyed by readers. So, can you talk a little bit about how much planning is done before you even leave the country? What are you kind of thinking about, etc.? What is the team thinking about? Can you talk a little bit about that?

Tom Decent 6:11

Yeah, I mean, like probably two years out, it was pretty clear I was going to cover the Olympics because I was the main swimming reporter. So we just targeted all the major meets that were going to be leading up into the Olympics as well. The world swimming champs were the year before in Fukuoka in 2023. So we were like, we definitely have to be at that. Just getting a good rapport with all the swimmers. I would go to every single Australian championships, Australian trials, just getting like a really clear picture of which events and athletes we were going to be covering, and then also looking through the schedule, like the Olympics as Strathno is an absolute beast of a thing. But particularly at the pool, like on night one, there was the chance that Australia could win four gold medals on knight one. So, you know, you've got to be very planned around who's writing about what race, um, who's going to be doing this. There's the art of watching the race, but also running to the mix zone, which is where you get quotes, and that can sometimes be 100-120 metres away. So just trying to plan to the absolute best detail who's going to be covering what, uh, then the irony was we went on strike for about five days as well, mid-Olympics. So that was um a lot of people about that. Yeah, which we might can touch on.

Alexandra Spring 7:14

Yeah, absolutely. Um well well, you've introduced it, so yeah, the whole nine uh newsroom went on strike, is that right? Uh on the eve of the Olympics. How did that impact things?

Tom Decent 7:24

Yeah, well, I mean, we didn't really think it was real until it kind of happened the basically the day before the Games, everyone back home had decided we were going to go on strike overpay and uh make a big stand, and clearly um the reporters in Paris were asked for their opinions on it. There were probably some mixed opinions, but we all agreed that we would um tools down and yeah, it was a big stand at the time, um, considering I'd spent my whole life wanting to cover the Olympics, and I had literally spent years planning for that first night of competition and um had to stand down for it and and not go.

Speaker 3 7:54

Wow, how did that feel?

Tom Decent 7:56

Uh I managed to sneak in uh and and watch, but yeah, it was difficult for sure. Like at the time, like think everyone back home um was on strike and doing it for the right reasons, and we did support that, but yeah, ultimately doing it during the Olympics was a big deal and made life pretty hard for the guys who um some staff still had to work around that time, but yeah, I felt for them a bit. But we just uh we had a good few days.

Alexandra Spring 8:18

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, Strath, I want to talk about the planning of this, but uh, but yes, also before we get into that, uh yeah, you're kind of the one of the major partners of the Olympics is uh is going on strike. Did that figure in the uh the planning?

Strath Gordon 8:35

Well, a bunch of people feeling very sorry for well people like Tom who we knew were were waiting for their moment, and then it's a bit like an athlete waiting for their moment and it doesn't come, but we understood you know the the issues at play. Um so we you know our vested interest was was ensuring that the athlete stories get told, so we're always going to facilitate the storytelling and that side of it. So for us, I won't say it was business as usual, but we're trying to foster that coverage, so it's in our interest to make sure that that we um helped uh whoever was doing the stories get the stories out there because that was that's the moment for the athletes as well. And um part of our planning is around all of those storytelling aspects that the the athletes have worked their way towards the Olympic Games, and that's their time on this on the stage. So it's it is only really once in four years that they get that chance. So we worked as as we had to and we just got on with it. But didn't actually anticipate that in our planning, but you've got to be always about planning uh is you can have as many scenario planning sessions as you like, but I've always said any media plan or crisis plan to deal with difficulty is really just a decision-making structure and and how those decisions are made and how those decisions are communicated. So we just got on with that and uh and uh yeah, got on with life. Uh so that's that's that's how that was.

Alexandra Spring 10:04

But uh absolutely so so talk me through the kind of planning that goes into uh the AOC, the public affairs plans before you even leave and get on the plane.

Strath Gordon 10:14

Well, there's probably sort of three aspects for us, and the one I sort of touched on is the storytelling aspect, just as Tom has mentioned it from a journalistic perspective. We're also in the storytelling business of the athletes because we're supporting the athletes, we're supporting their sports. We encourage people to participate in Olympic sports. Some of them are quite big and professional, uh, so you know, basketballers, for instance, we had basketballers there who are uh on on contracts that would make all of our eyes water. Uh on the other hand, there are athletes there who spend every spare cent they have uh training and preparing to get to the games, and for them, being an Olympian is a is a money, not a money-making uh concern. So storytelling was big for us in our planning, uh, and what are the opportunities leading into the games to tell those stories? And that could be team selection announcements, it could be setting up specific stories with specific journalists, news organizations to get those stories out there. I think the next thing is uh massive logistical planning exercise. How do we meet the needs of the media on the ground on a regular basis? So when that race happens at that location, how are the media going to get the access? Who's going to coordinate that? How does that happen? And we anticipate that across every event in which an Australian athlete is competing well before the game. So that planning is actually a sort of a two-year exercise in, and if that athlete wins a gold medal, what does she do then? And what's the the order of operation? So that's that planning, and then the third part of the planning, which is what I had uh the biggest part of my role there, is managing the issues that go hand in hand with being in Olympic Games. It's an international sporting event on the other side of the world involving several hundred countries. Uh, the world is a different place. We had issues on the eve of the Games, which everyone would have been well aware of. Where we're dealing with issues around Russia, Ukraine, we're dealing with issues around Gaza, Israel, we had Jewish athletes on the team, we had Islamic athletes on the team who have their own views. How are we going to manage that? How are we going to manage issues around anti-doping? How are we going to manage issues around the athletes' capacity to speak their mind on anything that they wish to do? Um, and what role do we play in that? Uh so there's there are a raft of issues.

Alexandra Spring 12:44

Um there's COVID and there's security issues.

Strath Gordon 12:47

Yeah, well, the COVID hadn't quite gone away. In fact, we actually had had a bit of COVID in the in the camp, but it was very different to Tokyo, though, so we managed that okay. But um, and then it's how are we going to plan for those things? I was particularly responsible for the daily media conferences uh in the initial stages with our chef demission, which is a fancy French word for sort of the the chief of the show, which was um Olympic gold medalist from previous games, Anna Mia, who was a fantastic chef. Um so what did that structure look like for her? How would we prepare her for her daily media conferences or any conferences that might have to be called ad hoc, which is what what happened when Tom broke his story about Michael Palfrey, the um the swim coach, so suddenly we're dealing with that. But you know, that that structure was in place, everyone knew what to expect, and then we just go through our operation, we pull our plans into place, and then we um we go from there. So there was kind of those three elements storytelling, the mechanics of making the athletes and their stories available to media prior and post-performance, and then dealing with the bigger issues that you could be asked anytime you did a media conference.

Alexandra Spring 14:04

Um how many in your team would were doing that?

Strath Gordon 14:08

Uh well, the the team was about 23 media liaison officers. Uh mentioned we had 33 sports, that means not every sport had a single dedicated person, but some of the media liaison officers would do multiple sports that they you know, so some sports are the reality is part of our planning is that athlete's probably going to be eliminated on day one. So we're not going to have to worry a plan about him or her after that because that's what's likely to happen. Hopefully that mightn't happen, but so, and then some sports required at times multiple media officers and swimming, classic example because they you know delivered um I think a third of our gold medals for the games, and so there were days where swimming athletes are winning multiple medals and their medals and they're having to be you know shipped from here to there to talk to that person prepared or whatever it may be. So um so 23 on the staff, and if you want to get an idea about what the hours were to work during during the games, it ranged from between 14, 16, and hours, 18 hours a day, uh, and for for us in the central office that was uh for 30 days straight. And uh so it was it was a it was it was a grueling, and it was when there's a big story on, you know, the j the the journos don't take a nap. Um so and and of course the phone can go at any time when you are going to sleep. So it's a it's a gruelling schedule, but it is the Olympic Games, it is very exciting, you are on, and it's amazing what you can get through.

Alexandra Spring 15:47

100%, absolutely. Alrighty, well, let's get into the big stories when the best laid plans don't quite pan out, perhaps. Um let's start with Tom. You broke a really important story, uh, which was uh Australian swimming coach Michael Palfrey uh was interviewed and he declared that he wanted a Korean, or he suggested that a Korean swimmer should win over Australian athletes. He said, go career. Uh and uh I think the story that you broke was that he was on the way out. Is that is that correct? Can you talk us through how that story came up, where you how you got a hold of it? What what went into the making of that story?

Tom Decent 16:29

Yeah, like in journalism you can't break every story, but you can put yourself in positions to break more, and that was lucky, but you also like the harder you work, the luckier you get in some respects. Like I've been around swimming pools for two years in the lead up. I knew where to like look for certain things and patterns, and I knew every single person who was in an Australian shirt. And um, the Australian team had just basically finished swimming one day, and I was just um instead of watching the main pool, I went to the warm-up pool. Like, you're not really supposed to sort of be around there, there was a mix zone there, um, and I was just hovering around. I saw a gold shirt sort of walk over to the mix zone, and there was um a whole bunch of Korean reporters. Now that's not normal because there was no scheduled media op with an Australian coach for that day. Um so I immediately was just like the instinct as a journo was to sort of just go over and see what was going on. And I texted someone on the Australian team, I said, have you guys still are you guys still at the pool? I said, No, we left like 20 minutes ago. So again, like start thinking, what's going on? So Michael had teed up this interview with the Korean media. Now, my understanding was to try and basically talk about Kim Woo-min, who was an athlete who he has coached in the past basically. Um, and I think he may have been wanting a gig over in Korea perhaps after this to put his name up in lights. And it was only with Korean media, but I popped in and watched and observed and recorded it, and he basically started speaking about this athlete and you know how he wanted him to win this 400-free, which is going to be in a couple of nights' time. And then at the end of this interview, he said go Korea. And it was all on camera for the Koreans, and I was there and thought, wow. I shed so much on, I didn't do anything with it that day. I just sort of parked and thought that was really weird. And the more I thought about it, I was like, you can't really do that because they're an Australian, he's wearing an Australian polo, so um how that all played out was a bit chaotic, and then it's where Strath and Swimming Australia come in, and yeah.

Alexandra Spring 18:18

So so you pick you get this, and you're thinking, This is not great, this is this is weird. Uh you know, you think, okay, I'm gonna pitch the story, I'm gonna do this story. When do you call Strath to say, hey, what's going on here?

Tom Decent 18:30

I think I've filed everything else I needed to that day. I had so much on just two days before the Olympics, and then I was chatting to my editor over a beer. I said, like, this has happened, this is that's probably a story, isn't it? He goes, Yeah, definitely. Like, no one else was there from Australia whether I go, No, it's just me and these Korean reporters, I don't know whether how much they would use of that. Um, and then I rang swimming Australia's head of comms the next day. I said, I'll um jokingly, I said, Thanks for putting up a coach yesterday for some media, and they said we didn't, and I said, No, like you had one of your coaches speaking to the media yesterday, and they had no idea. So this was a little bit of a a coach-gone rogue, which you know, best laid plans, your coaches probably don't wander off and do media without a media liaison officer. So um then Swimming Australia basically hauled Michael in and asked a couple of questions, and Strathcall probably take over where it um went from there. But um, given I had the story and no one else was there, I didn't feel like any mad rush to get it out because um yeah, we just sort of had said to Swimming Australia what Michael had said, and they were pretty surprised by that, as you could imagine, two days out from a game, and particularly given that 400 free race was coming up in a couple of days.

Alexandra Spring 19:37

Absolutely. Alrighty, Strath, take it from there.

Strath Gordon 19:40

Where did you get a call to say Yeah, uh I look I can't remember who I think it was it was uh Selina who was the comms lead for swimming, rang me and said, Oh yeah, we've got a problem, and filled me in on on the problem. So there I think there were a couple of things that were important in that story. Again, our scenario planning was we we didn't plan for uh a career uh an Australian coach to be effectively secretly still coaching, which is well, one of the stories that the this coach was actually still coaching this career an athlete via correspondence, which was in contravention of his contract with swimming Australia. Yeah, apart from being a bad look saying go career. So the biggest decision was what what's the impact on this team of having a if what do you do? Do you send this coach home and say you've broken your contract, off you go? Or do you keep him on the team because he has obligations and duties within the team structure that on the eve of the games you can't replace that? Um so there was a business decision to be made on one hand. I think from the PR journalism interaction there, there there were two things that sort of stood out for me. And one was the level of trust that has to come into play between the journalist and the PR in negotiating. Tom had this story. Um I've always had a philosophy in PR that you honour the exclusive. If a journalist has a story, you honour that exclusive with them. They got there first, and uh and you do that. So there's this trust that comes into play, and uh uh Tom can reflect on that trust environment between himself and and the uh the the swimming PR, but also from a PR perspective, you also make very public your intention that you're not going to play ducks and drakes with this, this is how we're gonna manage this issue, we're gonna be up front with it, we're gonna deal with it, we're gonna go through a process now that will determine um the fate of the coach, Tom having broken his story, and that we're going to be open and transparent about everything we do, including um uh and I might be hazy on the detail, I've read some of Tom's articles later, but Re reporting ultimately that we involve the swimmers themselves in the decision-making process because they were the people who would be most affected by the coach if he was dismissed on the spot, and at the same time, the token if he the coach if he remained with the team, what impact would that have?

Alexandra Spring 22:17

That would be pretty cranky, right?

Strath Gordon 22:18

Well, it it was interesting because they they the team had a meeting, so I think there's a sort of a leadership aspect to this too. Instead of the the head coach Rowan Taylor and the chef de mission, Anna Mears, making a decision between them as to what would happen, you actually consult the people who are affected, and they were the athletes themselves. So I thought that was a very good leadership. So for me, it's apart from a PR journalism story, it's a story about leadership and working together. The person who's responsible for the overall Australian Olympic team and the head coach of the swimming team. And the other reason from the PR point of view is why this was important, is the games haven't actually started yet. The swimming team are our number one source of medals. If this all goes pear-shaped, this is going to be terrible for the swimming team and a really difficult start for the Australian Olympic team more broadly because the other athletes and teams and sports kind of take a cue from our swimmers. Swimming success breeds confidence and uh yeah, uh determination in the other sports. So that was a dilemma. And ultimately they you know consulted the swimmers and the the the two swimmers, uh uh Sam Short and Elijah Winnington were the swimmers involved. They said, look, we understand if he is sent home, even though he was supporting someone who we're competing against, if he's sent home, it's going to impact our teammates and we don't want that to happen. So they were consulted, he was kept on the team, um, and ultimately the swim team had great results um which vindicated that decision, and then he uh he came home and uh didn't have a job anymore when he's at the time you had the follow, which was also that it was likely he was on the way out as well.

Tom Decent 24:08

Uh yeah, I mean he then had his contracts either terminated or not reviewed. I can't remember a few months after they announced that, but yeah, like yeah, swimming Australia initially said to me, Can we have the audio of it? And I was a bit wary that um audio like that can end up anywhere. So I said we basically gave them a bit of a transcript of what they said, um, and then ultimately we sent a little snippet of him basically saying go Korea or whatever, and they said, Oh, we're gonna late at night. I think that basically said to me, we're gonna say it's a conflict of interest. Then think you guys might have given us something late at night um to put out, basically saying this is what's happening, and we put the story out. Um very late in France, and then Annemiz, the chef de mission, the next morning, fronted up with Rowan Taylor, which again you can explain why you guys do that and just front-footing it, I would imagine. But then, yeah, it's uh once we published that, then it kind of really took a life of its own for a day or so. But the way you guys handled it meant that it got killed pretty quickly.

Strath Gordon 25:09

Yeah, well, it it did, and uh well you've you've anticipated the we did front up because we wanted the media and the public to know that we were going to deal with this and this is how we're gonna deal with it. And I think that set a really good tone. And then the then there's the difficult bit about what is the decision, and then once the decision was made, I think Rowan did a final media conference to announce this is the decision. Right. And as I said, I think it was it hasn't always been an easy relationship between the Australian Olympic Committee and Swimming Australia at Olympic Games in in past times. Uh I think this was a really good example of getting it right, working together cooperatively, and coming up with a good result that in the end was in the benefit of the athletes.

Alexandra Spring 25:54

Absolutely, absolutely. Um Tom, can you also just touch on the Cam McAvoy story and how which was a great story and he was one of the champions as well. How did that story come up? Yeah, I mean, can you just describe it for the everybody?

Tom Decent 26:08

Um I mean, like the Cam McAvoy story, in my opinion, was one of the best of the Olympics. The guy basically quit swimming, decided about 18 months before the games, he wanted to get back in the water. His friends had to him have a swim and see how you go. He'd been training in the gym and posted a really great time, and from there it just basically stopped training a lot. Like swimmers swim 20, 30, 40ks a week, and Cam was doing like three or four sessions a week. So um won a world title the year before, and then I just for followed Cam's story so closely, and I just knew every single detail about that story leading into it, and his race goes for 21 seconds, so you don't have a lot of time to make that, you know, you don't have three hours to write that story, you've got about 10 minutes. So if you can pre-write a bit of that, so I had a bit of that going on, and um, because the Herald and the Age um aligned with nine, we had sort of broadcasts, right? We were able to show video clips of that. So we had guys back in the office who were clipping up bits of his race, and I knew exactly what like parts of his race, having spoken to him and his team, they were targeting, right? The start, like I know how much goes into that, like reaction times, the first 15 metres, the finish, which he wasn't happy about. But you kind of write all that into a story, and also just like it is a privileged position, you have the ability to write the definitive story about Cam McAvoy's gold medal that night, which people will talk about for years to come, and like there is a lot of pressure on that, but you just have to deal with that pressure and do it, and by being thoroughly researched as well, and and also you know, you don't anticipate what someone can say in a mixed zone. Like Cam can come through and say something we didn't know about it, and you form a different story to what you initially thought, but yeah, like that moment in terms of I've covered a lot of sport, that was um that swimming arena was rocking for those games.

Alexandra Spring 27:51

I'm sure, absolutely. So that's a great example of a long lead story where you're kind of you've you're following it from way back and you're really kind of prepping it, so it's a kind of counterbalance to the Michael Pellfrey story, which is a breaking news story.

Tom Decent 28:04

Yeah, right. Yeah, very different, yeah.

Alexandra Spring 28:06

So yeah, so you can you can see the different examples of different kinds of stories that can happen um as you're preparing, right?

Tom Decent 28:13

100%. And that but that's also a great editor, too. Like they they pick and choose what kind of stories we do, they identify that someone might do a hard news story. Um, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about Ray Gun. There was uh a multitude of different angles on that story. Um, from I mean, the the news story doesn't really it wasn't really a news story to start with. It ended up becoming uh a whole bunch of other stuff, which we'll talk about. But yes, we will. Um yeah, very different stories, thinking quickly, and the Olympics happen so quickly that you do one thing and you're moving on to the next before you've like put the laptop down.

Alexandra Spring 28:46

Love it, absolutely. Alrighty, well, let's talk about some of the other big stories at Strath, which you would have had to kind of uh tackle as well. Australian hockey player Tom Craig was arrested trying to buy cocaine in Paris. Uh so how did how did that call come go down?

Strath Gordon 29:00

Well, a bit like the Michael Palfrey story, is it's the way you don't want to find out about stories, and that's from journalists. Ring you saying, What do you know about this? Um so yes, I literally got a phone call from a journalist saying, What do you know about this Australian athlete being uh arrested for buying cocaine? And I you know I don't know, I can't remember what time of the morning it was. I was guessing it was in the middle of the night? No, well it happened, it happened overnight, obviously, and uh and then I'm I'm in my office at about sort of quarter past five, and the the call came pretty early. So no, I knew nothing about it. So worst possible start because you've then got to play catch-up. You know nothing about it. You have some rough information from a journalist who uh hasn't yet got all the information themselves, and then suddenly other journalists are called in. So the story is spreading, you're thinking, okay, this whatever, this has definitely happened. It's it's now uh, you know, I'm now alerting uh people, including the the chef de mission and others, to try and find out as much as we can about it because we had to establish what had happened, and that was going to take some time, but in the meantime, we're dealing with media. So, again, being up front with media, once I had a fair handle on the fact that it was um this was a legitimate story, we were going to have to deal with it. Um and again, this was in our scenario planning, didn't have a particular scenario around uh you know buying cocaine on the streets of Paris at midnight, but generally speaking, we had a you know a plan around athlete behaviour, things of that nature. So it fell into that category. And what you want to do with these things is deal with them very, very as quickly as you can, and as Tom would know, and get the story out of the news cycle, if possible, as quickly as you can. Now, that was never going to be particularly easy because he was the first athlete of any country arrested at the Paris game. So it wasn't just the Australian media we were dealing with, we had the world's media by then camped outside the police station where he was being held. We're still trying to find out the detail from teammates who are being woken up from their slumber to say who was with whom, who did what, what happened when. We're talking to the police, we're talking to his family, we're talking to French lawyers, um, and trying to put a plan together. So, needs to say we had a meeting, um, and the object of that meeting was to settle on what we understood the facts to be, the care for the athlete. I mean, at the end of the day, he was doing something that someone in the Eastern Suburbs does every other night of the week. Um we had to put some care around the athlete and basically try and get him out of out of his predicament. His family had engaged some lawyers, and we knew those lawyers, so that was handy. They were Paris, uh, they were French lawyers. So that became a negotiation. So we've got a scrum of the world's media waiting outside this um police station. I sent my number two, Dominic, who Tom would know, on site to be our sort of forward commander. And basically, apart from again getting intelligence from the ground there, um also to reassure the media that this is how we're gonna play it. We're gonna try and deal with this quickly, we're gonna try and resolve it quickly. The media were worried he was going to be sneaked out of a back door and whisked off, which is something the French lawyers had suggested to me. Um I rejected that advice. I said no, the media are there and waiting, um, and um this is what he's gonna do. He's gonna walk out the front of that police station once we get him out, uh, and he's going to um issue a grovelling apology, and it's probably going to sound a bit like this, and that's exactly how it did sound, uh, word for word. Um so, but the first thing was to get him off, to get him out, and to get him free, and and and that was achieved. French law works a little differently to Australian law, fortunately for him. Um, and he was given effectively a slap on the wrist and he was out. The French police looked after him very, very well. He was able to have a shower, put a fresh top on him, and uh, but he was he was he was miserable. And um anyone who, I don't know whether anyone remembers that, but he was he was uh he he was extremely miserable. Uh the thing was to convince him, his family, and to some extent the hockey folks, that him issuing a grovelling apology is going to be the w best way to make this go away quickly. Because if he disappears, he and his family are going to be hunted for days until someone says something. So he can deal with this straight away, it goes away. So he did that, and the family accepted that, and hockey accepted that, and uh and that was good, and it also helped us. We had a struck of great luck that day, we won four gold medals, the best medal hall, uh a gold medal hall on any one day. So incredibly within 24 hours, this story that had engaged the world uh was gone. And uh most people would have forgotten who Tom Craig's name was, which is actually what I said to them. After tomorrow, they won't even know who you are.

Alexandra Spring 34:21

It's interesting that your strategy, it sounds like for both this case and also for the Michael Palfrey story. It is like, okay, we've got the story, we're not trying to hush it. Uh you we're kind of dealing with it. It's here, it's happened. This is we're not going to pretend it hasn't. Um is that something that you kind of learnt from your like dealings, or was that like always the strategy? Well, I think the police force, I guess.

Strath Gordon 34:42

I think it's conventional wisdom. Yes. And the one thing you learn about conventional wisdom is it's conventional wisdom for a reason. Because that's how things generally turn out. No two things look exactly the same, but if they have certain common elements, that's what you try to do. But the moment you obfuscate, certainly if you mislead, um, well, that story's got a whole new life and often becomes worse than the original offense. So um, so no, that was it was very clear that this is what had to be done, and um and and everyone sort of fell into line and it happened. And then by the end of Anameas came out and did a media conference, I think it was about 9 p.m. that night, and we had won three medals at that stage, and the journalists sort of asked three or four questions about Tom Craig at that point, and then started to ask questions about anticipating this fourth gold medal, and I thought that's it. I think we've we're we're okay here.

Alexandra Spring 35:38

So uh that's fantastic. Well, let's let's talk about Ray Gunn, right? Um, aka uh Rachel Gunn, um who was sent to was in a performance, uh a breakdancing performance. Um breaking, actually. Breaking, sorry, said breaking. Um, you know, the performance happened, the sport happened, and then there was a lot of commentary that followed that as well. So I want to talk about what happened there. Um she received zero points for her efforts when she uh competed. Um and then the whole story blew up, certainly here and I think around the world, it it really blew up. Um I'm curious to hear what was happening uh at AOC uh headquarters, and I'm really curious to hear from you, like how what your considerations were, Tom, about how you cover that story and how you um yeah, what what you kind of go through. Strath, let's let's start start with you.

Strath Gordon 36:42

Um well, strangely enough, uh, because I could see the moment Ray Gunn's name was mentioned, all the all the heads out there came up and smiles went on faces, and I thought, yeah, that's it's amazing, isn't it? Um uh it was nothing like that.

Speaker 3 36:57

Okay.

Strath Gordon 36:58

It was not it was nothing like those two previous stories. And there's some reasons for that. I actually remember watching her performance live and thinking, what on earth is she doing? Um that's fine because it did look very strange. Um, but she'd made a competitive decision that this is what she was going to do because she knew that she was um, you know, this is what I found out later, but uh I just looked at it, thought it was very strange. I mean, this this athlete had won the qualifying tournament here in Sydney. There's no controversy about it. She was uh to the extent in a subjective sport, she was clearly the best female breaker in Australia. She was the best female breaker in Australia. Um uh but it did look odd, and I think the media, and so maybe Tom can sort of come in on this point, I think the media just thought it was a bit odd, but not particularly kind of the story of the decade. And I don't know, yeah.

Tom Decent 38:03

I was doing other things to be fair, but Jordan Baker, who's the Herald's chief reporter, um, doesn't cover a lot of sport, but does an excellent reporter, was there on the ground and she like uh no one expected Ray Gun to get through anyway, so it's kind of a I mean like obviously everyone watched it and they thought it was a little bit odd and unique. Um, but then like and Jordan wrote a great piece around it where so athletes perform and then they go through the mix and that's their first sort of interaction with the media after that, or broadcasters obviously for TV. But Jordan wrote that, like, you know, there's a big scrum around her, and she probably is like unexpected unsure as to why that is, and she was relatively happy with how she went, I guess, but then her like emotions sort of change in that mix zone when she got questions from reporters from all over the globe, right? Like everyone sort of flocks to the the it thing of the the day, and she but Jordan writes about how her demeanour changed, and she kind of was started to it was the first moment where she started realizing that I'm getting the piss taken out of me a bit here, and maybe this is gonna be something. Now, at that point, Jordan's first initial probably report alludes to that a little bit, but then like no one could foresee where it goes to from there, like no one's gonna need control over what's on TikTok or what people think's funny or not, and um, and then it goes to a duty of care thing, and then perhaps how she's uh advised in that period. But yeah, like I went travelling in South America after the games, and all anyone wanted to talk to me about was ray gun from any like country. Now, like you're from Australia, from like ray gun territory. That's that was it for months. So you just how could you possibly foresee that in Olympic Games?

Speaker 3 39:42

No, absolutely. Hey, I mean, yeah, what what's what yeah, what are you thinking at this point?

Strath Gordon 39:47

She actually had a dedicated uh media officer for that day, and uh uh he had his hands full, obviously. Uh and really the focus for us at that point was uh athlete welfare. Clearly, she was overwhelmed and completely completely out of her depth in terms of what this had turned into. Uh, it had got a life of its own. Uh the narrative was like this raging monster of all sorts of things. Um and once the social media thing had breathed the the life very quickly into this story, so it went from that initial phase where that was a bit weird to know this is this is kind of the craziest thing that's ever happened at an Olympic Games, and then everyone's examining everything about her. Um so it's right at the end of the games, too. So there's a lot of focus on other things, so we're looking at this and thinking we've got to protect her because this is beyond her capacity to deal with it in a rational way. Um the next thing is, well, all the media want to speak to her. Well, she's done that. So the decision was: is there anything to be gained for the mental health of this person by putting her in front of the media and giving them what they want in order to, you know, common thing in PR. You stand up and you address the issues and that assists in uh you know mitigating against where a story may be going or what's happening. We took the view this was never going to happen, that uh putting her up to speak to the world's media, uh, or even, you know, you're not going to get away with a friendly one-on-one, which is another tactic you can use in PR. Let's just get her message out via here. It's too big. Um, so we took the view there's no benefit, and the best thing is that we um we circle the wagons around her, uh, we speak on her behalf, the games are nearly over, other athletes are performing. We still have the Australian Olympic team out there winning medals, going to finish here on the on the medal count, the the closing ceremonies a couple of days away. So it really became that uh kind of operation. I spoke to her a couple of times. I've still got all my WhatsApp messages with her. Um incredibly, she um wanted to go into a closing ceremony, so she felt like she wanted to do that to give her closure on her Olympic experience, so no PTSD, but she was talking about going to another event, a breaking event in Europe, uh, and competing. And that was the only real advice I gave her to say, do not. Oh, but I bought tickets, and I said, Do they know you're competing? No, I said, Well, don't compete, and I wouldn't go. I would just go away. I would just go and have a holiday somewhere with your husband and and just get off the map. I can't tell you what to do. She's a her own, she's a private citizen, she's you know, she's not our employee. I said, but if I was in your shoes, if you go to this thing, this is what's going to happen. Up to you.

Alexandra Spring 43:15

Absolutely.

Strath Gordon 43:16

Um, and I I felt desperately sorry for her because I think her whole life uh was turned on its head uh in in a flash, something she never anticipated. Um, and that she would still think about going to that breaking event and competing after this shows you that she was not equipped. And then, of course, I think reality then started to.

Alexandra Spring 43:42

I wanted to just uh to talk to you, Tom, about your and I know you probably didn't write uh specifically about that, but that what are the ethics around, you know, there there was a huge tidal wave of online trolling and bullying and all the rest of it. Like how as a journalist, how do you kind of navigate Covering it, but also not adding to the fuel to the fire, do you think?

Tom Decent 44:06

Yeah, and that's probably on an editorial team to decide that a bit as well. Like, you know, we sort of do what we're told, but we all um as the ones who are at the coal face of it, um, we probably have to say to editors like, maybe enough's enough, or we're you know, do we really need to continue doing this? And um, I think there was a fair bit of sympathy shown around it. Um, but like I don't know whether it was any definitely not for print media, but experiences of TVs trying to bump bounce her and stuff. I don't know, but I can't remember during that time whether there was issues, I don't know. It happened early on.

Strath Gordon 44:38

It it didn't once once she had the advice, she should and she and she was she she became terrified. So she just came into the village and um yeah, so that was she didn't get bounced again.

Tom Decent 44:51

So in in the Olympic village, like media can't get in there, that's uh safe zone for obvious reasons, but um yeah, uh it just took a life of its own um and then continued well beyond the Olympics too. So you guys obviously um say your thing, and and then it and then I would imagine she had her own team around her and well she didn't at that stage, she actually I gave her some advice.

Strath Gordon 45:12

I said, okay, you you you're gonna need a manager and you're gonna need a PR specialist because once you break from the team, you're you're out there in the real world, the Olympic team um disassembles. Um so I made some suggestions to her. She didn't take that advice, that's fine. She she found someone else. But the last thing we did on her behalf was there was a um a um petition, online petition, that by the time I'd got on off the plane in Singapore coming home, had amassed 50,000 signatures calling for her head, claiming uh a large number of completely untrue things. Um one that you know she'd used taxpayers' dollars to do this, that uh her husband had been on the judging panel that got her to the games, that she had prevented indigenous athletes from competing because of some body she sat on. None of those things were true. And uh so I issued a press release that she was then able to use uh when she put her head up a few days later um saying this is all nonsense. The I had the the petition pulled from um what's the name of the site? Um change.org. Uh the petition was pulled because it was false, and uh and I had her father on the phone in tears one night and um and uh gave him some advice and um and then she got a got an agent who managed her affairs after there, and uh that that's a that's another story.

Alexandra Spring 46:50

Another chapter, absolutely, absolutely. Um if we if we move on uh from that, Tom, what are your other favourite highlights from the Olympics that you look back now and think, wow, that was an incredible highlight, that was a great story, you know. Other things that we haven't touched on, what were your highlights from those from the games?

Tom Decent 47:08

Um I definitely like Noemi Fox winning gold. That was like, you know, Jess was a great story, and everyone knew her, and everyone knew a Naomi story too, but no one really thought she was probably gonna do it. Um the manner in which she did it and just the raw emotion of Jess celebrating with her sister was like an absolute highlight for me. Um yeah, there's a number that's bringed to mind. The last night of the swimming was the same day as the men's hunter final at the track, and I had told everyone that I'm going no matter what. I'm gonna send my words and I'm gonna get in a cabin. We're gonna race across town and see the men's hundred final, so that was cool. Um US basketball team coming back from about 25 points down to beat Serbia, I think, in a semi-final. That was pretty cool with like LeBron James and stuff. Um, there's just so many celebs and big dogs there that it it was it was um and at all the venues too, Strath, they were just remarkable. Like even something like the beach volleyball, which you would argue you might not go to in Olympics, might not be the first one, but that was the event that everyone wanted to go to, obviously, under the opening.

Speaker 9 48:09

Yeah, one of the few I saw.

Tom Decent 48:11

There are a few highlights, but yeah, as Strath says, you work incredibly hard. We had five days off, so we couldn't complain too much, but um in the middle of it, but yeah, um, incredibly rewarding.

Alexandra Spring 48:21

Absolutely. What about you, Strath?

Strath Gordon 48:23

You know, in addition to your work that you were doing, highlights from the oh well uh Nomi Fox, uh she did work experience with um with us. Um so I was so pleased for her because her her her very deserved deserving sister has been such a big star, and then Nomi got her own place in the in the sun. I I thought that was fantastic, and just for her personally, I thought it was it was brilliant. Um Saya Sakakabara uh after the all the issues she'd had. I don't know whether people know the story of Saya Sakakabara. Her brother had been very badly injured ahead of the uh the Tokyo Games and um has had a very difficult recovery of sort of life-changing injury in uh BMX uh racing, and um and Saya then in Tokyo crashed as well and was out, and then she won the gold in Paris for her brother, who's still recovering and um has a brain injury, and uh you know that was very emotional for me. I I just I love working with Anna Mears. Um you know, you you go to a games, and one of the key things in PR is the credibility of your chief spokesperson, whether it's your CEO if you're working for a business or the head of the chair, whatever the organization is you may work for. Um but if you work with a uh a person who uh can withstand the rigours and deal with difficulty, uh, who listens to advice, doesn't always have to accept it, and if they don't accept it, they'll question you. Why why why would we do this? And then you and you work with them. Uh Anna was an absolute dream, and she had the credibility of being an Olympic gold medal-winning writer who you know had her own incredible story. So working with this wonderful woman, she did she'd sometimes say, Yeah, you know, what why are we saying this? I said, Oh, you know, you say this, but you could antify it. I'd say you could amify it. So say this and put it in your words. So she'd say, Well, this is what I'd like to say, and then we'd have an agreement about you know, you know, what that is, but she was her own person, and uh she wasn't sort of heavily scripted. There was there was a you know, she'd go to a media conference, and then you go, Oh, where did that come from? That was fantastic, but it came from her heart and her head, so it's that was a great experience working with her. So it was a wonderful game, and uh for me it was the my final act. Um I retired a couple of months later and um and haven't worn a college shirt since. So um, so uh it was it was a great experience, and and things went well. I mean, I was surprised about the things we were never asked, and um like what? Like what, yeah. Well, what did we miss? Well, we keep the recording on, right? Well, I just thought there well or could have been asked more of. I think the whole issue around transgender sport uh was big news of the games with the the the two boxers uh competing in the female comp. That was massive. I just thought we would be dealing with that issue a lot because we had boxers who potentially some of our female boxers could have come up against those women. So what what was that? And and then the confusion about people calling them transgender boxes, but they weren't transgender boxes, they were DSD boxes, so the you know it was it was a confused issue, but it falls into that um culture wars kind of environment. Um so I I was surprised we weren't asked more about issues like that. I was surprised we weren't asked a lot more questions relating to the um Gaza Israel environment. Uh one of our female boxers, uh Tina Rahimi, did put out a tweet and it just didn't get reported. Um so I chase that one up. Tom. It was busy games, but you know, and and she was entitled to do that. And um so she just put out a tweet in in in um well, it might have been Instagram, sorry, Twitter so last century. Um but I I thought there would be a lot around that. I mean I I had real concerns about managing our athletes and uh concerns around security um with athletes. So I I thought there may have been more questions around that. Anna did get asked a question on transgender in her very final farewell press conference where we're wrapping up the whole games, and she had we had her some lines, she'd worked through the lines, she she went to every media conference, armed with those lines, never got asked the question. And in the final media conference, she got asked the question and she forgot the lines and just sort of fluffed it, and no one cared. So uh interesting. Yeah.

Tom Decent 53:16

What about keeping Jess Fox as the flagbearer under wraps? I interviewed Naomi Fox at a function and she may have indicated that Jess may have known about that a little bit in advance. Oh, I think Anna may have said that she uh you know had someone in mind. Remember, we were all asking her.

Strath Gordon 53:33

Oh well, yeah, it sort of goes with the territory that that's something you keep under the uh under wraps, but uh I'll I'll be honest, Tom, I've kind of forgotten whether there'd been any any any any breaches there because keeping the the closing flag bearer is is it's it's a difficult issue because you wanted names, you wanted someone who's gonna be iconic and everyone says yes, that person is a deserving person. But then there's then there's uh logistics around people are they coming and they're going, and are they still going to be around? Are they gonna be here? And then you've got to keep I I didn't lose any sleep over it, whatever whatever that was, but um, but uh and you know, and and Jess was great, she'd got voted on to the uh IOC Athletes Commission, and she is now an uh uh an IOC member in Australia now, so she's um yeah, she's done incredibly yeah, and she I mean she's an inspirational person in her own um right, Jess Fox. But uh yeah, I've forgotten about that.

Alexandra Spring 54:26

Fascinating. Um just before we go to questions, uh the next Olympics are in Los Angeles, but then in 2032 it's the Olympics are gonna be in Brisbane, uh, which is presumably where some of our uh students may uh may get maybe get some jobs. What's your advice uh from a PR perspective, from a journalistic perspective about getting those jobs, and if they get the jobs, what what to be aware of? Do you want to go first? Wow, okay.

Strath Gordon 54:55

Uh how to get a job. Uh well, how many PR students are here, by the way? Okay, great, very good. Um, well, the there's a from Olympics, so there's I guess identify where the jobs may be. So uh the biggest employer is probably going to be around the uh the organizing committee, so Brisbane 2032. So that's an entity within itself, so they all be employing people. Uh the individual sports all have PR people, but a lot of sports use um uh a PR agency. There's one particular agency who specializes in minor sport, if I can call that word minor sports, smaller sports, who can't really afford to pay a full-time PR person. So um so sports themselves will have positions available leading into Brisbane 2032 because this is again, this is their moment in the sun. This is how they recruit their future athletes and get people involved in their sports at the grassroots level. So they will want to make uh hay while you know while the sun shines for Brisbane 2032. The Australian Olympic Committee will again uh it it won't hire a lot of people. All those, I mentioned the 23 in in Paris, uh apart from our own five full-time staff, the rest were either worked for the sport already or they were volunteers. Like the Ray Guns PR advisor actually was a PR, senior PR person at Telstra, who just volunteers every games and takes holidays and and does that. So a lot of them are volunteers. So my my suggestion uh is uh you know fish where the fish are, uh look at the sports, uh maybe look at volunteering or interning with sports. There's a this company called Beyond the Break who uh cover across certainly the eastern east coast, so Brisbane, Sydney, uh Melbourne looking after smaller sports, um they'd be they'd be great to um intern with or get some part-time work with. Uh so getting getting embedded with the sport is is really good because you learn about the mechanics of how the Olympics actually work and what actually happens with the sports and and things of that nature and get that important experience. So I'd be focusing on those if if Brisbane 2032 was an objective. Um so that that's so the Olympic committee probably won't be doing a lot of hiring. They will be recruiting volunteers, um, and they'll recruit volunteers for for LA as well. Um Brisbane 2032 will certainly be hiring, and the sports probably between now and 2032 will be hiring at various points, either directly employing a PR person or using the agency like Beyond the Break.

Alexandra Spring 57:45

So Absolutely. All right, fabulous, thank you. Tom, what are the how do you get in line for an Olympic gig for 2032? And what are the skills that you think that sort of emerging journalists should be focusing on if that's one of their goals?

Tom Decent 58:01

Yeah, it is a bit of a case of right place, right time, I guess. You know, the major organizations will still get a lot of accreditation passes, so clearly, like if you're in a major newsroom and you want to go to the Olympics, like and you see a sport that you think someone might not want to cover, or whatever, like hone in on that. Like I did that with swimming, obviously that's not a great example because the swimming guy will probably go to an Olympics. But you know, if you're in a sports department and you want to cover cycling, like make that your beat and make yourself so good at that sport that you have to go when Brisbane's on, uh much easier to cover the Brisbane Olympics given budgets, so uh rather than flying people across the world, so newsrooms will have more cash to invest and do it, and it'll be a bigger deal being on Australian shores as well. Um I do think that in seven years' time, I think like content creators will definitely be a bigger force to be reckoned with. You're seeing a lot of it now where big um organizations, Cricket Australia's AFLs, are letting those guys into more, um into press boxes a bit more or red carpets and whatever, and sort of producing content that kicks on a bit rather than your traditional medium. So I do think that like clearly being able to shoot stuff on your Instagram and and video is is obviously huge. Uh, but yeah, like it's gonna be bigger than Ben Ho when it is here, and anyone who experienced Sydney in any way will remember how great that was.

Speaker 3 59:22

So yeah, absolutely.

Alexandra Spring 59:23

Yeah, fabulous. Alrighty, we've got a couple of minutes uh for questions. Uh if anybody has any questions at this stage.

Speaker 59:33

Um I just had a question for the time. Um we were talking about uh storytelling before. Um considering that, uh what are you sort of hoping for when you see an event, when you're watching the event uh happen? What kind of outcomes are you looking for when considering storytelling um in publishing?

Tom Decent 59:55

That's a good question. As a reporter, you have to be like, I'm a reporter, not a supporter. So I don't go to a swimming meet and hope the Aussies win. Helps for interest's sake, but also like I'm barracking generally for the best story. Like if I know that the swimmer in lane eight um has had a terrible lead-in and beats everyone else in the field, I know that's a great story. So you kind of like as I said, just being really diligent with your research. Um and that's what the beauty of the Olympic Games is, right? Like, stories pop up from every anywhere. Like, who remembers? Do you remember Eric De Yield? Eric Muslim Barney in Sydney 2000, the guy who basically was from Equatori and he couldn't swim. A couple of guys get DQ'd and he's heat and he has to try and swim the length of the pool twice. Like, no one could have foreseen that that would be basically one of two or three stories people remember from the pool in Sydney, rightly or wrongly. So um, but yeah, like it it it all it's just about observing it all as well. Sometimes like it is a privilege to be able to interview these athletes on either the greatest day of their life or potentially the worst day of their life, and you don't know what that outcome will be and in a sport like swimming, it's that far. Which sounds crazy that James Magniston lost, lost, won a silver medal at the Olympic Games by 0.01 seconds, but he deemed that to be the biggest failure in the world and took a long time to recover from that. So, like it's it's also about perspective as well. But yeah, you you did really do get the highs and lows, and and I think that uh because the Olympics emotions are so high, and someone like Ken McElboy has 21 seconds to execute four years of planning or less in his case, but you know what I mean? Like, there's um it's just the stakes are so high that the stories are just there everywhere you look. And the Paralympics too. If you can have a carbo paralympic sport, I highly recommend it. I've done two Paralympics and it's the most enriching, enjoying experience of all time, and they're just unbelievable on so many different levels.

Alexandra Spring 1:01:49

Other questions?

Speaker 6 1:02:01

Would you say specialism is the area of speciality is becoming like now recognized again?

Tom Decent 1:02:20

Yeah, I I guess it's I guess it's like a round. I mean, they're obviously like like blessed with sport, there are different rounds within the round. Like you do sport, but I do swimming, cricket, rugby, my main ones, but I guess it's probably no different to like general news as well, or being on a police round, or courts, or um, yeah, I I don't really have a great answer around whether it needs to be more specialized nowadays. And I started as a cadet at the Herald in 2014, and I got a go at all, sort of we did eight rounds across six weeks. I always wanted to do sport, but I remember the editor, Darren Goodsurf said to me at the end of it is like if you want to do crime, you can do it. So, but I'd sort of had a real interest in doing sport, but um yeah, I don't know, like maybe in the future people might get more um specific. I don't think like sub stacks are gonna kick off in years to come, and I think that people will uh get around their head paying for more of that and really specialised stuff and niche stuff on that aspect rather than kind of the broad menu you get from something like a Sydney Morning Herald. I think people do like the really specific stuff as well. Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:03:25

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 1:03:29

I'm interested in your sort of thinking or reaction uh immediately after hearing the press conference with the swimming coach declaring that he wanted a career to win. Um it seems like if you didn't say, aha, here's a school, I'd better get on the phone to the air. Could you just talk a little bit more about the circumstances there that were were um in a sense leading you to sort of you could you could leave it for a bit, you could you could come back to it. That just what was going through your mind, what was affecting your your reaction to that.

Tom Decent 1:04:09

100%. Sometimes stor sometimes I don't know what a story is, or it takes me five hours to think that oh that is actually a story. Maybe not in that case. I did know that that was that was a bit like can't be doing that. And then I checked with a couple of people as we learned that he was breaching his contract, which effectively said you can't be coaching anyone else outside of the Australian team. So it just took a while to materialise, but yeah, um, yeah, like there are certain stories that you don't realise straight away. The fact that he said that at a conference with Korean reporters meant that I knew there was a very, very low chance that it was going to end up on Aussie TV pretty quickly, or if he'd said that at a press conference with 10 other Australian reporters, it would have I mean, I don't think he would have done that. I think I to this day don't know if he knew I was there, to be honest. There was 30 Korean reporters and I was there, so you can say it was a bit of luck as well, but also they didn't really care about the fact that they were just happy he was talking about a Korean swimmer and he had an Aussie t-shirt on. But like the flip side of that is that um head coach Rowan Taylor was like quite angry about that because um it wasn't a great look. The funny thing is that Mick Palfrey, that coach, was sharing a room at those Olympics with Sam Short's coach. So you could imagine the pillow talk that night of him, you know, saying he wants a Korean swimmer to win um against the Aussie guy that he was uh yeah coaching.

Speaker 1 1:05:26

Would you say that? I mean, that you seem to suggest in some ways there is a story there, but it's not immediately obvious to you, the reporter. Yeah, it's sometimes just dawns on you uh a little bit later. But yes, hang on, this is this is a great story.

Tom Decent 1:05:44

I think I think I knew it was a story, but maybe this the significance of it, like and then you sort of sometimes you also do a press conference of 10 15 minutes and you forget every word that's said, and then you go back through the tape, and that's actually what is on the record. So then you talk to an editor. Who you sort of kind of speak to and they go, Yeah, that seems a bit odd. You ring a couple people in swimming and go, What if I told you this? And they say, Yeah, that's definitely a bit weird. You sort of piece it together a little bit, and it takes a while, and then you ring swimming Australia and you say, What about this? And they go, Oh, that would be very odd. And then they drop the phone. Yeah, but they would go, That's a problem. Um, so I yeah, but again, that's why good editors as well, knowing what isn't isn't a story. I had one today that I thought was not a story, and I'd mention it on a podcast, and then people I was doing the podcast with was like, Why would you say that? That was it's a good story, why don't you keep that up your sleeve?

Speaker 3 1:06:37

And I was like, Okay, so So that's what you're doing tonight, but literally after that.

Tom Decent 1:06:48

Well, back in the day, Porto, when you were playing rugby for Australia, the newspaper guys had one print edition basically a day. The internet wasn't a thing, respectfully, given your age, but it it it it actually has changed so much. 80 years younger than I am, yeah. But it but it has changed so much. Like those guys would have one edition a day, whereas it's so instantaneous now. Um like I'm on my phone so much, it's ridiculous because I know and I have to be near it. I have my watch which pings notifications all the time. Like, if I'm at dinner, I need to know what's happening really quickly. Like I have athletes um Twitter notifications on my watch sometimes because like a great example, Ariana Titmus retiring the other day, like that pinged on my watch while I was playing tennis because I just needed to like keep an eye on her social media because I knew she was probably going to retire pretty soon. So but to answer your question, Poido, like it is stressful for sure. Um after about 6 p.m. the newsrooms are very quiet generally when you're still trying to get out your work and get a story in as well. Um, but it's probably like high performance sport in your case, you just have to be calm under pressure that you can't try and let it affect you.

Speaker 5 1:08:00

Um there's pressure on a break at the story, I guess, right? There's probably a popular story that might be some report on if you've got something to break.

Tom Decent 1:08:12

If you get a tip that like a story is about to break, like there's no greater thrill. Like it's a thrill, but it's also like you instantly think, what's what's the chance that my competitor has that story? How can I get that story out quicker? So it's a game against the clock. I would imagine Strass had thousands of instances where something's happened and he gets a call from journals and it's like that, that, that, you know, back to back to back. So it's a great rush and a thrill, but you've got to be right as well. There's no point going if you're 50% right. You can you just need to make your calls.

Strath Gordon 1:08:46

And this and the same applies in um in PR. It's just going to say one of the one of the critical things I've learned in PR in my time is actually getting the facts right is really critical. So you're always under pressure to deal with something quickly and to demonstrate to you know the public or the journalists and media that you're dealing with this quickly, but what you can't do is get ahead of yourself. You you do have to be calm and you have to make sure you line up all the facts right. And I really learned that lesson in in police, where you're under incredible scrutiny with high-profile events that are happening in the community. And if your spokesperson, whether it's the commissioner of police or a deputy commissioner or or whatever rank is doing that, gets a fact wrong because it hasn't been triple-checked, and you say there were four people in the room when the explosion happened, and there were actually eight, it is very difficult to claw back your credibility that if you can't get the that fact right, how can we trust you on the rest of the information you're providing? Now, sport is not quite like policing. Um, but I did learn that lesson in police that that while it's quick, you know, you've got to be quick to respond and and and put that together in a coherent way and get to the public quickly to explain what you know and where you're going. But getting the facts right is is is crucial. And I've been in meetings with with senior police back in the day, and a police commissioner would say, he said six, you said five. I want another phone call made before I I walk in front of those people and tell them that there were six people. Um so getting the facts right. I know it sounds stupid. No, it sounds essential. Well, people uh feel the pressure to get out there and do something, say something, put out a statement, whatever, but it has to be measured against being accurate from the very first statement you make. And um the the cops taught me that lesson. Not the hard way, didn't sort of have any, but it's just knowing how critical that was because you you know what would happen if you get that fact wrong, and then you can see case studies of other people who do do that and what happens to their credibility once you put a statement out that it's not accurate.

Alexandra Spring 1:11:16

Absolutely. Well, those are great words of wisdom, I think, uh, to uh to to end on. What you always got to get the facts right. I think that's really the essential lesson, whatever side of the coin you're you're on. So um if there's no more questions, um I'd like to thank Tom, I'd like to thank Strath for all of your wisdom and for sharing your stories behind the scenes uh with us. Um I'd also like to say a very big thank you to Kerry for all of your organizing, for creating the event, uh all your work leading up to it, and thank you to Troy who helped to set this up as well. Thank you all for coming tonight. Um I hope that you learnt. I hope you were inspired, all of those good things. But thank you very much, everybody, um, for coming along.