In a famous case before the Australian High Court Justice Lionel Murphy, in arguing that the conviction of an indigenous activist should be overturned, wrote: “Mr Neal is entitled to be an agitator.”
In the same vein, I would argue that Sinead Diver, whose failure to finish the Olympic marathon has been criticised in some quarters, was entitled to be an optimist. She had problems with a foot injury in the build-up, further problems with cramps in the quadriceps in the warm-up, but she was entitled to go to the starting line with the expectation that she would get to the finish line.
Thay may be a matter of opinion in some quarters. In arriving at his controversial opinion half-a-century earlier, Justice Murphy cited Oscar Wilde’s characterisation of agitators as “a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. . . Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation.”
Oscar Wilde, Lionel Murphy and Sinead Diver are all of Irish heritage, which may or may not have anything to do with it. But Diver is the only one of the three to be selected to run the 2024 Olympic marathon – a two-act drama at both ends of the selection process. The leading Australian finisher in Paris, Jess Stenson, was involved at the selection end and now Diver, whose race ended after little more than one kilometer, is embroiled at the results end.
Lisa Weightman, who missed selection but was named – and presumably entered – as the reserve, is now reportedly upset that Diver did not step aside before the race. In similar circumstances with the men’s marathon Brett Robinson pulled out allowing Andy Buchanan to step in.
Timing is all here. Robinson withdrew a fortnight before the men’s marathon, giving Buchanan plenty of time to get to Paris, acclimatise and race. Diver’s pre-race injury precluded such a replacement as the replacement window had closed.
So, what should Diver have done. The foot injury – plantar fasciitis – is painful but also largely manageable. Diver had been coping with it for some time, including during the period when she ran a half-marathon in early July. It’s not as if there was no risk in the Olympics, but such risk was known and acceptable.
The quadriceps cramping, however, was sudden, unpredicted and – critically – it was severe. As any marathoner knows, cramps can be a problem late in the race, but can be endured. You can battle through a few kilometres staving off cramps but not 40-plus.
In either case, Diver loses nothing by trying. Commentating on the race, Dave Culbert referenced not the High Court of Australia, but rather Tanzanian runner John Stephen Akhwari who said famously of finishing the Mexico City 1968 Olympic marathon in last place more than an hour behind the winner: “My country did not send me 5000 miles to start the race. My country sent me 5000 miles to finish the race.”
Admittedly Akhwari’s comments appear more relevant here than Justice Murphy’s views on another matter, but the fact remains that Diver was entitled to be optimistic about her ability to finish the Olympic marathon right up to the time she cramped in her warm-up. Even then, she was entitled to give it a try – to run a bit and see what happened.
Two other athletes – Rose Harvey of Great Britain and US athlete Fiona O’Keeffe – made the same decision. Harvey, whose tight and sore hip before the race morphed into a fractured femur by the end of it – finished in just under three hours. O’Keeffe, also was suffering hip soreness: like Diver she did not last 5km.
Harvey was a social media hero, O’Keeffe appears not to have attracted much adverse comment, but Diver has been judged harshly, especially on social media. Following Oli Hoare’s earlier reporting of troll abuse after his 1500 ‘failure’, this represents a worrying development. No athlete steps on to an Olympic start line to fail, even though far more of them will fall short of expectations – theirs and ours – than exceed them.
With the women’s marathon the trolling started with the selection and now has run right through to the outcome, the only change being in the athlete copping the brunt of the attacks. In naming their three from the six who had qualified, the selectors did not rank in order. Yet people decided that Stenson had been preferred ahead of Weightman. Both social and mainstream media played along with that false binary depicting Stenson as the bad guy keeping Weightman from an unprecedented fifth Olympic team.
Stenson silenced her critics with a thirteenth place finish. Genevieve Gregson ran a strong race to place twenty-fourth. No problem for the keyboard warriors: they morphed seamlessly into trenchant criticism of Diver, who they now say should have given her spot to Weightman, but didn’t.
Tenth in Tokyo three years ago, fastest Australian – with a national record – in the qualifying period, successfully managing a persistent injury to get to Paris. As we know it now, these all seem to be reasonable grounds for Diver to think it might – would – work out all right on the day.
It didn’t. But Sinead Diver was entitled to be an optimist.
A tough one Len and I admire your optimism that plantar fasciitis is “manageable.” As an ex-distance runner I experienced the same injury twice and it was, by a long way, the worst injury I ever had. It may well have caused a biomechanics change in Diver’s style and perhaps led to her pulling out. Some guesswork here. But, whatever the reason, trolling of her and athletes like Ollie Hoare are simply unacceptable. As you well know, athletes put in years and years of hard work and sacrifice and trolling is nothing more than ignorance. Performing at less than optimum on the biggest stage, or, as in Diver’s case, barely making it out of the starting blocks would be devastating. She deserves our 100% support, not criticism or raking over the selection criteria, again, and again, and…
100% agree. The campaign that we have seen from the non-selected runner has been appalling and no doubt contributed to the state that Sinead Diver found herself in. Sinead was there, she was justifiably at the start line, what happens after you cross that line is nobody else’s business. As Sinead said post race on her social media account she (and the team) had been the target of vicious trolling leading into the games – it would have been ridiculous for Sinead to be replaced by the individual that would benefit from the trolling she enabled in the first place.