David Leggat: Aussie athletics spat gives everyone good chortle

That sound of scurrying feet echoing across the Tasman this week was coming from the rooms of Athletics Australia.

There are few things better to spark interest ahead of a sporting contest than a good old-fashioned spat. They're nothing new but they can be fun.

So step forward Australian runners Jana Pittman and Tamsyn Lewis for showing their verbal claws and giving us all a decent chortle this week.

The background is that the pair used to be buddies but Lewis took exception to Pittman making smart-alec remarks after both had won their 400m heats at the Australian trials in Sydney, Pittman almost a second quicker than Lewis.

Pittman, the youngest world 400m hurdle champion in Paris three years ago, apparently intimated the final should be a doddle, she was off to scoff some pizza and claimed the field was so ordinary she could have won the title when she was 15.

So Lewis fumed, and after she finished second in the final when Pittman trundled in last she couldn't resist. She described Pittman as a "bitch" during a radio interview after the final - won incidentally by New Zealand's Jane Arnott - and things rapidly escalated.

Lewis, 27 and clearly inferior, talent-wise, to 23-year-old fellow Victorian Pittman, said - and bear with me as this is not exactly lucid, but you'll get the drift - that "with the cat fight, the bitch fight and whatever else was being said and then after the heats she came out and said there was no competition, so I was standing behind the blocks [before the final] saying 'I'll give you competition bitch".

Pittman says Lewis started it. Lewis begs to differ, claiming her remarks were "tongue in cheek". In which case, methinks you wouldn't want to be round when the delightful Ms Lewis really rolls her sleeves up.

Australian officials are moving swiftly to get the pair lovey-dovey again but words can sting.

They were once team-mates in a Commonwealth Games-winning 4 x 400m quartet. Just hope one doesn't have to pass the baton to the other in front of their hometown fans in Melbourne. The recipient might finish up wearing it.

National 400m champion Lewis is no stranger to the spotlight. A couple of years ago she was slammed for both being too fat and appearing in a raunchy beach layout in the lads magazine Ralph, which sounds a contradiction in terms, but there you are.

Sport has no end of athletes who didn't get along off the field, or even on it.

Take British running aces Steve Ovett and Seb Coe. Chalk and cheese, personality wise, fierce rivals but brilliant runners, and Olympic champions.

Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe barely said a civil word to each other for years, yet it didn't affect their ability to win Grand Slams.

Belgian pair Kim Clijsters and Justine Henin-Hardenne come from different parts of Europe's dullest country and aren't in the habit of exchanging Christmas cards.

Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier genuinely didn't like each other. It didn't stop them producing a three-act play which still stands as boxing's most compelling drama.

It was no secret that Jeremy Coney and Sir Richard Hadlee weren't exactly bosom buddies in the latter years the pair were dominant figures in the New Zealand cricket team.

Punchups at All Black training sessions? You bet it's happened, but it is part and parcel of a physical contact environment, and players move on.

A few years back at a golden oldies tournament, one prominent former All Black belted another, who had been a team-mate for years.

"Why'd ya do that," the recipient complained.

"I've always thought you were a bastard, but I couldn't do that till now," the hitter replied.

The point of this exchange is that, for the good of the team, athletes are able to submerge their personal feelings about the bloke, or woman, standing next to them.

Take note Jana and Tamsyn.