Paul Lewis: Aussie support wins gold every time

A friend has one of those T-shirts that used to be popular - the ones that read on the front: I support New Zealand... And on the back: and anyone playing Australia.

Those T-shirt owners would have had a few warm moments at the beginning of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games, when former Olympic swimming champion Duncan Armstrong's ludicrous forecast that Australia would sweep all 19 swimming gold medals crashed and burned in spectacular style. So did new Australian prodigy Libby Lenton's effort to bag swimming's El Dorado - the legendary seven golds. And that was even before Moss Burmester stepped up with his monumentally well-judged swim to bag New Zealand's first gold medal of the games.

But there was a moment during this spectacular Australian fall from grace - surprising losses in the pool saved only by the trifecta in the women's 200m individual medley - that showed one of the major differences between Australia and New Zealand.

If I may be permitted a gross over-generalisation - Australians tend to be bad winners but good losers; New Zealanders tend to be the other way around. Australians can be insufferable when they win (and Kiwis often feel their innate arrogance surfaces at such moments) but there are few better losers in the world of sport.

If proof is needed of this assessment (which may be contrary to the opinion of most), it came when Lenton fell at the first hurdle of her seven-gold mission, finishing second to Scotland's Caitlin McClatchey in the 200m freestyle.

Lenton beamed and beamed. Her smile lit up the pool; a thing of amazing radiance. If this is what she looks like when she wins silver and is held up to some ridicule, you wonder what she'd do if she won gold. A smile of such intensity that it would vapourise the chlorine fumes from the pool and trigger spontaneous multiple orgasms, I suspect.

She won me over, did Lenton. I now have a sneaking regard for her quest for six gold medals.

That's the thing about the Aussies when they lose. They learn from it, they add it to their war chest of determined comebacks and double their efforts. But they are not afraid to front up. Ask any sportswriter who has been on the scene for a while: Win, lose or draw, the Aussies stump up and talk about it. Ask those covering All Black rugby. The All Blacks can be a wee bit snakey when they come second. The Wallabies? "Yes, mate... what do you want?... No trouble, pal..." and off they go.

And the crowds? The Australians at the Melbourne Aquatic Centre were brilliant. They back their stars in a way that our crowds don't. We're a bit reserved, aren't we?

We sit on our hands a bit and we reserve judgement. Or maybe it's just that we don't like waving our naked emotions around in public. I understand this - I am as guilty as the next person - but the Aussies have got us beat when it comes to supporting.

Let's go back to Lenton. There she is, with a million-dollar smile and an Australian crowd hooting and hollering like she's just won the Olympics, Tattersalls, has a pet koala called Curly and has decided to marry Heath Ledger. Support? This was bleeding mass adoption. It is impossible not to admire it.

Some of it is blind but it is devotion nonetheless and no sports star anywhere can do any less than their best when copping boatloads of devotion. It gets a bit much in the Aussie media sometimes, when they bang off thousands of words which could all be boiled down to one sentence: We are really bloody good, aren't we?

Like the Australian newspaper which devoted about 2000 words to Lenton's gold medal quest and gobbed off all over the place about this certainty. In the last line of this throbbing, self-important salute was this sentence: Scotland's Caitlin McClatchey is also a threat. Too right, mate. Small wonder non-Australian journalists at the pool chortled and made little uncomplimentary hand signals to each other. Even Melbourne's sober Age newspaper cautioned against over-confidence but only because she might be beaten by another Australian(!).
But the plain fact is that the Australians will win more gold at the pool and elsewhere (but not, happily, as many as they thought they would). They are unsurpassed as a nation in willing a victory.

As we drove away from that chilling night of the Rugby World Cup semifinal in 2003, my brother-in-law ventured to suggest that we had just seen another reason why Australian sport is so good. They back each other - the fans, the players and the media are all aligned and pull together in a way we don't.

I think he is right. I am not sure what we should do about it - probably nothing as there is no way we will ever be Australian-like.

But you can't help but admire them, particularly when they take the form of a hugely talented athlete and outright good sport like Libby Lenton.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY