Transcript

Cast (in order of appearance)

Nicky Bethwaite
Nathan Wilmot
Bob Wilmot
James Wilmot
Julian Bethwaite
Kim Herford
Mark Bethwaite
Narrator: Matt Carroll AM

Transcript begins:

Nicky Bethwaite:

Represented at the 1988 Games, 1996 and 2004.

Nathan Wilmot:

I said I’m going to go and do that mum, and I’m going to do better than dad.

Bob Wilmot:

The Olympics is not something you try, no. It’s something you do.

James Wilmot:

Everything’s got to be perfect.

Julian Bethwaite:

I have designed a number of boats and a couple of those boats are currently used in the Olympics.

Nathan Wilmot:

A hundred thousand people cheering and yelling.

Kim Herford:

Pretty much a high.

Mark Bethwaite:

Competing for Australia at the Olympic Games, there is no greater honour.

Narrator:

Mosman has a long history with the Olympics. Beginning with Frederick ‘Freddie’ Lane, Australia’s first Olympic swimmer, winning two gold medals at the Paris Olympics in 1900.

When Lane returned to Australia he settled in Mosman at the Curlew Artists’ Camp. Once home to several leading Australian artists, by the early 1900s the camp was a place for sailing, swimming and outdoor pursuits.

The Curlew and Balmoral Camps provided semi-permanent retreats from the pressures of city life and Freddie Lane made the most of this, commuting each day to the city by ferry and remaining at Curlew until his marriage in 1908.

Fast forward to Melbourne in 1956, the first time Australia hosted the Olympics. Mosman was there with award winning journalist and author, Gavin Souter, on the ground for the Sydney Morning Herald. Mosman was not only reporting but coaching and competing too.

Mosman’s Sam Herford was an accredited swimming coach for the 1956 Olympics and the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Herford was a talented swimmer and surf lifesaver before switching to coaching in 1936.

After the Second World War he became owner of the Spit Baths and coach to numerous Olympic swimmers who trained there. Two of his charges, Murray Rose and John Devitt, had great success in 1956 and 1960 and Herford, as one of the key contributors to the golden age of Australian swimming, helped lead Australia into our most prominent Olympic years.

It’s not surprising that Mosman with its many bays and beaches saw much of its Olympic success in water sports. What is not so well known is Mosman’s family success at the Olympics and the Herford family are no exception.

Sam succeeded as an Olympic coach, daughter Kim an Olympic swimmer, and son Gary as an Olympic rower.

Kim Herford:

Pretty much started with my mum as a 14 year old state and national champion and my dad was a state and national champion surf and still water. Mum would have gone to the Games in 1928 but was passed over as being too young and Edna Davey was taken instead, she was a few years older than mum.

And my Aunty Clare won the gold breaststroke medal in 1932. That’s pretty much the basic history of how I started swimming. Moved to the Spit Baths in about 1949 and as I’m told, I taught myself to swim at the age of two because it was my backyard it was probably the thing to do.

I left school end of third term in 1963 to train. They tried to make me stay and said you’ll be sports captain next year. I said, no, I’ve got something better to do.

Narrator:

Meanwhile, across the ditch, the Bethwaite family were sowing the seeds for Olympic family sailing success. Frank and Nel Bethwaite and their four children moved from New Zealand to Sydney in 1959.

Mark Bethwaite:

My father was a great man. He was a great pilot in the Second World War flying in the Pacific against the Japanese. He was decorated. He then became a pilot with the forerunner to what is Air New Zealand. He then went into small boat design and manufacture. He then wrote a number of books on the science and technology of sailing.

Narrator:

Frank Bethwaite is remembered as the father of high performance sailing with expertise in designing, building and sailing boats. With this pedigree it is not surprising children Mark and Nicky became dual Olympic sailors and Julian an Olympic boat designer.

Mark Bethwaite:

I sailed for Australia in the 1972 Olympics in Munich. I sailed for Australia in the ’76 Olympics which were at Montreal with the sailing at Kingston, Ontario. And I was in the 1980 Olympic team for Moscow but that was the year that Australia boycotted due to a war in Afghanistan.

Nicky Bethwaite:

My name is Nicky Bethwaite. I’ve represented at the 1988 Games, 1996 and 2004, ’88 and 2004 as a competitor and ’96 as a coach.

Julian Bethwaite:

My name is Julian Bethwaite and I am not an Olympian. I have designed a number of boats and a couple of those boats are currently used in the Olympics and a couple more are being considered.

Mark Bethwaite:

We grew up in the east coast bays north of Auckland, a little bay called Torbay, where in fact I went back for the 2017 World Masters Games. So it was a nice homecoming. I recall seeing boats sailing off the beach there and one day I expressed interest in sailing and that changed my life. My father was quick to put an old boat under me, so I started sailing when I was about six.

Nicky Bethwaite:

I always say we didn’t have a lot of choice in whether we went sailing or not. If we didn’t go sailing we sat on the beach and we pretty quickly got tired of that.

Julian Bethwaite:

So I’m the youngest, I’m the baby. I think of all the children I probably got the best out of both of my parents in the sense that my three elder siblings flew the coop and I stayed in the family business and that allowed me to have very close interaction with both my mother and my father.

People talk about my father because whatever he put his hand to he did extraordinarily well. Look, my first experience sailing would have been with my parents, I think it was about three or four. I still sort of remember it, being curled up in front of a thing called an NS14 down at Northbridge. It was a family day, they had to carry an extra person and I was probably the lightest, so it probably suited them down to the ground and, yeah apparently, my mother tells me I was singing songs most of the way around, infuriating my father, but that’s another thing.

Mark Bethwaite:

When we came to Sydney the family settled in Northbridge and there was no sailing club there at the time. There were a few people who did sail off the beach in Clive Park, Northbridge. My father was actually instrumental in bringing that group together and forming the Northbridge Sailing Club.

Nicky Bethwaite:

I mean I remember curling up in the cockpit of the Northbridge Senior that Mum and Dad were sailing and I’d have been three or four years old I suppose and just — I would have had no idea, probably asleep for most of the race. But anyway, I guess that sort of just led on to… I had my first boat when I was six and they were all built at home and dad was an amazing carpenter. I just loved putting that first coat of varnish onto the plywood of whichever boat it was that was, that we’d just finished building.

Nicky Bethwaite:

So I started with Northbridge Juniors which was a design that dad introduced at Northbridge Sailing Club and then I just sort of, as I got bigger, dad just built more boats that suited me.

Narrator:

The Bethwaite family may have sown their sailing seeds out of Mosman but the Wilmots sailed into Olympic success from the shores of Mosman.

James Wilmot:

Hello, I’m James Wilmot. I went to the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. A resident of Mosman since I was eight years old, went to Middle Harbour Public School.

Bob Wilmot:

Hi, I’m Bob Wilmot. Grew up youngest of six kids, single mum. Mum was a ballet teacher. We had a water frontage in Mosman and my brother loved sailing and he was very, very successful at it and he learned at a very early age how to build boats.

Nathan Wilmot:

I’m Nathan Wilmot. I represented Australia at the Olympics in 2004 in Athens, 2008 in Beijing where we won a gold medal, and more recently was a coach for the Australian 470 Women’s Team in Rio.

James Wilmot:

My grandfather’s place was just down the road and next door to him were two very famous sailors who – Ian Brown who won a medal in ’76 and John Dorling who was very competitive in Etchells and stuff. Anyhow, they had two little dinghies and I pestered them enough to be allowed to go sailing with them now and then and … finally got a Flying Ant of my own and I could sail that pretty well whenever I wanted from my grandfather’s place at the time.

We’d sail from Mosman/Cremorne around to Walton’s boat shed down at Balmoral and get a pie for lunch and a milkshake and a bit of sailing and sail home and it was good fun.

Bob Wilmot:

Sailing wasn’t necessarily a ooh, should I go sailing, it was like when. I was just that young kid going when’s it my turn, can I go. And at four years old, Jamie needed a crew one day in his Manly Junior and I got the gong and just loved it and never looked back.

Our weekends were really… We would sail around to Middle Harbour Yacht Club and race at either Middle Harbour Yacht Club, Skiff Club, Clontarf, Balmoral or Northbridge Sailing Club and we would probably average three races a weekend at three different clubs.

Mum was the dance instructor at Middle Harbour Primary when I was there and, you know, it was just what I did. Same with sailing, dancing was a big part of my life and so when it came to going overseas and needing funds to do that, mum would put on concerts. So when I went to Perth, my sister Rowena was competing in the Flying Ant Australian Championships which I had competed in. But I’m pretty sure I went to Perth as a young whippersnapper when Jamie went over for Cherub Worlds with my sister Jean, would have been competing then.

James Wilmot:

1969, I was… I actually learnt to drive across the Nullarbor. One car had two Cherubs and a Flying Ant on the top and the other car had a Flying Ant on the top. We had four boats and two cars. It wasn’t until my second year in Flying Ants that we happened to win the state championship and then it sort of just started rolling from there.

Bob Wilmot:

The windsurfing, it hit Australia predominantly around ’76 and so I’m at school and, you know, 14 years old I think. My brother bought a wind surfer. He was sailing 18 foot skiffs at the time and he’s like oh, I need to get fit so I’ll pick up a windsurfer and I would take it out and I just couldn’t get enough of it. We’re like well if we can race each other, we’ll take on the world and so we organised an Australian championships around June of ’77 at Belmont Sailing Club.

So I’m 15, I’d been watching my brother and sisters flying off around the world competing and I’m like, when’s it my turn. And as it turned out, I won every Australian championship from ’77 till I retired in ’84. ’84 was the first year that windsurfing became an Olympic sport.

Narrator:

Middle Harbour Yacht Club was a home away from home on the weekends for the Wilmot children in the 1960s and 1970s and then to their children in the 1980s and 1990s. International success followed, culminating in Olympic success for brothers Jamie and Robert Wilmot and Jamie’s son, Nathan.

Nathan Wilmot:

Apparently when I was four years old watching dad compete in LA in ’84, I turned to mum and said, “I’m going to go and do that mum and I’m going to do better than dad” or along those lines and so the Olympic dream for me is quite a long one and I mean obviously it was always going to be sailing. Yeah, once I started sailing that, it was a great boat.

James Wilmot:

’83 was when we got going for ’84. Definitely didn’t spend enough time doing it. We quite easily won the states and the nationals. We had a very close Olympic trials down in Adelaide. We’d only been in it for five months or something and I should have really started a year before it. It was good experience for when Nathan came along and started his campaign that everything’s got to be perfect.

Nathan Wilmot:

The idea I guess was probably sail Flying Dutchman like dad did and he’s still got one, still got it sitting there ready for me to get it out of the woodwork but unfortunately that didn’t make it in, well got kicked out of the Olympics so the next choice was the 470, and at the time when I was 17 I was the perfect size for it.

James Wilmot:

We had four kids at the time and, you know, it just… It was hard work to balance everything and, as it turned out, we just didn’t put the right boat on the water in Los Angeles to have a good show.

Narrator:

Striving for excellence brought these families together as they shared their Olympic dreams and courage.

Mark Bethwaite:

If you have success at club level then it’s natural to aspire to success at state and national level. To set your sights on an Olympics is a different order of magnitude.

Julian Bethwaite:

I hate to think how much it cost but you’re talking half a million dollars probably, back then in the ‘70s, and he would have funded all that himself. And Nicky did the same thing and I watched my two siblings do all this Olympic stuff and I went I’m not that stupid. ‘Cause there was really, in those days there wasn’t any really great aura around an Olympian. Sure, I mean you had Dawn Fraser and all those people winning gold medals and everything else, but in the sailing field, the ultimate sailing boat in the world was either the Sydney-Hobart or the 18 footers, and I just got sucked straight into the 18 footers.

So the season in Australia started the second week in September and finished at Easter. What we tried to do was extend the season by sailing in Europe. We took all the ideas we’d learnt from our Australian season, we’d started building boats in January and shipped them to Europe and then sailed those boats for three months in, or one month, two months in Europe, very intensively. At the end of that, those boats almost invariably got sold into Europe because these were like having a Ferrari and you couldn’t buy it anywhere but in Australia. Well all of a sudden these Ferraris, and there weren’t very many of them, we’re only talking about five or six boats, were sitting in Europe. So we had people coming down from Switzerland with bags of cash just giving us Swiss francs.

On one of those trips we came back through the United States because I had to do an inspection of a site in Rhode Island and I ran into a guy called Peter Johnston. So we decided to collaborate and that collaboration was the 49er. And the 49er evolved extremely rapidly. We were selling almost 150 boats a year before it was Olympic.

We had this trial on Lake Garda in Italy. I mean I knew Lake Garda well ‘cause I’d taken the 18 there as part of the European tour. It’s just one of these meccas of sailing. We won that trial comprehensively and in the end the boat was endorsed almost 95% vote and from then on it’s just been a rollercoaster ride.

The people who sail the 49er, and to a lesser extent the 29er, are evolving faster than the boat is, and they understand that if we don’t evolve the boat, the boat can’t stay with them. Evolution is inevitable, you just — and to reject it is a – well it’s the end of the class, it’ll die. I always look at a project in how much better can I make it. It’s actually very much my father’s philosophy.

Kim Herford:

Come the summer of ’63/’64 my times were just getting better and better and better. At the state championships, that’s where I started to really show some ability. Then went into the Nationals, which I hadn’t been to before and came second to Dawn Fraser. So I was selected on the Tokyo ’64 Games team. The headlines, it has ‘Olympic Swimming Team Announced’ and you’re walking past something like that knowing it was you and that sort of thing, that’s when the excitement started.

We’re in the Southern Hemisphere, usually the lead up out of our summer time, so they used to take the swimmers up to Townsville to train. One good thing is we didn’t have to get up at four or five o’clock in the morning to go to wherever you trained because of the weather up there. I think we started training around about seven or eight o’clock in the morning. So it’d be a three hour session in the morning and probably a three hour session in the afternoon.

We went straight from Townsville to Brisbane to pick up the rest of the team, we didn’t come back to Sydney, and flew to Tokyo. That’s where I picked up my big brother and Mum, and there is a place within the village called the International Club where all the athletes met up at the end of the day and that’s where you got to meet all the other competitors and that was fun every night.

Mark Bethwaite:

I met a man called Tim Alexander when we were both undergraduates at Sydney University. He was doing Architecture, I was doing Engineering. We were selected independently to sail together with one other on the University Sharpie in the Intervarsity Competition. That’s how Tim and I teamed up in the first instance. We formed the view that we would make a good Flying Dutchman team of two and we had our first Flying Dutchman built in 1970 and we trained hard and won the Australian Championships in 1971.

The Olympic selection trials for the ’72 Olympics were held on Port Phillip Bay out of the Royal St Kilda Yacht Club for Flying Dutchman and Tim and I prevailed in those trials and so we were selected. From then on we did have some funding to go and compete in pre-Olympic regattas in Europe.

The Montreal Olympics were a lower key event but they were most enjoyable nonetheless. To be able to get back for a second Olympics and to compete again for your country, it’s just a marvellous sense of achievement. The quest is always for a medal. I’ve been fortunate to have won a number of world championships and so you could say that I peaked in the wrong year. They give me a great sense of satisfaction and achievement but I’d trade them all for even a bronze medal.

From a personal point of view it was incredibly exciting to represent your country and to sail in an Olympic regatta is the culmination of a huge amount of work and ambition and the Olympics themselves, the 1972 Olympics were a fabulous celebration of youth, of Germany’s re-emergence following some fairly dark history in the Second World War, the colour, the spectacle, the facilities were all absolutely first class.

Whilst there was some bonding with other teams, it was intensely competitive. All that changed halfway through the regatta when the PLO staged its invasion of the Israeli team quarters in Munich. That happened whilst we were out on the water in Kiel. We became aware of it as we sailed back towards the Olympic harbour in Kiel and the security, both on the water and on land, just clamped down in a manner which changed the whole dynamics, the whole atmosphere of those games. It went from a very high level of, as I say, celebration to, well let’s get on with this and get it over and done with.

Bob Wilmot:

The ’84 Olympics was quite an eye-opener for myself and Bruce Wylie, and my brother was at the sailing event. So the sailing event was in Long Beach, California and we were in Santa Barbara, California and the way the rules were made up, we weren’t actually allowed to be on the water anywhere near Long Beach.

Nicky Bethwaite:

Then in 1986 the announcement came that there would be a women’s event for sailing at the Olympics. So I made a shortlist of the people I would like to sail with and fortunately the person on the top of the list was available and that was Karyn Davis, who became Karyn Gojnich, and that sort of started a sailing partnership of about 20 years. So that took us to Korea. No funding available. Karyn and I had to take out a bank loan, guaranteed by our parents, you know, all this sort of thing to get a boat, buy sails, do the travelling, hire a coach.

We sort of brought in a few innovations of our own by being the first women involved. We girls were the best performed of that Olympics of all the sailors, of all the boys in Australia. So in 1999 or in 2000 there was a boat selected that was just ideal for women and it was called an Yngling. Now I’d been coaching the Soling in Atlanta and the Yngling is just a scaled down Soling, and we won selection to go to Athens.

The lead up this time was so different to ’88. We had funding support, we quickly established ourselves at the top ten in the world and then we’d just sort of get stuck into our very regular regatta season in Europe and it starts at the end of March and about every two weeks there’s a regatta. Over those six regattas you would get to know your competitors and you’d form your friendships. We just had some great times and, again, still great mates with a lot of those people.

We didn’t go so well. I didn’t have the same feelings of failure as before. I did think that we could have done better and the upshot was I wanted to have another go with Beijing in 2008 and everything went well and we got selected and we’d just come home from China, which was our last selection regatta having secured our spot, and I was off doing some cross-training on a mountain bike and I came off over the handlebars and ended up with a shattered shoulder and plates and all sorts of things and that was basically the end of my sailing career as far as the Olympics go.

Bob Wilmot:

After the ’84 Olympics I was always what’s next, what’s next and I met a guy who wanted me to do an 18 foot skiff. He owned a gold mining company and his wife, she had an aloe vera company, said he’d sponsor me for the Olympics. His company was Square Gold, had a bit of a roll-on and he helped me financially make the Olympic team.

It was very different from ’84 because I was the helmsman, I was responsible for two other crew. The two other crew were part of our team with Bondy. So I was responsible for funding, for boat equipment, for transportation of boats, for… You know, I was responsible for a program, whereas before I was only responsible for making sure I had my harness and my shorts and got to the event on time. There was a lot more responsibility, a lot more campaign planning, fitting in with the other coaches, with the Australian sailing team.

The Olympics is not something you try, it’s like oh, I’ll give it a go for a year. It’s like, it’s no, it’s something you do.

Nathan Wilmot:

Originally the idea I guess was probably to sail Flying Dutchman like dad did and he’s still got one, he’s still got it sitting there ready for me to get it out of the woodwork but unfortunately that didn’t make it in, well got kicked out of the Olympics, so the next choice was the 470.

I sailed with Malcolm Page and originally we scraped and begged and borrowed for the first tour we did of Europe. So we used his old boat, we were training partners with the Japanese for the 2000 Olympics so we got a lot of equipment from them that we used and he was working for Telstra, I was working off and on with Sailmakers and wherever I could. And so we battled away for a little bit that first year I guess but then at the first Worlds we did we got third, so that put us straight on A level funding with the AIS.

Victor came in and started in 1997 with the Australian team and he had just coached the Ukrainians to a gold medal in the men’s and a bronze medal in the women’s. None of us could understand him at first. We didn’t know what we were doing and I think he was watching us capsize and thinking what have I got myself into. Probably still does at times but, yeah, he was with us from then, basically day one that we started sailing or I started sailing a 470 he was there and right up until we crossed the line in Beijing in ’08.

In Athens we went into the Olympics, we were ranked number one in the world, we were favourites I think. Well we were world champions, we were European champions, our training partners were the gold medallists from Sydney, the girls. So we were pretty confident. We went into Athens just a little bit immature and we let a few little things get to us and ended up being a bit too extreme on the race course and just watched the medal get further and further away.

As soon as we finished, I think we were even on the towing gun, well got to get ready for the next ones, and there was nothing going to stop us. So the lead up for China, even though it was — we did, worked harder, it was probably more relaxing because we were in a better frame of mind, we knew what we had to do and it was just up to us to do it, and no outside thoughts were going to change it and we, yeah, executed it right at the end of the day.

After we won, after we got ashore and I’m not sure how but a few of our team members came down to the boat ramp with a couple of beers for us and a little bit of a celebration and off you go to do the media program and go and talk to everyone, and then a couple of people come up to you and say, all right, all the medallists, we’ve got to go get drug-tested. By this stage all you want to do is eat and have fun.

After that though, we went into a marshalling area which had, thankfully, Mars Bars and Snickers and chocolate bars and watch all these six skinny guys that haven’t eaten for a year suddenly eating chocolate and putting on a tracksuit and getting ready to go and stand out and for us to listen to our own national anthem, for them to have to listen to ours.

The opening ceremony is… It’s a long day, but then when you walk out, it’s quite an amazing feeling, like 100,000 people cheering and yelling and an amazing feeling just to be — to do the lap and then stay in the middle for a little bit, see the fireworks at the end.

Kim Herford:

They had balloons, they had doves, I think they had jets doing the Olympic rings and that was about it, apart from all the speeches and anthems and quite plain compared to what we get these days.

Bob Wilmot:

To be on that podium, you know, it was just a celebration of the time that we spent together. That was a special time for us.

Nathan Wilmot:

Getting off the plane, going into the hangar and seeing all the family and TV cameras everywhere, the Prime Minister, it was quite bizarre and got a message from whoever was in charge or someone saying, yeah, everyone put their medals on and I’m watching the swimming girls just going like this putting on like their four medals and we put on our one. So we let them go first and we followed up just behind all the rest of the gold medallists.

Kim Herford:

Pretty much a high, yes, yes. No, it was exciting coming home and being greeted with… You couldn’t move at the airport.

Nicky Bethwaite:

Every Olympic athlete, it’s like being at the top of the pyramid and all through here are all the people who’ve supported you all the way through. So you’re the result of— that team or that individual at the peak is the result of a lot of effort from a lot of people.

Mark Bethwaite:

Any advice that I could give would be totally dated but I would say to anybody who aspires to competing for Australia at the Olympic Games, there is no greater honour.

Kim Herford:

Well I guess it’s for a medal but I think the quest is to do as well as you can, to do your best.

Nicky Bethwaite:

Once you walk away from your competitive career, you really struggle to find something to replace it, has it all been worth it and so forth. From my perspective now, it was worth every second. But part of the thing I think that you don’t often get an opportunity to do is to take something that you love as far as you possibly can and test your limits and you’re never left wondering what if I’d done something else.

Kim Herford:

No, I don’t think I’d change anything apart from my result. Just enjoy your position on an Olympic team.

Narrator:

Commitment and determination made their dreams come true. Mosman, bounded on three sides by Harbour waters, provided the perfect backdrop to their success and the local clubs and community supported these families.

Mark Bethwaite:

I have lived in Mosman many years and we had 21 very happy years there, raised two children, and I used to run and swim on Balmoral Beach pretty much every day. It was a fabulous place to live and we still have very many dear friends and wonderful memories of our time in Mosman.

Julian Bethwaite:

It’s just a really nice, friendly suburb which has suited us exceedingly well for a very long period of time and I’ll probably die here. Try and sail twice a week, once out of Middle Harbour and the other time out of Mosman Bay.

Kim Herford:

The Mosman I grew up in is still here. Mosman’s pretty much in my blood.

Bob Wilmot:

Middle Harbour at the time, Middle Harbour Yacht Club, Skiff Club, we had so much talent, we had some of the — we probably had half the Olympic team for many years out of, you know, a 5 k radius.

Nicky Bethwaite:

I now sail out of Middle Harbour Yacht Club but I race offshore on a Sydney 36 called Stormaway and we have a great deal of fun and so, again, it’s this feeling of camaraderie, it’s about sailing with people with a bit of purpose.

Nathan Wilmot:

Well my entire career, I mean it wouldn’t happen without Mosman and Middle Harbour and Grandma’s place just down the road from here where we are now. And I remember going off the wharf down where Dad grew up and still there. I think I’ve still got three boats in the boatshed down there. It’s just been our sailing home, Middle Harbour, either the Skiff Club or the Yacht Club.

Narrator:

The support continues for the current local Olympians now facing the challenge of the unprecedented postponement of the 2020 Olympics.

MUSIC / CLOSING CREDITS