Anna Meares, Australia’s newly-appointed chef de mission for the Paris Olympics, says “opinions are welcomed” among Australia’s top athletes but backed the current policy of keeping protests off the podium and field of play.
Meares said she would welcome free-thinking, free-speaking athletes as head of the Australian contingent in France in 2024 and was backed up by Australian Olympic Committee president Ian Chesterman, who predicted “the athlete voice is only going to get louder” in time.
“I think that’s a good thing,” Chesterman said. “As administrators, we need to provide that avenue for athletes to be able to speak and to know that they’re being heard. I’m very pro recognising that that’s the world we live in and if we don’t take our athletes along with us, we move forward at our own peril.”
Chesterman and Meares were in Brisbane on Monday to announce the country’s decorated queen of track cycling as the chef de mission for the Paris Games.
Amid a growing trend towards athlete outspokenness on cultural, political, social and scientific issues, Meares backed Australian athletes to pick the right forum in which to speak out.
A 2020 survey instigated by the then-chair of the AOC’s athletes’ commission, Steve Hooker, found 80 per cent of almost 500 past and present Australian athletes wanted the field of competition left a politics-free zone.
Anna Meares is Australia’s chef de mission for the Paris Olympics.Credit:Getty
“The athletes’ commission is a really important element within the AOC and the alumni. They surveyed the athletes asking for their opinion, which I think is really great, to get to know what they want and how they want to voice their opinions,” Meares said.
“Eighty per cent came back saying they wanted to be able to express themselves, but they all agreed that the podium wasn’t a place to do it. There were so many other areas and avenues they can express opinions in. I think it’s welcome.
“Sport is held in such high regard here in Australia. Our sportsmen and women are role models and they’re not just robots. They are human, they are passionate about human rights and the challenges facing the world. Opinions are welcomed.”
A four-time Olympian and dual gold-medallist, who recovered from a broken neck to win silver at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Meares will be the youngest chef de mission to lead an Australian team since John Coates in 1988, as well as the most recently retired.
Rower Nick Green, of ‘Awesome Foursome’ fame, was 45 when he led the team in London in 2012 after competing at the 1992 and 1996 Games. Meares’s last Olympics was Rio in 2016. She will be just 41 when she leads the Australian team in Paris.
The only Australian athlete to win a medal in four successive Olympic campaigns, Meares worked under Petria Thomas as general manager of the Australian contingent at the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham earlier this year, a role equivalent to the deputy chef de mission. She said the call-up fulfilled a career ambition.
“When I retired, my husband said to me, ‘You have to find something you can really connect with and be passionate about’ … the only thing I could think of was that I’d love to be chef de mission for Australia one day,” Meares said.
“I thought it might be in 10 or 20 years’ time, so for it to be happening now … I feel very honoured, a little bit nervous and excited as well.”
Sports news, results and expert commentary. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
