No silver lining for Australian boarder cross team

A long standing rift between Jarryd Hughes and Alex Chumpy Pullin reared it’s head again today when Australian team members failed to publicly congratulate Hughes at the bottom of his winning run as he won silver at PyeongChang. Both Pullin and Hughes made the medal final but it was Hughes that crossed the line in a podium place after medal hopeful Pullin took a crash and overshot the jump by 40 feet in what he called the equivalent of “jumping from a four story window.”

While Hughes and gold medalist Pierre Vaultier hugged each other, Pullin failed to congratulate his team mate when he eventually made it down the run, choosing instead to hug other riders who also competed in the final. Though to be fair there was congrats in the semi finals when they finished 1 and 2.

But by the time Jarryd had finished post medal interviews and came out to the crowd be publicly congratulated by family and friends, Pullin and his supporters were leaving the grounds. It was ‘frosty’, but not surprising given the team history.

The fractures in the team are, in the words of Olympic Winter Institute of Australia CEO Geoff Lipshut, “a personality clash”. Based on the furore created by #teamoutcast in Sochi four years ago when Hughes and Torah Bright both revealed their believed cracks in the funding process for Australian Olympic athletes. The beef was mainly with Pullin who received the bulk of the funding, which #teamoutcast believed should be theirs.

The Olympic Winter Institute of Australia took note of the public battle. Hughes went on to receive appropriate funding and the OWIA set up a separate training program for him so that he and two times World Champion Pullin’s camp, including OWIA coach Ben Wordsworth and fellow team mate Cameron Bolton, would not have to train together.

“We do offer him (Hughes) something different, he doesn’t want to do the same program as the other guys do and given he has an emormous amount of talent we’re happy to support that” said Lipshutt.

“He wanted all these different things and to be separate and we said fine. He has a New Zealand head coach and a Canadian personal coach and he went and made a deal with one of the best wax techs in the world.

We’ve set up a process where they are happy to be on the same team as each other here, they all get on enough to do their sport and that’s all we ask of them. Learning from the last games we actually gave them all enough space where they could all have a go and getting three in top ten today, means what Jarryd did worked and what Chumpy did almost worked.”

When asked in the post event press conference if he would be on the podium today if the separate training system hadn’t been set up for him, Hughes responded “no, I wouldn’t.” He was also pointed in the mixed zone interviews when asked how the team would celebrate his silver medal he responded with “I have no idea, for now I am just going to celebrate and enjoy this.”

“We’re in an individual sport, we all want to beat each other, it is what it is” Hughes went on to say in the medal winner press conference when asked about team cohesion after a great race for Australia with three (Bolton, Hughes and Pullin) in the semi finals, and two (Hughes and Pullin) in the finals.

Hughes impressive win is Australia’s 15th medal in a Winter Olympics and comes off the back of five knee surgeries on his left knee. He also returned to Australia early after World Championships last year, unhappy with his result and spent months training with Sydney Uni Rugby and Crossfit Active in a dry land team environment.

“After the last games we set up processes and we are really pleased” said Lipshutt of the way the Australian boarder cross team are handling the Olympics.

“We have cut through personal issues. No one crossed each other in the lead up. We rehearsed the lead in for years, you’ve all got to be on the same team, you have to get used to it, and they understood that and everyone played their part.”

Pullin traditionally has an excellent reputation within media circles and is always gracious and upbeat when interviewed. I have never in my working life as a journalist heard him say a bad word about any of his fellow competitors or his Australian team mates and I probably never will.

But it doesn’t take much to put on a show for media and viewers, a simple pat on the back, a hug in front of a camera, a shake of a hand, a high five, a shout out of congratulations, that’s all it takes to kill a story like this dead.  You might think your fellow athlete is a jerk but all you have to say is congratulations. Five syllables. I can’t say if it would have been different if the race results were the other way round or not.

“We’ll catch up after. Pretty cool to see a fellow Aussie on the prodium” said Pullin when asked about Hughes before moving on. “Going through heats with Cam (Bolton) was really awesome.”

Even Lipshutt admits nerves about how this ‘personality clash’ could have really played out on a world stage.

“I’m actually not going to say what my worst fear was” he laughed while still in the silver glow.