When American sprint
icon Carl Lewis was an unknown but
promising teenage athlete in New Jersey, he found inspiration in a quiet,
shy Australian woman, Olympics star
Betty Cuthbert. In 1994, before a Melbourne dinner in her honour, he
lauded her “courage and conviction”, which had empowered her to do far more
than anyone would have dreamed possible. He said she was one of the
champions who had created his interest in the Olympics.
The Betty Cuthbert
story is often told. At her Sydney secondary school she discovered a talent
for sprinting, and she developed into a world-class athlete. But Australia
had several top-class women sprinters, and so, in 1955, Betty - then aged 17
- spent most of her savings on tickets to the
1956 Melbourne
Olympics, never expecting that she might be selected to compete.
She was chosen, and
became known as Australia’s “Golden Girl” after winning gold medals in the
100-metres sprint - the first gold medal ever won by an Australian on
Australian soil - the 200-metres and the 4x100-metres relay.
She went to the 1960
Rome Olympics, but injuries meant she failed to win any medals, and she
announced her retirement. It was at this point that her journey into courage
really began. While working at her parents’ plant nursery she heard a voice
telling her to run again. The voice became insistent, and after months of
indecision she resumed training. She did not find it easy: she was often in
pain as she worked to restore strength and speed.
Then, shortly before
the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, she developed a painful foot injury that left her
unable even to walk properly, let alone sprint. A series of experts could
find no remedy. It was only a chance meeting with a Sydney chiropodist that
led to the right diagnosis - a dislocated bone that had not shown up on
x-rays. Secret treatment meant she was at full strength when she started in
the Olympics 400-metres final, and in an explosive race she won her fourth
gold medal.
In Chapter 1, we saw
examples of the kind of courage that wins bravery awards: dramatic rescues
from burning aircraft, from raging seas or from mining disasters. Naturally,
our hearts stop when we read of these and similar acts of heroism, like the
mother who rushes into the burning house to save her screaming child. But is
this really courage? Perhaps it is desperation. Or just instinct.
There is another
version of courage: a quiet, steely determination that succeeds in the face
of adversity. Indeed, the kind that involves flamboyant gestures may
sometimes be classified as foolhardiness. The ancient Greek philosopher
Aristotle noted this when he wrote that, “the brave man is the man who faces
or fears the right thing for the right purpose in the right manner at the
right moment”
He saw the fearless
person as “mad”, and the person who is over-bold as rash. In fact, he
believed that the rash man was, really, feeble. “They swagger a good deal
when things look bright, but make themselves scarce in the presence of
actual danger.”
But courage retains
its aura as the virtue we most admire. Writer Robert Louis Stevenson
described it as “the footstool of the virtues, upon which they stand”, and
Samuel Johnson saw it as “a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue that
it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice”.
Teaching courage to a
child means exposing him or her to stories of bravery, as well as
encouraging the child to extend himself or herself through taking some risks
- reasonable risks - by fighting for beliefs, standing by friends who may be
teased for being different, admitting mistakes, and putting aside one’s own
views in favour of those of others. British wartime leader Sir Winston
Churchill said that it takes courage not only to stand up and speak but also
to sit down and listen.
Unless we raise youth
who possess moral courage we end up with citizens who may appear to be
tolerant, but who in fact lack commitment to anything much at all. British
writer Dorothy Sayers expressed it like this:
In the world it is
called tolerance, but in hell it is called despair….The sin that believes in
nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing,
enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing,
and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.
Betty Cuthbert is
deeply religious. She did not make much of her faith in her autobiography,
Golden Girl, which was published in 1966. But recently she has been
more open.
Indeed, she believes
it was God telling her to run again, before the 1964 Olympics. In 1992, she
told Olympic historian Harry Gordon, author of Australia and the Olympic
Games, that: “I knew it was God, and even though I tried to resist I
finally just had to give in. It was quite clear.” At the end of her dramatic
gold-medal-winning race she felt a great peace. She prayed, and asked God,
“Have I done enough?”
The British runner Ann
Packer, winner of the Tokyo 800-metres gold medal, came second to Cuthbert
in the 400-metres. Much later, Packer was interviewed by author David
Hemery, also a former Olympic gold medallist, for his book
The Pursuit of
Sporting Excellence, and she recalled the contest:
When I spoke to her
[Cuthbert] years afterwards, I realised that I wouldn’t know if I could ever
have won that race. She is a mystical girl with very strong religious
beliefs. I call her mystical because she has an inner understanding of
herself which would be very difficult for anyone else to touch and I just
felt that she had a stronger belief in herself than I had. She had a very
strong character and many, many setbacks have motivated her tremendously.
Her depths of reserve enable her to keep coming back - that sort of spirit
would be very hard to beat.
In 1997, the Bible
Society published a version of the New Testament of the Bible which it
titled
Towards the Goal, aimed at sporting people. It contained profiles of
top Australian athletes, all of whom knew, it said, that “their success
doesn’t depend on their sporting ability alone, but on their relationship
with God”. They included figure skaters
Danielle McGrath and Stephen Carr, jockey
Darren Beadman, rugby league player
Brad
Mackay, tennis champion
Margaret Court and AFL man
Steve Lawrence.
Betty Cuthbert was included, too. She said that just before she ran in
the Melbourne Olympics her grandmother passed to her a verse from the
writings of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: “But those who trust in the
Lord will find new strength. They will be strong like eagles soaring upward
on wings; they will walk and run without getting tired.”
There is irony in this
prophecy, because in 1969 Betty Cuthbert learned that she was suffering from
multiple sclerosis. She must now move about in a motorised wheelchair.
I recall my Auntie
Sheila in London, who over a couple of decades became progressively
incapacitated from multiple sclerosis - though, as happens so often with
this cruel disease, she was blessed with enough periods of remission to lure
her into the false hope that she was on the mend.
Determined to continue
her career with a market-research firm, she used to drive to the office in a
specially adapted Morris 1100, struggling into it each morning, usually
unaided, from her wheelchair. It took courage, yet every morning there was
real fear in her eyes as she set off in heavy traffic on the short drive
from Hendon to Camden.
As the quote from
author Mark Twain at the head of this chapter suggests, fear is often an
ingredient of courage; it may even be a necessary ingredient. Martin Luther
King talked about the necessity of building “dykes of courage to hold back
the flood of fear”, while Ernest Hemmingway simply said: “Courage is grace
under pressure.”
I do not know to what
degree, if any, fear has played a part in Betty Cuthbert’s life. She has
said that after the initial diagnosis she spent 10 years travelling to other
countries in search of a cure, before coming to an acceptance of it.
Now she works to help
MS sufferers and others. In 1981, Australians were shocked to learn that she
was surviving on an invalid pension. (She had gained fame at a time when
athletes were true amateurs, and she didn’t make money from her successes.)
As a result, there have been a number of fund-raisers held for her. And she
insists that a portion of the money raised must go to help the needy.
As a nation, we may feel discomfort discussing notions of character and
heroism, yet we still recognise it when we see it. That is one reason Betty
Cuthbert remains so widely admired, even when other great athletes of the
past are barely recalled.
Through her faith and
courage she serves as an inspiration. She says she now accepts her disease,
and does not ask why it should have happened to her. Indeed, she told the
Sydney Morning Herald in 1997 that she believed God wants her to use her
fame to generate publicity to help other sufferers.
I suspect that God is
using her for a much wider purpose: to teach us all-important lessons about
the fragility of worldly fame, about courage and service, about the
importance of life and about suffering.
In a cold age when
many voices are calling for euthanasia for the terminally ill and when, in
the words of American commentator Father Richard John Neuhaus, we have “a
culture that is increasingly given to inflating the horrors of disability,
sickness and dying in order to make the case for relieving people of the
burden of living”, it is witness such as Betty Cuthbert’s that teaches us
there can be meaning in suffering. She teaches us what it means to be alive.
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