Almanac Book Review: Athletes and Near Death Experiences – The Case of Triathlete Emma Carney

 

 

Emma Carney with Jane E Hunt, Hard Wired: Life, Death And Triathlon

Ryan Publishing, Melbourne, 2020, pp. viii + 357, pb $39.95.

 

Reviewed by Braham Dabscheck.

 

Sport involves using our bodies to achieve some goal. This is often equated with something called exercise which, in the popular imagination, we should all do. In the discussion which follows, we will ignore that work also involves us using our bodies. If work is not ‘appropriately’ conducted it can result in permanent and debilitating injuries, even death; issues associated with occupational health and safety. Most top level sports involve participants pushing their bodies to the limit of their endurance; is life in extremis safe?

Imagine now, that you are a top level athlete, in this case, in an individual sport. You are in competition with other top level athletes; these are the persons you think and obsess about because if you are to succeed they are who you need to beat. The sport concerned will be organised in some fashion. If it involves international competition it will have a national association which will be ‘in charge’ of you and your sport. As a top level athlete, you would expect it to enhance your ability to compete; such as providing support staff, organise travel arrangements, accommodation and the like. You would also expect coaches to help and guide you through your career.

This was not the lot of Emma Carney, a triathlete who dominated the sport from the mid to late 1990s. She won the International Triathlon Union World Championship in 1994 and 1997, and the International Triathlon Union Triathlon World Cup in 1995, 1996 and 1997. In 2012, she was inducted into the World Triathlon Hall of Fame; 2014, the Triathlon Australia Hall of Fame; and 2016, the Sport Australia Hall of Fame. Carney was involved in a series of disputes with Triathlon Australia (TA) and coaches in the lead up to the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games. The nadir of this was her non-selection for the Sydney Olympics.

In Hard Wired: Life, Death And Triathlon, Carney with the aid of Jane Hunt, a culture historian from Bond University, provides an account of her life and career as a triathlete. Carney kept extensive diaries of her ‘training, personal [commercial] commitments, lifestyle and intricacies of my experiences as an elite athlete’ (p. vii). She asked Jane Hunt to write her biography. Hunt drafted a document and convinced Carney into telling her ‘story in her own words’. She rewrote Hunt’s chapters from her perspective, which Hunt then tidied up.

Hard Wired is unlike conventional ‘glory’ autobiographies by sporting stars (usually ghost written) which focus on their successes, overcoming obstacles, anecdotes and titbits of gossip on those within their orbit, of how everything is hunky-dory in the wonderful world of sport. Carney takes us inside the messy world of triathlon, of constant battles with injuries and medical problems – Emma Carney almost died from cardiac arrest after a swimming training session in Edmonton, Canada in 2004 – run-ins with officialdom, so-called support staff and coaches and the incredible strain that committing yourself to sport places on one’s psyche; especially when your career comes to an end and you believe you have been cheated out of what destiny should have provided.

Carney was a champion school girl long distance runner. At an early age she discovered she liked running and had a highly competitive streak. She says ‘I was wired to work hard, fight obstacles and never buckle. I took on adversity as something to overcome, not a reason to ask for help’ (p. 165). This dictum nearly cost her life. In a running career from 1984 to 1995 she won 46 of 107 races and only finished outside the top three on five occasions (pp. 335-341).

In late 1991 Carney experienced a serious back injury. Visits to doctors and physiotherapists were not helping. Her father, David Carney, encouraged her to do some cross training. She saw a triathlon race on television and met up with on old school friend (from Wesley College, it went co-educational in 1978) Marcus Galbraith. They started to train together in the swimming, riding and running disciplines of triathlon. Marcus was killed on his bike on Australia day 1992, returning from a triathlon. His father told Carney that ‘Marcus always thought you could be the best triathlete in the world’ (p. 37).

Carney was still having trouble with her back and her father again suggested she should do triathlon for cross training. They found a local race and decided she should ‘just see how I would go’ (p. 37). She won easily. Her father researched triathlon results worldwide and discovered Carney’s times were very competitive. Carney spent 1993 and 1994 alternating between running and triathlon. In November 1994 she entered her first international triathlon competition – the World Triathlon Championship – in Wellington New Zealand as an unknown competitor and won by over two minutes. She decided on a career as a triathlete and dropped running.

Carney was an autodidact triathlete; she worked out, with help from her father, the ‘best’ way to approach triathlons. She found swimming, riding and running coaches and asked them for advice on how best to train for each of the disciplines. Her strengths were running and bike riding. She explains how triathletes need to balance the three disciplines, how to not tire yourself out in the swimming leg (in her case stay close to the leaders so as to catch them in the other two legs), how to use gears, the height of the seat and how to sit on the bike to not tire legs for running, and when to take on others in the run down to the finish. Her swimming training was based on speed work and recovery (to stay fresh) rather than long periods of distance training.

In the mid to late 1990s, Carney dominated women’s triathlon. She described ‘battles’ that went on between rival triathlon organisations as they sought to take advantage of the growing interest in the sport; sponsorship conflicts between rival groups and between leading triathletes and triathlon organisations; sponsorship deals and appearance commitments that these involved. In all of this she was guided by her father who worked in management with a variety of sporting companies.

A rival triathlon organisation tried to sign Carney offering her a sign-on fee that was one per cent (she says, ‘yes – one per cent!’) of that offered to top men triathletes (p. 78). Carney was a strong supporter of equal prize money for women and men. She was prepared to speak out against attempts to depart from this principle, or when event organisers attempted to reduce payments below what had been promised. She also called out the sexism that pervaded sporting and triathlon media:

As women, if we had an opinion against the norm, we were hard work; if we showed ambition, we were greedy; if we showed emotion, we were too dramatic. In the case of the new emerging TV series, if we fought for equality, we were seen as disruptive and uncooperative (p. 77).

In 1996, at the height of her successes in triathlon, Carney was beginning to feel ill with a chest infection. After consulting a sports medicine doctor, she was advised that her lungs were only working at 60 per cent of capacity. She was advised that she had a chest virus and warned of the ‘long-term physiological damage this effort [of training and participating in triathlons] would have on my body and vital organs’. The doctor informed her father that such damage would ‘certainly manifest itself at some stage in the future…that if any damage had been done to the heart, it would be absolutely minimal initially, but with scar tissue the heart would need to work harder and with each extreme effort there would be more damage’ (pp. 116-117).

Carney rested for a period. She and her father thought she had recovered and let this advice slip from their memory. Carney got back on the bike.

The International Olympic Committee decided to include triathlon in the Sydney Olympics. This decision proved to have a devastating effect on Carney’s career and long term well-being.

TA received funding from the Australian Sports Commission for the Olympics. This in turn put pressure on Carney to come into its training programme, to capitalise on her success, thereby increasing its funding. Carney had previously trained herself and was successful to boot. While initially resisting, she agreed to join a TA training group and was forced to interact with head coach Brett Sutton. He was a former swimming coach who had segued into triathlon.

Carney is highly critical of Sutton’s coaching methods. His approach was to require his charges to do ‘volume training’ – large amounts of slow repetitions rather than ‘fast quality work’ as happens in a race. ‘There was no recovery or treatment provided which [Carney] thought was very unbalanced’ (p. 135). She fell ill before a race in Stockholm with a chest infection. She refused to take medication offered to her by coaching staff where the ingredients were not clearly displayed, fearing that she would be in breach of the Australian Sports Doping Agency drug code. Sutton criticised her over this. She pulled out of the race feeling ill. Sutton, who had already criticised her for not taking the pills told her she was soft for pulling out.

Carney says Sutton’s method of training was to work on an athlete’s weakness, bring it to the forefront of their mind and then make them vulnerable and reliant on him to remove the weakness. He focused the majority of this destructive coaching methodology on the female athlete. He would openly tell every female athlete that they were genetically fat, because they were female, so they needed to train harder than the me. “No one was allowed to question a session, and if they did, the session volume was increased, or they were ridiculed to their face and behind their backs as ‘weak’ or ‘soft’ ” (p. 137).

Carney said food was “another avenue through which [Sutton] could inflict mental abuse’ inflicting ‘non-sensical rules on the girls’ ” (p. 138). No attention seems to have been given to diet, and the use of dieticians, in enhancing performance.

Carney added that “[Sutton] didn’t believe in resting an injury; an injury was just a sign of weakness in an athlete’s body…I also have the ongoing mental impacts of [Sutton’s] coaching as athletes carry the psychological scars of the abuse through their private lives, well past retirement from triathlon. To this day there is a widespread belief amongst many of the top triathletes from that time, that Brett Sutton’s abuse contributed to a high-profile Australian triathlete’s suicide” (p. 139).

At one point, Carney’s lower back seized up. She refers to how while at a TA training camp, she had not received any chiropractic care. Sutton offered to massage her back. She accepted.

Her account of what happened is as follows:

[Sutton’s] idea of a massage was weird. I kept my running gear on, because I didn’t trust him…[Sutton] basically ignored my back and ran his hands lightly over my legs.

“What are you doing?” I asked him.

“Massaging your back”, [Sutton] replied.

It was so weird it made my skin crawl. I got up and left. (p. 144).

In 1997, Brett Sutton was arrested by Federal Police on several counts of misconduct (paedophilia) with a young girl in 1987. He subsequently pleaded guilty and received a two year suspended sentence.[1] TA told triathletes not to leave the training camp and to show support for Sutton, not to comment to the media under the risk of disciplinary action and back his bail application. Carney’s father was told by TA staff that it ‘withheld knowledge of [Sutton’s] behaviour when they appointed him’ (p. 161-162). Sutton was demoted as head coach but still exerted a strong influence at the training camp. The camp fell into chaos and Carney decided to depart and go her own way. Sutton said that her departure would put her selection for the Sydney Olympics at risk (p. 151). A TA official later told her father the same thing; ‘because I always raced as an individual and did not race as a team [member]’ (pp. 158-159).

During this period Carney’s body began to break down. She suffered a problem with her Achilles which became chronic and required surgery after she retired. She also experienced problems with calf muscles. She found herself ‘underperforming’ and became increasingly frustrated.

She recalls:

“my ‘winning edge’ was no longer as reliable as it had been. I didn’t always have that ‘edge’, ‘spark’ or whatever it is called where I could do whatever was necessary to force a win…I was feeling tired. Sore and aching. Dizzy and light-hearted now even at times between training. Breathless after sudden intense efforts in races” (p. 179).

Carney was experiencing the problems that she and her father had been warned about in 1996; warnings they had forgotten. Her heart was scarring and placing her long term health at risk. Desperate to get back her edge she found a new swimming coach with a ‘high reputation’ who was cast in the same mould as Brett Sutton. He combined volume work with verbal abuse (p. 180).

At a Triathlon World Series event in Ishigaki, Japan in April 1999, Carney finished fourth. After the race she complained of a sore foot. A physiotherapist experimented with various forms of treatment to no avail. No thought was given to a scan or X-ray. On her return to Australia a scan revealed she had broken a bone in her foot. This forced her to recuperate and killed off a large part of the 1999 season.

Selection for the Sydney Olympics, for both women and men, would be based on two races held in Sydney and Perth two weeks apart in April 2000. A win/best Australian (the races were international events) in either race would guarantee automatic selection. The third slot would go the best performer over the two races. On 23 December 1999, TA outlined its final selection protocols. They included a ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause’ which would make allowances for athletes who were ‘disadvantaged due to a pre-existing injury or illness or an incident [that] occurs during the race’. In that case, the selection committee would consider performances in major triathlon events that had occurred in 1999 (p. 219).

Triathletes were required to formally notify TA/the selection committee if they wanted to rely on the ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause’. Carney had a poor 1999 due to the broken bone in her foot. Given that the protocols were released two days before Christmas 1999 she, and other triathletes, had no way to activate the ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause’ for events which had occurred in 1999.

At the beginning of the first qualifying race swim specialist Loretta Harrop dived into the water and pulled out of the race and invoked the ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause’. She didn’t compete in Perth. During the riding leg Carney slipped on a wet surface and smashed her hand on a barricade. Her hand quickly swelled up and reduced her ability to change gears and brake. Her riding leg was a disaster. She made up time on the running leg and finished fourth. Carney recounts problems she and her father had in obtaining acknowledgement from TA that it had received her flagging of the ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause’ (p. 211).

A major error occurred with the running of the second qualifying race in Perth. The running leg was supposed to be 10 kilometres. For an unknown reason, an official opened the finish line with a lap to go; the running leg was reduced to 7.8 kilometres. Carney was the fourth best Australian, behind ‘swimmer’ Nicole Hackett. Because of the shortened running leg, and running was her major strength, she was substantially reduced in her ability to have a better finish in the race. TA should be condemned here in the strongest terms for its inability to properly conduct a race which would determine Olympic selection.

The winners of both the qualifying races were selected for Sydney. The third slot went to Loretta Harrop, who had briefly participated in one race and not at all in the other on the ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause’. Her performances in 1999 were seen as being superior to Carney’s injury ravaged year. No allowance was made for Carney’s ‘Disadvantaged Athlete Clause Appeal’, nor was any adjustment or allowance made for the shortened Perth race.

Carney appealed her non-selection. She was so devastated by what had happened she found herself unable to provide an account of the appeal. What happened during these proceedings is examined by Jane Hunt (pp. 218 -239) and her father (pp. 240-253), respectively. Twice her appeal, first by an Appeal Board, and second by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), resulted in the selection committee being asked to set aside their decision and make a new determination. On both occasions the selection committee, comprising the same persons who made the original decision, reconfirmed their decision. Carney’s legal team again mounted an appeal to CAS. Prior to this final hearing, David Carney refers to a conversation he had with the President of the International Triathlon Union.

“He…[told] me that he had done everything to convince [the] TA President…that TA had made a major selection error in excluding Emma because she had rightly qualified…the IOC was “pissed off” that Australia had so many Appeals still undecided so close to the Games and further that Emma losing her appeal would cause all other Appeals to be resolved…I disagreed…and told him in no uncertain terms. He then floored me by telling me that having worked for so many years in the sports industry I was still so naïve, and I better believe it” (pp. 250-251).

CAS dismissed Carney’s appeal. The two swimming specialists that were chosen, failed to win a medal. Switzerland won the gold and bronze medals; Australia’s Michillie Jones silver. Carney reproduces a quote from the Swiss coach to the Australian selectors for not selecting her. ‘Well, thanks to that mis-selection, we grabbed two medals in the Women’s Race. Thank you, Aussie Federation’ (p. 255).

As a result of her not being selected for the Olympics, Carney’s sense of self-worth nosedived and her career fell apart.

She lamented:

“It is all very well to encourage athletes to speak up when abused or mistreated, but who was going to protect the athlete from retaliation by the national federation when they do? To me the system seemed broken. Gaps were there that could ruin lives for forever” (p. 255).

In 2000, triathletes did not have an organisation to defend and advance their rights and interests. Since then two bodies have formed. They are the Professional Triathletes Organisation which ‘began to take form in 2014’, but took four years to get off the ground, and the Professional Triathletes Association.

Carney spent the rest of her career struggling with a worsening Achilles problem and feeling continually tired and disoriented. Continual training and racing increased scarring and weakening of her heart. Following a swimming training session in Edmonton, Canada in July 2004, on a team bus returning to base, her heart began to race. She asked the bus to stop, got off grasping for air. Her heart rate was 248 beats per minute. She was suffering Ventricular Tachycardia and was on the verge of death. She was saved by a taxi driver who had the sense to call an ambulance and paramedics who defibrillated her on the spot.

Carney stayed in Canada for several weeks recovering before being considered well enough to fly back to Australia. During this period, she was not visited, nor was she contacted by anyone from TA concerning her welfare. She provided a detailed account of her recovery, the implanting of a defibrillator to protect her against further attacks, and brief details of her post triathlete career. She has a lengthy chapter on the death of her older sister Jane from cancer. It makes for harrowing reading and provides insights into the devastating nature of such a death and its impact on family members. There is also information on her failed marriage (her husband, who is not named, was violent) and the birth of her son.

Hard Wired provides an account of the demands and pressures that are placed on a world class athlete. Triathlon almost killed Emma Carney as a result of the continual demands that training and racing placed on her body with the inadequacies of medical care and associated support provided during her career. Her life was saved by the quick intervention of a Canadian taxi driver and paramedics. At a minimum, all athletes who participate in sports which involve or require athletes to push themselves to their limits, should be provided with annual cardiac tests. She was forced by TA to subject herself to a coach whose modus operandi was to drive those in his charge to physical and psychological stress; a coach that they knew had been involved in paedophilia in the past. All sporting bodies need to undertake due diligence in their appointment of coaches to ensure the health and well-being of athletes.

In March 2020 the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released a report which provided a blueprint to enhance human rights. Amongst other things, the report pointed to Rule 2 of the Olympic Charter which ‘Encourages and supports the medical care and health of athletes’, and ‘Promote safe sport and the protection of athletes from all forms of harassment and abuse’.[2] Hard Wired documents how TA and the Olympic movement totally failed Emma Carney in both of these objects. The overbearing approach, the extent of the demands placed on athletes and the abuse she documents would not be tolerated and denounced if it occurred in normal paid employment. Athletes should be afforded the same protections as those in employment.

The IOC, in its relationship with national sporting bodies, such as the Australian Olympic Committee, and national sport governing bodies, such as TA, needs to develop procedures to ensure that athletes are provided with better medical care than what was afforded to Emma Carney. It also needs to regulate and oversee the work of coaches to protect athletes from physical, psychological and sexual abuse. This will involve the development of codes and guidelines to govern the work of coaches in their relationships with athletes; rules regarding the nature and level of training; a clear statement that coaches cannot use food as a means to punish and control athletes; regular supervision and evaluation of coaches and an arms-length mechanism for athletes to evaluate and air grievances against coaches; and for athletes to be able to elect and choose their own representatives in giving voice to their concerns on either an individual or collective basis.

Hard Wired provides a valuable addition to writings on sport in its warts and all account of the demands, pressures, health and psychological risks that a champion triathlete experienced during her career and lasting impact following retirement.

[1] See Steven Downes, ‘OSM investigation: Sexual abuse by coaches’, The Observer, 7 April 2002. Also see Report of the Independent Investigation, 2018. The Constellation of Factors Underlying Larry Nassar’s Abuse of Athletes, Joan McPhee, James P. Dowden. Ropes & Gray, December 10.

[2] International Olympic Committee, Recommendations for an IOC Human Rights Strategy, Independent Expert Report by Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein and Rachel Davis, March 2020, p. 4; International Olympic Committee, Olympic Charter, In Force As From 17 July 2020, pp. 16-17.

 

 

 You are invited to OddFriday/Footy Almanac lunch with Emma Carney, details Here.

 

Read the Media Release for Emma’s book Here.

 

To purchase a copy Hard Wired details are Here.

 

 

 

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Comments

  1. This is a writing tour de force, Braham. Riveting, an excruciating account of Carney’s treatment, and an excoriation of a ‘system’ that failed her so badly.

  2. A brilliant review by Braham which hits many nails on the head.
    This book is the most dramatic and revealing that I have ever published.

  3. Extraordinary tale. Harrowing. She was a superb athlete who, it seems, was broken down by a lack of care and downright criminal behaviour.

    Sadly these dreadful sporting stories keep emerging.

  4. Great review. Emma Carney was ridiculously good for a long period of time. Head and shoulders above her rivals. Won many word titles. A true champion. Everybody knew.

  5. Put together with last night’s Four Corners it seems that sport can seriously damage your health and subsequent life, especially if you are a woman in activities dominated by male coaches and officials, though there are examples where female coaches are tyrants or worse. Yet some of what coaches have done in the past would now be regarded as abuse, though it has been held up for years for approval because of the success of the athletes or competitors who won trophies or medals at individual and team sports after undergoing that program. Would a Percy Cerutty (sp.) be allowed to coach today? Jock Wallace and the Sandhills at Gullane have entered Scottish football folklore, but his teams were successful for a time. But nobody has followed his regime since to my knowledge. There is a lot of interest these days in brain damage caused by sport, but I wonder and fear for Raphael Nadal if he continues to have to use injections in his foot just to get on the court. He seems to have realised this himself at last. Probably did so a long time ago, but has only admitted it in public this year?
    Sorry, wandered off your review, Braham. Brilliant as always.

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