Special Report: From Australia With Love – How Tennis Superstars And The World of Sport Helped To Support A Devastated Olympic Nation

“It’s important for people like me who have a big platform to raise awareness,” US global tennis superstar, Serena Williams, on participating in the Australian Open during the host nation’s bushfires disaster. “For me in particular, as a player, it was incredibly devastating because I literally know people who have been affected.”

Following the terrible bushfires that have been engulfing Australia in recent months, Michael Pirrie explores the role of elite sport in helping a devastated Olympic nation during the Australian Open tennis Grand Slam and year of Olympic milestones. 

Something profound and unexpected has been happening in Australia twenty years after it hosted the iconic Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

While Australia’s economic, cultural and international horizons have expanded since, events on the sporting field, and battlefield, have long helped to define Australia’s fighting spirit, its identity and destiny.

Sydney’s Olympic party atmosphere and spirit of friendship united Australia and the world in an electrifying celebration of sport.

The success of the Sydney Games reinforced images of Australia as the ‘Lucky Country,’ with a vibrant economy and an obsessive love of sport, which this once unknown great southern land has become synonymous with.

While Australia hasn’t felt much like a lucky country in recent weeks, with the nation battered by extreme weather events of almost biblical proportions, the sporting world is returning Australia’s friendship and solidarity in sport.

The superstars of world tennis began the return of service and love of sport to a nation in urgent need of solace and deliverance from harm and loss.

But this would not be sport as normal or anything approaching normal.

While the heat of the Australian New Year often challenges visiting tennis players, the smoke-filled skylines that greeted the world’s best tennis athletes on arrival this year presented a new and unprecedented challenge.

SPORT LIKE NEVER BEFORE

Never before have Australia’s much envied long, hot, lazy summers of watching sport on the television in the lounge, escaping to rural retreats, or lying on the beach under big blue skies turned deadly so quickly, or so widely, with firestorms spanning three states.

Even the Australian Open tennis television trailers proved ominous and prophetic, urging locals and visitors to “be open to anything.”

Significant stretches of Australia were devastated by fires, dust storms, drought, torrential rains, wild winds, power black outs and soaring temperatures.

The returning sounds of the Australian Open’s tennis commentary, polite, cheerful applause, post-match interviews, and umpire rulings helped to replace the sounds of stunned silence that filled a nation inflamed.

Naval carriers and planes were dispatched to evacuate coastal communities.

Thoughts of Dorothy MacKellar’s epic ode to Australia, ‘My Country’ came flying home, never so real or vivid, of “a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains…her beauty and her terror …all tragic to the moon…”

Amidst the devastation and destruction, sport helped to provide some salvation to Australia at its time of greatest need in decades.

A DEVASTATED NATION TURNS TO SPORT

The annual international tennis migration to Australia for the start of the new Grand Slam season proved much more than a distraction – it provided a sense of stability and sanity to a country in fear for its future. Sport gave back some hope and semblance of normality.

The slap of the racquet, like willow bat on leather ball, are sounds that immediately evoke the joy of summer to all Australians.

The returning sounds of the Australian Open’s tennis commentary, polite, cheerful applause, post-match interviews, and umpire rulings helped to replace the sounds of stunned silence that filled a nation inflamed.

All along the nation’s precious sapphire coast, towns were crumbling and homes were burning. Tennis was sport’s first responder. Others would follow, including some of the biggest names of world football in recent times.

These include Chelsea legend, Didier Drogba, former Manchester United midfielder Park Ji-Sung and Juventus’ former striker, David Trezeguet, who will combine with a galaxy of other former international and Australian stars in the Football for Fires fundraiser in May. Organisers expect a crowd of around 80,000 in Sydney and to raise $1 million.

“The #FootballForFires match will harness the world game and its star players to draw attention to the Australian bushfires crisis and the crucial rebuilding of communities that will be required long after the fires have eventually burnt out,” according to event organiser, Lou Sticca.

“The images of these fires and the devastation they have caused to families, properties and our wildlife have touched so many people around the world and the international football family wants to help Australia,” he said.

The return of household tennis names, along with teams of support staff, umpires, broadcasters, media, and other service providers for the Australian Open gave comfort to the nation that it had not been abandoned nor forgotten.

The tennis stars stayed and competed, determined the Grand Slam show would go on, despite initial health and safety concerns in early qualifying rounds about potentially hazardous particles in smokey air from the fires.

While the titans of tennis live in a rarefied environment with the highest levels of service and prize money, this Australian Open was about more than appearance money and rankings.

THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL 

For many elite tennis players Australia’s bushfires disaster was personal.

Several of the sport’s biggest stars have come to regard Australia as a temporary second home, travelling long distances to compete at the Open event, site of many career wins and highlights, witnessed, shared and celebrated in Australia.

These include Novak Djokovic, the new number one ranked player in the world and record eight times winner of the Australian Open, including this year’s title. “A tragedy for Australia,” is how Djokovic described his personal feelings.

“It’s really not pleasant to see this many people suffer the consequences of a big force that is hard to stop. At times, nature shows us how, in a way, insignificant we are towards her.”

The beach and bush, the building blocks of Australian culture, were at the epicentre of the fires, and some tournament players knew of coastal locations impacted and people affected.

Rafael Nadal, the top ranked men’s player for the tournament, shared a high five salute and jig with a local volunteer firefighter on court in a spontaneous piece of sports theatre that lifted the mood.

“It’s important for people like me who have a big platform to raise awareness,” said US global tennis superstar, Serena Williams.

“For me in particular, as a player, it was incredibly devastating because I literally know people who have been affected,” said Williams, who donated $43,000 of prize money from her singles title victory in New Zealand, prior to arriving in Australia.

The rituals of the Australian Open’s festive, summer holiday atmosphere include body tattoos of kangaroos, koalas, wombats or other varieties of much-loved wildlife favoured by visiting tennis team members and staff.

For them, the loss of so many rare mammals and marsupials, some of the oldest and most vulnerable creatures on the planet, unique to Australia, was also deeply felt.

Players shared these personal feelings about Australia as the horrific toll began to emerge through smoky, blackened ruins of twisted, melted metal frames and concrete foundations of countless homes and buildings that simply turned to ash or disappeared in the inferno.

SPORTS STARS RALLY FOR A SPORTING NATION

The players also shared Australia’s grief, temporarily setting aside practice sessions and preparations to participate in the “Rally For Relief” tennis fundraising exhibition.

Featuring four of the biggest names in world tennis and sport – Roger Federrer, Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic – all Australian Open winners – the unique event helped to raise more than a massive $6 million for bushfire victims.

Other players donated money for each ace served, or volunteered prize money, including seventh-seeded German Alexander Zverev, who donated $50,000 to the fire recovery effort, after initially promising all prize money if he won the event ($4 million), but lost in the semis.

The players’ personal feelings changed the personality of this Australia Open.

Sport was helping a stricken nation to slowly recover and rebuild, a process in which small gestures can mean a lot.

Some of the funds raised initially went to buy new tools and equipment for tradesman and construction workers so that they could resume work and earn money for their families.

Rafael Nadal, the top ranked men’s player for the tournament, shared a high five salute and jig with a local volunteer firefighter on court in a spontaneous piece of sports theatre that lifted the mood.  

This was an unprecedented show of generosity and solidarity with a sporting nation in pain.

This was sport standing side by side with a nation steeped in sport; a nation that has long engaged with the wider world beyond its distant shores through sport and the values of sport, sometimes in difficult situations.

Australia played a key role in last year’s global campaign that secured the release of a young Bahraini Olympic football refugee, wrongfully detained in a Bangkok jail after fleeing to Australia. 

TRANSCENDING SPORT

Sport was now helping to provide relief to Australia, a nation that sees and expresses much of itself, its character and its origins as a remote British convict colony through the rich and diverse tapestry of life and opportunity that surround sport.

It has also helped to overcome the tyranny of Australia’s distance from many world regions.

Australia, in the process, has helped to grow the Olympic movement, staging two highly successful Olympic Games in Sydney and Melbourne; developed Olympic sport, including tennis; and hosted numerous world championships.

No championship, however, has resembled the Australian Open, which proved that the sporting event was indeed “open to anything,” just like the trailer said. Australia’s world tennis spectacular transcended sport.

Rarely has a sporting event been so relevant to the communities beyond its competition zone, or so reflective of events in wider society.

Not since Australia’s Catherine Freeman held the hopes of a sport obsessed nation and its indigenous communities on her shoulders at the Sydney Olympic Games, has so much been expected of a young indigenous athlete as Ashleigh Barty. 

The Australian Open became an immediate outlet for a grieving nation in response to fires so terrifying they resembled scenes from a digitally enhanced natural disaster movie.

This was sport as a form of support and welfare for a host nation in mourning.

Both Australian Open finalists spoke about the devastating fires that killed dozens of people and millions of animals. 

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON SPORT 

“…What we all saw before and during the tennis, there are way more important things in life, and it’s very tough what this beautiful country has been though and is still going through …I hope all the people and the animals affected, recover very soon, and that a disaster like this never happens again,” said Dominic Thiem, runner up to Djokovic, in his internationally televised concession speech.

The bushfire disaster was integrated into the production and roll out of the Grand Slam tennis event itself, with courtside commentary, player interviews, break out features and other broadcast and event elements containing references to the fires.

Information was also provided through the Australian Open on how help could be provided for victims of the fires so intense that farms, wineries, vast tracts of countryside, homes, streets, and tens of thousands of livestock were wiped out, creating empty, ghost communities like those encountered on ‘The Road’ in award-winning US author Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel.

The bravery of the emergency services, including the sacrifice of three US air firefighters who died when their air tanker crashed while fighting the fires, was also honoured.

Volunteer firefighters attended the Open as a tribute to those who battled the deadly fires, which closed interstate highways and isolated towns and communities. Their presence was regularly acknowledged and applauded.

The Open took the fighting spirit of Australia to the world, with organisers staging an almost faultless elite international sporting event – praised by the top players as setting the standard for world sporting events – with the nation in crisis.

The message “Australia is open” (for business) was stamped on court. 

BARTY’S PARTY  

Sport, remarkably, continued to play a role in Australia’s recovery process as a new national sporting hero emerged from the ashes of Australia’s bushfire catastrophe.

The rise of Ash Barty to the top of women’s tennis in time for her home Grand Slam, as her nation grieved, could have come from the script of a Steven Spielberg movie of personal triumph over national adversity.

Australia needed something to cheer about, and Barty almost owned this Australian Open, referred to by legions of local fans simply as “Barty’s Party.”

The young and proudly indigenous tennis champion, who progressed deeper and further into the Open tournament than any Australian female player in decades, brought a smile to the beleaguered home nation.

While not winning the tournament itself, Barty won the admiration of her troubled nation, even winning an inspiring victory on Australia Day, the nation’s birthday. Just like the movies.

Not since Australia’s Catherine Freeman held the hopes of a sport obsessed nation and its indigenous communities on her shoulders at the Sydney Olympic Games, has so much been expected of a young indigenous athlete as Ashleigh Barty.

Barty’s announcement as the new Young Australian of Year during the Open tournament was also significant, at a time when the nation’s profile and performances in world sport have been declining since the golden Sydney 2000 Olympic era.

AUSTRALIA’S NEW OLYMPIC DREAM  

Twenty years after the Sydney Olympic Games highlighted Australia’s deep passion for sport and important community and business benefits from Games investment, the Australian Open of tennis has demonstrated what sport can do and mean for the nation in dramatically different circumstances.

The support from the Australian tennis and wider sporting world for the fire-ravaged host nation has been of Olympic proportions, bringing the case for a return of the Olympic Games to Australia into sharper focus.

Sport’s role in helping to support Australia through the early recovery phase of the bushfires crisis also highlights the enormous potential of the Olympic Games to unify and sustain communities in uncertain times.

The location of the Olympic Games in regions around Brisbane, Queensland, home state of Ash Barty, Australia’s new national sports hero, and natural successor to Sydney Olympic champion, Catherine Freeman, as ambassador and torch bearer for a new Olympic campaign adds meaning and credibility.

The case for the Brisbane Olympic Games is further strengthened by the experience of Australia’s senior IOC member, John Coates, mastermind of the Sydney Olympics, who is overseeing final preparations for the Tokyo Games, as a catalyst to help in the rebuilding of Japan after the devastating 2011 tsunami.

This should all interest Australia’s central government as it grapples with the enormous economic fall out from the fires and countless burnt out communities, and looks for new, long term projects to rebuild, unite and push the nation forward.

** Michael Pirrie is an international communications strategy advisor and commentator who has worked and advised on several major international projects. Michael led the global media campaign for the London 2012 Olympic Games Bid Committee, and was Executive advisor to Seb Coe, Chairman of the London Olympic Games.