Remembering Amy: Amy Gillett, the Girl Who Never Gave Up

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Mike Safe is a writer with The Weekend Australian Magazine. He is also Amy Gillett’s uncle. He lives at Bondi Beach in Sydney.

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Remembering Amy Amy Gillett, the girl who never gave up

M I K E

S A F E

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First published in 2006 Copyright © Mike Safe 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Safe, Mike. Remembering Amy : Amy Gillett, the girl who never gave up. ISBN 978 1 74114 884 8. ISBN 1 74114 884 7. 1. Gillett, Amy. 2. Women cyclists - Australia - Biography. 3. Women athletes - Australia - Biography. I. Title. 796.62.092 Edited by Wendy Skilbeck Cover and text designed by Phil Campbell Typeset by Michael Kuszla, J&M Typesetting Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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For Denis, Mary, Georgina and Simon … and the rowers and riders who shared Amy’s dream

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Contents Preface

ix

Chapter One: A Death in Germany

1

Chapter Two: Picking Up the Pieces

21

Chapter Three: Bringing Her Home

45

Chapter Four: Oakmount Court

60

Chapter Five: Two Girls in a Boat

82

Chapter Six: The Long Haul to Atlanta

96

Chapter Seven: From Boat to Bike

114

Chapter Eight: To Be the Best They Can

134

Chapter Nine: Winning, Losing, Laughing

154

Chapter Ten: A Personal View

168

Chapter Eleven: A Pink Balloon

187

In Her Own Words

192

Appendix

211

Photographic Credits

213

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Preface In some ways, this was a difficult book to write, being a member of Amy Gillett’s family. Considerable emotion was spent by those close to her in telling their stories and, of course, I already knew much of what they had to say, at least from our family’s perspective. But, in some ways, it was also easy to write. For a start, knowing I was her uncle, everyone – friends, team-mates, rivals and coaches – were more than willing to share their experiences with her – the good, the bad and the often hilarious. As I conducted the interviews – more than forty of them as it turned out – I found these were, without exception, committed and passionate people able to express their thoughts and emotions about Amy and her ongoing sporting adventures in a remarkably articulate way. And so that was how I decided to shape this book – letting the people who knew her, many of them better than me, tell their stories in their words. It’s an old interviewer’s rule too often forgotten today – let those who were there do the talking. You, the writer, should shut up and listen. You might learn something. Of course, Amy was never famous – certainly not in a way that was going to win her a place on the back of cereal boxes, as one of her team-mates jokes in this story. But her life of twenty-nine years came to celebrate what’s supposed to be the good stuff of Australian sport – going as hard as you can and never giving up. It took her to an Olympic Games and won her a couple of world titles and on the way she saw and experienced more in her short life than most do in ninety ix

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years – again, as one of her team-mates remarks in this book. Her death, along with the serious injuries to five of her cycling team-mates on a rural German road in July 2005, touched millions of Australians in a way that few other sporting stories have in recent times. There are scores of other young women like Amy who give themselves to sports such as rowing and cycling where they will never win fame or fortune. Their sacrifice, and that of their families, is enormous – much more so than the average footballer or cricketer who does win all the fame, fortune and back pages. But most of them, as they explain here, wouldn’t change it for all the cereal boxes in the world. Hopefully, this book – the story of a girl from ordinary circumstances who had an extraordinary determination – will encourage other young Australians, girls especially, to get out and have a go. You never know what you might achieve.

Mike Safe Bondi Beach Australia

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C H A P T E R

O N E

A Death in Germany

Moments before she died on a picturesque German countryside road on a perfect summer afternoon, Amy Gillett made the decision that played a part in taking her life. As she deliberately rode ahead of her five companions, the twentynine-year-old Australian team cyclist had no idea of the lethal card she was dealing herself. The following day she was due to compete in a time trial over this very same stretch of road, Highway 1087, outside the hamlet of Zeulenroda, in the state of Thuringia in eastern Germany. Her placing in it would play a crucial part in making or breaking her cycling career. A good showing against a strong international field would position her for a place in the Australian team for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. And, as always, the Adelaide-born, Ballarat-based athlete, who had already gone to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 as a rower, was determined to give her all. With Amy, there was never any half measure. 1

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And so, rolling between fields of golden grain ripening in the late summer sun and strands of cool, green forest at 5.40 p.m. on Monday, July 18 2005, with her five team-mates – Lorian Graham, twenty-seven, from Enoggera in Brisbane; Louise Yaxley, twenty-three, from Penguin in northern Tasmania; Katie Brown, twenty-two, from Menai in Sydney; Kate Nichols, twenty, from Gymea Bay also in Sydney; and Alexis Rhodes, also twenty, from Kersbrook in the Adelaide Hills – it was hardly surprising when Amy came off the back of the pack to take the lead. Warren ‘Wazza’ McDonald noted her move. As coach of this elite group, the Australian women’s road cycling team, sponsored by the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) and the sport’s competitive body, Cycling Australia, Warren knew all about Amy’s ‘go for it’ attitude. The day before, Sunday 17 July, while the team was still at its European base at Novellara, in northern Italy, he had taken her out for a time-trial training ride after which he knew she was setting herself for a big one. Now he was in a team car about 50 metres behind his charges, shadowing them as he always did. The team had driven up from Novellara that day, leaving at 5.30 a.m. It had been a long, hard haul in a convoy of vehicles, including their equipment truck. Their destination was Zeulenroda, about 80 kilometres south of the industrial city of Leipzig and the starting point for the Tour of Thuringia, a six-day race for the world’s outstanding female cyclists and part of the northern summer competition circuit that takes them across Europe. Even with the growing interest in glamour events such as the Tour de France, Australians have little appreciation of

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the fanatical following competitive cycling has in that part of the world. While the women’s circuit certainly doesn’t have the same profile as the men’s, it’s just as fiercely contested by a number of sponsored teams of professionals and development squads, such as Amy and her five companions representing their country. The tour events, like Thuringia, and one that traverses Italy, are run over consecutive days and literally tour the area. In all, the Thuringia event covers nearly 600 kilometres with prizes every day for top rider, top team and awards for best sprinters and hill climbers. Performances are accumulated over the days with overall winners in the different categories at the end of the tour. Plus, there are time trials – each rider against the clock and Amy’s strong point – the most important of these often being on the first day of the event as was to be the case here. On arrival in Zeulenroda, Warren decided to take the six out for an easy ride to loosen their legs, cramped from the long day in the cars. As well, it was a chance to familiarise themselves with the 17-kilometre time-trial course as only Amy, the big sister of the bunch, had ridden it before. ‘So it was supposed to be a bit of a recovery spin and a chance to give them a mental picture of the course,’ says Wazza, a big, cheerful bloke who has helped build the Australian women’s team into one of the success stories of the international circuit as it keeps turning out riders who graduate to the top European professional teams. ‘The idea is to set in your mind the lie of the land, just see how the course runs.’ Lorian Graham, who had won the Australian road-race title, a one-day event earlier that year where she had been part of the Queensland team, recalls an enthusiastic Amy

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talking up the hotel where they were to stay. According to Amy, who enjoyed a bit of luxury, it was ‘six star’ with a beautician, sauna, spa and pool. But for the moment, at least, there was no time to luxuriate as Wazza got them out on the road. ‘There was a square in the town and Amy pointed it out and said, “Yep, we start up there”,’ remembers Lorian. ‘I said to her, “Well, you know where we’re going – why don’t you lead the way?” So Amy went on the front with Alex … It was just an out-and-back ride, probably six or so kilometres out of town – not far at all. And it was lovely countryside – nice rolling wheat fields and slopes and trees, and perfect conditions for a ride, hardly any wind. I remember saying to Kate as we went along, “Look at these roads”. There wasn’t a crack in them – not a pot hole, not compared to Italy anyway.’ On the way out, they periodically swapped places. Louise Yaxley and Katie Brown were first to the turn-around point followed by Kate Nichols and Lorian. Alexis Rhodes and Amy, the two South Australians who had spent a lot of time training together in the Adelaide Hills, were now a bit further back and the front riders slowed so the bunch could regroup for the ride back in. ‘We always ride in formation,’ explains Lorian, who, more than anyone present that afternoon, has forensic memory of what was about to happen. ‘And it’s a tight formation – it’s not loose and scattered all over the road. We’re professional about it. I wouldn’t call the ride back in downhill, it was only slight, and I think we were going between 50 and 55 kilometres an hour. Talking to Katie later, she seemed to think we might have been going a bit faster because of the slight downhill. I didn’t have a speedo or distance counter on my bike so I can’t be sure about that …

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‘So Amy and Alex were at the back and then Amy – and I knew what she was doing – just wanted to do an effort and that means really starting to wind the pedals over. It’s the sort of thing that’s done pre-race and, obviously, that was what she was gearing up for with the time trial the next day. We all realised what she was doing and the time trial wasn’t as important to me as it was going to be for her so I didn’t feel I needed to do an effort. I was happy just to ride my legs out and the others felt that way, too. That would be the last time I saw Amy, just the side of her face as she went by me and then her back. I thought as she went by, yep, that’s Amy, always doing the extra effort if she could. From there, I reckon she was sitting in front by 5 metres or so. Katie was in my line of vision and so I couldn’t see her any more.’ Warren McDonald, following in the car, watched Amy go to the front of the group. ‘For a moment it looked a bit strange because normally she wouldn’t do something like that, but then I thought, oh, well, she’s keen and just wants to rev her legs … Sunday, the day before, I’d been out on the scooter with her and she did one effort at speed. It had been a beautiful sunny day in Italy, about as good as it gets, and she was moving really, really well. I remember thinking at the time, oh, she’s going to have a good one [time trial].’ So now it was Amy on the front followed by Katie Brown and Louise Yaxley. Then came Kate Nichols and Lorian Graham with Alexis Rhodes at the rear, or back in the ‘lounge chair’ as competition cyclists disparagingly call it – easy riding on the back wheels of the group. They had returned about half way to town when a blue Honda Civic, registration number GRZ-XX-287, appeared

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from the opposite direction on what was an almost straight stretch of road. There was no warning as the car twitched suddenly and veered across the road towards the bunch. No one could quite believe what they were seeing – and none of their lives would ever be the same in the aftermath of what was about to happen. ‘That whole afternoon I reckon we’d only sighted maybe three cars, including this one,’ remembers Lorian. ‘It wasn’t busy at all and up until then there hadn’t been any sign of a problem … I remember hearing its wheels screeching and then it came towards us. I think the two outside wheels must have come off the edge of the road. There was a bit of a lip on the road there and then, as the driver tried to correct it, to get it back, it over-corrected and came at us. ‘When that happened, I thought the person (the driver) was playing some sort of silly joke. I had no idea why this was happening. I suppose it was 40 metres away and from there to the point where it hit us there was no time to react, no time at all. I couldn’t even get an “Oh, my God” out of my mouth. It just hit us. I didn’t see Amy get hit because of Katie being in front of me. Then I think once Amy was hit, it [the car] changed direction. It was at that point that I thought maybe it would miss some of us, but the whole back end swung around and that’s what collected me, the back door. The last thing I saw was its little triangular side window. Fortunately, my head never went through anything. But we all were hit … I thought Alex behind me might have had time to avoid it. But it was like ten-pin bowling. It was a hell of an impact and then everything came to a standstill …’ Katie Brown, riding behind Amy and alongside Louise Yaxley, remembers being unconcerned when Amy went to

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the front. Like the rest of the bunch, Katie and Louise understood she was putting in an effort in preparation for the time trial. ‘I can’t time trial and so I was just cruising along having a ride,’ Katie says. ‘So I was chatting to Louise, just chatting away, and then I heard a car screech. Then I saw it and it looked like it was doing a burnout, like it was just standing there, like it was stopped almost. I looked at Louise, wondering what was going on, and then looked back up the road and then it was coming straight at us, this whole side of the car was just coming … Then I saw it hit Amy and I sort of went, okay, and like in a split second I tried to swerve to the right and get off the road. But then the car sort of swung back and the panel where the front wheel was hit me … I went up on to the front of it and smashed the front windscreen and then over it and spun around in the air a few times. I landed on the ground and rolled into a ditch in long grass. They reckon I ended up about 50 metres away from the other girls … My [bike] forks had snapped and gone back into my legs and so that’s why I got cut up so badly and when I hit the windscreen I had my hands up and so that’s how I broke my hand. I remember having glass in my mouth and I guess getting thrown over the car somehow my leg got dislocated and the bone pulled out … When I think about it now I don’t know what would have been better, if anything about it could have been better – getting hit side on or being thrown over the car like I was.’ Following behind, the coach could only watch in horror. Warren’s memory of the accident remains incomplete – like snapshots, or slides. ‘I don’t know whether it’s my mind … but when I think about it now it’s not like a movie. What I

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remember seems like a series of slides up on a screen and the car coming at a weird angle. I remember thinking, jeez, that looks strange. And then, all of a sudden, it had flipped around and I thought, no, it’s hitting the girls. Because I was behind them it was sort of like I was anchored. I don’t know whether my mind blanked out or whether I shut my eyes. I honestly don’t know. But I have this memory – like three or four slides – of the car sort of sliding through them and ending up in an embankment.’ Lorian Graham, who had previously broken her share of bones in race falls, found herself lying in the middle of the road, but remained conscious throughout. Her recall of what can only be described as carnage is remarkably lucid. ‘I remember touching my knee because that was where I was feeling the most pain. I knew I’d shattered a knee cap and I managed a bit of a look at it … and it didn’t look too pretty, I’ve got to say. I tried to get up but couldn’t and then I had a look around for a second and it was frightening because of the silence. No one who I could see was moving. It was at that point I thought, well, we’re in a lot of trouble here. In my effort to get up, I did actually feel my collar bone, my left collar bone that I’d previously broken, was gone again and so was my right leg. I just couldn’t move at all. ‘Then I heard Katie [Brown]. She was the first one to call out … For a split second she’d made an attempt to avoid the car, but she still got hit and ended up down in a ditch. She was all twisted and was in long grass by herself. She started calling out, “I’ve broken my leg. Help! Help! I’ve broken my leg”. From there I looked around some more and it was at that point that Warren got out of the car. I’ll never forget the

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look of horror on his face. He put his hands to his head – and I can swear because I’m just saying what he said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck – what do I do, what do I do?” I tried to talk to him and said, “Look, I think I’ve broken some bones, but I’m okay …” I don’t know where he drew his strength from that day, but, yeah, he went into survival mode and dealt with it.’ The other member of the squad talking at that stage was Kate Nichols and she was worried about her hand. She was calling out that she could see it but she couldn’t feel it. She didn’t know how much of it was still attached to her arm. Warren remembers going to her and calming her as best he could. Already, he sensed there were more serious priorities. ‘I can remember saying, “Oh no, oh no, oh no …” That still plays over in the mind every now and then. The first thing was to try to evaluate them all and I’m thinking, obviously, I need an ambulance here … So I’ve run back to the car to grab my phone and, thank God, a couple of vehicles had pulled up and one of those was some sort of security vehicle, like an armoured car for carrying money, and I asked those guys to call an ambulance and they nodded. So I went back to evaluate and it was one of those situations where I had to make a decision. To me, and even though this wasn’t a nice decision, I saw Amy lying there. I haven’t told many people this but I knew she wasn’t with us any more and I made the decision that she had been killed instantly.’ For Warren, who had worked closely with Amy, encouraging her through good and bad times, it was as if this woman who was always prepared to go harder and longer than anyone else, had now gone to her own peaceful place. ‘To me, as she was lying there, it seemed like she was at peace …’

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By this time, no one involved was sure how much time had passed – but it seemed like an eternity. More vehicles were pulling up and people were pouring out of them to assist. ‘A lot of them were a terrific help until the ambulances got there,’ Warren says. ‘I remember much later Louise [Yaxley] saying to me that there are a lot of good people in the world, but you know it’s hard when not one of the six of them [the cyclists] got up off the ground and poor Katie was down in a ditch calling out for me, too, and I could only tell her that there were others worse off …’ For Lorian Graham, lying on the road with her shattered knee and unable to move, it seemed that Alexis Rhodes and Louise Yaxley had the worst injuries. At that stage, she did not know Amy had been killed and would not be told until the next day. ‘I knew Alex was just behind me and she wasn’t speaking at all. She was gargling fluid so obviously her lungs had been damaged in some way. At that point, she wasn’t making sense at all … So I just, I mean, I tried to be strong for her. I remember saying something like, “Alex, we’re all here, mate, we’re all here together and the paramedics have been called, everyone’s coming to help us”. I told her to keep her eyes open … Also Louise seemed to be wheezing quite heavily and I knew she must be in a bad way … and Amy was the last one I asked about because I didn’t actually see her get hit by the car. So I guess I thought, I just hoped for the best and I remember saying to Waz, “How’s Amy?” and he said, “The paramedics are still working on her”. And I know now he said that to keep me calm as I was lying there. He would have known [Amy was dead] as soon as he got out of the car because when I think about where everyone came to be lying,

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she had been the first one, in front of us, and she ended up the last lying behind us.’ Katie Brown and Kate Nichols, the two, who, like Lorian, remained conscious throughout, were living their own private nightmares. After being dumped in the long grass off to the side of the road, Katie had no idea what had happened to her team-mates – only that Amy had taken the brunt of the impact. It would be ten to twelve minutes before the first ambulances arrived, but for all concerned it seemed like an age. ‘I couldn’t move,’ Katie recalls. ‘My left leg was wrapped around me and I was in this sort of laid-back position. It was wrapped underneath my right leg and the foot was up like near my armpit and I had this cut on the arm and the vein was just squirting blood. One of my fingers was at 90 degrees to the rest and I just thought, oh, my God … I tried to pull my leg out from under me, but it wouldn’t move and it was too painful to try to move anyway … I don’t know how to describe the pain. I had black dots in front of my eyes and I was trying not to pass out.’ Despite the pain and shock, the helpless Katie could see only too plainly the massive trauma to her twisted leg. ‘It was split open and half my knee was hanging out. So I knew there was a huge problem there. I just looked down at it and went, “Ohhh!” I tried to get the grass and stuff out of it … Later, when the ambulances came, the guy who was holding my drip, just a bystander, the poor guy, stepped back and trod on a toe of my dislocated leg and broke it and I went, “Oh, shit! Get off my foot!”’ Later still, when it came time to move her on to a stretcher for evacuation, there was the considerable

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problem of getting Katie’s twisted leg out from under her. ‘I let out this scream when they straightened it, because to go on the stretcher I couldn’t have my leg up around my shoulder, could I? So the doctor and the ambo guys had to pull it out and straighten it as best they could and later Lorian told me that my scream sounded like someone falling off a cliff. It started really high and then just got fainter and fainter until I couldn’t scream any more. I had nothing left in me. That was excruciating, just unbelievable.’ For Kate Nichols, a newcomer to the group who had only been with them a month, this was hardly what her dream of riding for her country was supposed to be about. She ended up on the edge of the road, dazed and unsure of her injuries. ‘Initially, I couldn’t feel my legs so I was really worried that I’d done something serious to my back. Then I started to feel them and thought that was okay and then I looked down and saw my hand and it was like, “Oh, no!” It was pretty messy. The skin was all lifted back and it was pretty deep. My tendons were cut and everything and I could see stuff – I don’t know what it was. So then I concentrated on keeping conscious because I knew the other girls were likely to be a lot worse than me. Lorian was calling, “No, no, Kate – you’ll be okay”. So I thought, yeah, I’ll be okay – I was willing to believe anything positive at that stage. And I knew Lorian was okay because by then I could see her, but I knew Alex and Louise must be pretty bad. I think Alex was directly behind me and I’m not sure where Louise was. I was disorientated. I didn’t hear anything at all about Amy – at that stage it didn’t even enter my mind that she was there. When the doctors at the hospital told me the next day, “One of your team-mates

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didn’t make it”, I was like, “Alex? Louise?” It took me ages to remember that Amy had even been there – and then when I heard it was her it was such a shock … Amy had been very welcoming and would talk to you [Kate as a newcomer] on the same level. I’d found I could relate to her and have a really good conversation – she was a no-rubbish kind of person.’ As help arrived, Kate had a drip inserted in her badly torn hand. ‘There was a guy holding my drip, but I couldn’t put my hand down (on the ground) because there were horrible bugs crawling all around and so I was holding my arms up for like an hour. All I wanted to tell this guy was, “Can you please help and just hold my arms up?” But he couldn’t understand. In the last five minutes Warren came back and I got him to tell the guy to hold my arms for me – I just couldn’t communicate with him. So I was just lying there exhausted like that, wishing we could get out of there. It was a long time.’ While the ambulances arrived, Warren’s fears for Alexis and Louise intensified. ‘Alex was on the edge [of unconsciousness] and Louise was out of it … The thing was to try to stabilise Alex, but I could see in her eyes that something wasn’t right, obviously with her lungs and her back … and Louise was losing a lot of blood. As soon as the first ambulance arrived, they were straight on the radio calling for back up. I pointed to them to look after Louise and, because of the amount of blood she was losing, they were putting drips and things into her and I was trying to calm her, but I think by then she was pretty much unconscious and Alex was next … So I was just trying to give them some strength, to get them through it, but I can’t describe how hard it was.’

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Louise Yaxley, who had serious head, wrist and arm injuries as well as a stab wound to her abdomen from a tree branch, still has no memory of the accident, but willingly pays tribute to Warren’s efforts at the scene. ‘If he hadn’t moved as quickly as he did, Alex and I wouldn’t be here either. We both had to be resuscitated on site and I had to have a blood transfusion there. So, yeah, if the helicopter hadn’t have been there within something like ten or twelve minutes that would have been it.’ As the five girls were stabilised for evacuation, Warren has memories of looking back and seeing Amy alone and still on the road, bits of smashed bicycles, as if torn apart by some brute force, scattered around her. ‘One of the medical people had put a blanket over her, but it didn’t fully cover her and when they started to move the girls I said, “This isn’t right, the girls shouldn’t see her like that”. So I grabbed some more blankets and covered her as best I could. I’ve never asked the girls since, but I didn’t want them to see her like that … and I believe none of them did …’ Both Louise Yaxley and Alexis Rhodes would only find out days later that Amy had died. Like Louise, Alexis has little memory of the accident and its immediate aftermath. She suffered, among other complications, crushed lungs and spinal injuries. Both of them would end up at the Friedrich Schiller University Hospital, a state-of-the-art facility with emergency and intensive-care units unrivalled in Germany, or just about anywhere else in the world. Indeed, the fact that the disaster happened only 50 kilometres from this hospital and its emergency helicopter service in the city of Jena is perhaps the one stroke of luck in the whole shocking episode.

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‘I remember the day and the drive up [from Italy] with Amy,’ says Alexis. ‘On the day before a race she’d usually be very focused on just racing and trying to give herself the best possible preparation. Obviously, everyone does that … but Amy could take that to the next level. She was quite amazing about it. But this time she seemed quite relaxed and happy about the whole thing.’ Of the accident, Alexis can remember being on the back of the bunch with Amy as they cycled back in, but little else. ‘I can just remember being really scared,’ she says of the aftermath. ‘It’s almost like I was somehow watching the whole thing. It’s weird … when I first woke up [in hospital] I didn’t have any memories from about three or four days before. It’s just gradually come back.’ Meanwhile, the driver of the car, eighteen-year-old Stefanie Magner, a second-year apprentice book designer who had received her driver’s permit only two weeks before, had been taken from the blue Honda, which was owned by her father, Stefan Magner, and moved about a hundred metres from the immediate scene. From nearby Zeulenroda where she lived with her family, she would have known the road well. She had a cut near her left ear that required fourteen stitches and a heavy dose of bruising and concussion, but no life-threatening injuries. The car was badly dented from ploughing through the cyclists. It ended up lodged in a grassy embankment. Lorian Graham, who with Kate Nichols was the last to be evacuated, was happy to see the more seriously injured girls taken off first and, indeed, told Warren this should be the case. ‘For me, it felt like an eternity, but I knew I just had broken bones. My head and my back were okay and so I said,

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“Please, let me be the last” … but then it got to the point where I just couldn’t look at myself anymore. They hadn’t covered me over with anything and towards the end of it I was kind of closing my eyes because I didn’t have anything else to do, just lying there. Then people were calling out to me, “Don’t go to sleep! Don’t go to sleep!” and I was thinking, well, I don’t have anything else to do … I would have liked to have been up and trying to do something [to help], but on that day it might have been a blessing in disguise that I couldn’t, considering what was going on around me … Just Waz, I mean, he had so much to deal with … I still can’t imagine what he went through that afternoon, seeing all the bikes and bits and pieces scattered like that.’ By the stage Lorian was evacuated, it had been decided she would be sent to a general hospital in the town of Gera, about 30 kilometres away, not the specialist centre at Jena. Initially, a despairing Warren wanted the five kept together and complained about them being separated, but the emergency specialists and trauma surgeon who arrived at the scene via helicopter managed to convince him it was better to distribute the load between hospitals as the more seriously injured girls needed maximum attention. Warren saw their point and relented. ‘With the ambulances and choppers coming in, it was such a surreal environment with all these people trying to talk to me. Then I found out they were intending to take them to different places and I started to get upset. But the guys there sat me down and the doctor explained that they didn’t send five people to the one hospital … and, as I know now, the doctors in Jena did a fantastic job in putting them back together.’

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On Sunday 17 July, the day before the accident, Denis and Mary Safe, Amy Gillett’s parents, came home to find a message from their daughter on the answering machine at their home in West Lakes, a pleasant lake-side suburb in the western suburbs of Adelaide. ‘It was just to let us know that she was off to Germany – “leaving tomorrow”,’ says Mary. ‘She said she was feeling good and strong and really looking forward to the race, especially the time trial part of it. If she did well in the time trial she was pretty well assured of a Commonwealth Games spot in Melbourne.’ Denis called back to the team headquarters in Novellara in northern Italy. ‘Someone answered the phone, one of the girls, I think, and said she wasn’t there and that they’d give her a message, but whether she got the message I don’t know.’ Amy never called back and the voice on the answering machine would be the last words from their youngest daughter. Two weekends before, they had spent three days with Amy and her husband of eighteen months, Simon Gillett, very much the love of her life, at a new straight-from-the-pages-ofVogue-Living home they had planned and built at Mt Helen, outside of Ballarat in central Victoria. During that weekend they also visited Agincourt, a property Simon and Amy had recently purchased about a hundred kilometres to the west, near Ararat. Originally from a Victorian farming family, Simon had returned to the land after quitting as a rowing coach, the sport where he had first met Amy. They were rapidly expanding their parcels of land, using innovative cropping techniques, and building a lifestyle that allowed Amy to follow her cycling dream around the world while Simon

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worked on the properties and often joined her on the competition circuit, be it in Australia or overseas. ‘She said, “Mum and Dad, we’re going to take you down to the new property for a barbecue” and it was a lovely day,’ remembers Mary. It was to be their last day together as parents and daughter as Amy was back on her bike and off to Europe the following week. So Denis and Mary were hardly prepared for the knock on their front door at 5 a.m. on Tuesday 19 July, South Australian time, less than four hours after the accident. ‘The sensor light out the front came on and there was this hammering at the door and the dog [Max, a black flat-coated retriever] was barking,’ says Denis. ‘So I went out there and there were two policemen. Straight away I knew there was trouble – I mean, you don’t get policemen knocking on your door at 5 a.m. when it’s still pitch black in the middle of winter … One of them said to me, “Are you Amy Gillett’s father?” and I said, “Yes” – and I knew then that it was huge trouble. He said, “I’ll need to come inside” and so he came in and said, “I’m sorry but I’ve got to tell you that your daughter has been killed in a road accident in Germany”. And it was just terrible … he didn’t really know what to say after that and, really, there wasn’t anything he could say.’ Mary was still in bed at that stage. ‘Denis had got up to deal with the knock at the door and I thought it must have something to do with the neighbours, like somebody was stressed or upset, that they needed help. So I was just lying in bed, sort of listening, and I could hear the voices and I thought, well, there’s someone inside the house now, not just on the front door step. And then I heard this awful wail

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from Denis and so I shot out of bed and went out and he told me.’ Although Denis and Mary didn’t recognise him at that awful moment, one of the young police officers sent to inform them had once lived only a couple of streets away and as a child had been a regular playmate of two boys who had lived across the street from the Safe home – and Amy had often been part of those games. ‘His mother told us a few days later that when he came into our street he remembered it because he used to come to play here,’ says Denis. ‘But the name Amy Gillett hadn’t registered with him because he’d known her as Amy Safe … But as soon as he had stopped out the front and walked up the driveway, he knew. So it was very difficult for him, too.’ The police officers gave Denis a card with a telephone number for the Foreign Affairs Department in Canberra. ‘They didn’t stay very long after that,’ he says. ‘In fact, I told them to go. They didn’t have any more information and they didn’t know what to say either … and we could tell they were upset as well, especially the one who had known Amy.’ And so they were left standing there. Mary says they didn’t know what to do. ‘I mean, it was now a quarter-past-five on a winter morning,’ says Mary. ‘And then we just went back to bed and held each other for a time. Max [the dog] came in and he knew something was terribly wrong and then it was like … it was just words we spoke, but they couldn’t mean much at that stage.’ After about half-an-hour, Denis rang the Foreign Affairs Department number in Canberra. ‘I got put through to a woman and she was very good – she said all the right things,

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I guess. She explained what they knew about the accident and that Amy had been killed and some of the other girls were critically injured. She said to ring back later when they had more information, to ring any time we wanted. But that was it really.’ Then came the job of ringing family and friends – and little did they know at that stage that Simon, Amy’s husband at home in Victoria, did not know of her death. Fate was again dealing its cards in its own perverse way. When Ballarat police called with the sunrise to give him this worst of news, he was already out on his regular early morning bike ride.

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Through a tranquilliser haze that had engulfed her, Katie Brown could hear a babble of anxious voices. They were talking about cutting her leg off. To say the least, Katie, a feisty young woman whose older brother, Graeme, had won two cycling gold medals at the Athens Olympics and who had dared dream of doing the same, was not impressed. ‘I could hear them saying something – they were telling Wazza and I just went, “Blah, blah, blah …” because I couldn’t think properly at that stage. Then they’ve gone, “We can’t do anything for you at this hospital. We have to take you to another one because your leg’s too bad and they might need to amputate it”. Then I’ve gone, “Urghhh!” and at that stage they gave me the gas. They’ve said, “Count to ten” and so I’ve counted to ten and gone, “It’s not working! Help me!” … The next thing I know I’ve woken up in the ICU (the intensive care unit) and asked, “Is my leg still there? Where’s my leg?” But it was like I had no limbs that were working because both my arms 21

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were plastered up and both my legs. I couldn’t move … It was like a horror movie where you wake up and I felt like I had plaster from my neck to my toes. I could only move my neck and because I’d broken some ribs my lungs were bad, too (one had collapsed). I had tubes down my throat and so I was just lying there thinking, oh, my God.’ Because of the heavy dose of medication she was on, Katie still has only scrambled memories of the aftermath of the crash that killed Amy Gillett and initially saw the dispatching of the five injured team-mates to hospitals in surrounding towns – Jena, Gera, Schleiz and Greiz – as well as to Zwickau, just across the border in the state of Saxony. The immediate plan was to distribute the load as lightly as possible by helicopter and ambulance so maximum attention could be given to the five who were in various states of distress, but all in need of surgery. Quickly, however, after they were stabilised, four of them were brought together in the Friedrich Schiller University Hospital in Jena with its world-class facilities to handle major trauma cases. Louise Yaxley and Alexis Rhodes, the most critically injured and hovering near death, were placed in induced comas and put on life support in the intensive care unit there. After her initial shuttling about, Katie Brown also ended up at Jena. Her at-risk leg with its fractured patella, the bone that protects the knee joint, was operated on and pieced back together as were ruptured tendons in her other knee and her smashed hand in which all but two bones were broken. Kate Nichols was also brought there so that a specialist hand surgeon could repair the torn tendons in her right hand and fingers. A large gash in her arm was also closed and she had deep abrasions all over her body, including her face.

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The odd one out at this stage was Lorian Graham. She ended up being admitted to the general hospital at Gera, Jena’s neighbouring town and something of a step down from the high-tech facility up the road. But it didn’t lack the personal touch. ‘When they got me there I actually had a translator waiting in the emergency room and he said, “I’m Welsh, but I speak fluent German – is there anything you want me to tell the doctors?”’ says Lorian. She told him she had pins in her elbow from a previous bike crash and then he asked if she wanted to telephone her family. ‘He asked who my next of kin was and I said it was my mum, but I said, “You’re not ringing her – she’ll absolutely flip”. I’ve got two older sisters and one of them is a nurse who I live with in Australia and so I rang her. By then it must have been about 8.30 p.m. (German time) and so 4.30 a.m. in Australia.’ Her sister, Leesa Cunningham, finally answered, knowing it could only be Lorian at such an hour – she knew her little sister had either won something or something had gone terribly wrong. ‘I just said to her, “Leesa, we’ve been in a head-on with a car and all the other girls are in different hospitals – I’m here by myself”. I told her my injuries, but said I thought I was going to be okay. I gave her the responsibility of letting the rest of my family know … I’m from Rockhampton originally so my mum would have been home there by herself at that time so I didn’t think it would be a good idea to call her – I’m glad I had my wits about me on that one … So from there I went into the operating theatre and they worked on my knee. Then I came out into the recovery room and I was put into a room with three German women. So it was a tight squeeze with four of us there … but I felt very alone. I didn’t know

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where anybody else had gone and I wanted to know how they were.’ But the wheels of concern were already turning fast as families, friends and fellow riders were alerted to the crash and its consequences, which were about to reverberate across two continents. For Warren McDonald, the aftermath was to prove almost as torturous as the crash. Within fifteen minutes of the girls being run down, he had managed a frantic phone call to Shayne Bannan, Cycling Australia’s national performance director, who was at the team’s European headquarters at Novellara in northern Italy, the place from where they had departed early that morning. Indeed, it took a couple of calls before Bannan was able to establish the full extent of the drama unfolding around his embattled friend on the German rural road. Often, Wazza’s wife, Sian, travelled with him on trips like this, but this time she was in Switzerland with the Australian BMX team. Bannan immediately phoned Australian Greg Boorer, a former cyclist and coach who worked regularly with representative teams in Europe as a mechanic and jack-of-all-trades. With his wife, Margaret Hemsley, an ex-Australian rider and professional in Europe, he lived and worked in Frankfurt in the information-technology business, knew the ins and outs of life there, and spoke German fluently. Greg contacted the Australian consulate in Frankfurt and within minutes that message had been relayed to the Australian Embassy in Berlin. From there, the ambassador, Pamela Fayle, informed the consular operations centre of the Foreign Affairs Department in

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Canberra, where it was early morning, Australian time, while putting together a team to drive south to Jena. Meanwhile, Greg Boorer and Margaret Hemsley were already on their way from Frankfurt, which was closer to the accident site. ‘Knowing this was an Australian team, knowing that one of the girls had been killed and several severely injured – and at the time we’d got the news it was feared that two of them might have in fact been killed – we knew this was a big issue,’ says the ambassador who had an idea of what she was in for, having been a crisis-centre manager during the original Bali bombings in October 2002, and the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001. With senior officer David Poulter, she was heading to the scene an hour later. ‘We grabbed everything that we might need, laptops and what information we had at that stage, and were on our way as quickly as possible. We were on the phone constantly in the car and had discussions with the local police and they told us there was going to be a press conference, but they would put it on hold until we got there. They gave us as much information as they had at that point so we were able to establish there had been one death, that it was Amy, her passport details and were able to put in place the steps to have the next of kin in Australia notified through our consular operations service in Canberra.’ A real concern at that stage was that Amy’s name might be released to the media by the German police before her family back home had been notified. On arrival in Jena, after 10 p.m., German time, Pamela and her staff went straight to the press conference, stressing that the name could not yet be made public. ‘That’s always part of our job in these cases

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– you’re racing to do the right thing, to make sure loved ones don’t hear or read things that shouldn’t have been released at that stage.’ Meanwhile, news of the accident had spread through the ranks of the cyclists, including other Australians, who had gathered in that eastern corner of Germany for the six-day Tour of Thuringia. Sara Carrigan, who had won the road race gold medal for Australia in heroic circumstances at the Athens Olympics, was at the reception desk of her Zeulenroda hotel with another highly credentialled Australian rider, Natalie Bates, attempting to get an internet connection to her room when she first heard of the crash. Sara, who had ridden with Amy for three years, particularly with the Australian team in Europe in 2004, is still chilled as she recalls the moment. ‘One of the Belgian girls we knew was there and she said there’d been a bad accident out on the road with the Australian team and that someone had died. I got goose bumps and shivers up and down my spine … I felt as if my face had somehow turned grey. It’s the last thing you want to hear, especially when you know it’s going to be someone you know.’ The Australian professional women – about a dozen of them scattered in teams across Europe, but principally in Holland, Italy and Germany – have their own ‘Aussies away from home’ network. Although competing fiercely against one another during the European summer, they have come up together through the club and state team ranks back home and the best are often reunited on national squads at the Olympics and Commonwealth Games or world championships. And so it wasn’t long before text and phone messages

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were flying back and forth between them. Natalie Bates contacted her sister Kate, another Athens Olympian, who was at her European base in Amsterdam. Kate was not due to race in Germany, but had already heard from another Belgian cyclist about the crash. Knowing all involved, especially Amy and Alexis Rhodes, Kate scrambled to catch a 2.30 a.m. train to Frankfurt. ‘When I spoke to Nat she said, “I’m really worried about Amy”, but we hadn’t heard anything definite at that stage and so the next few hours were just excruciating.’ In Frankfurt, Kate would be met by yet another Australian professional, Olivia Gollan, a good friend of Amy, who had been a member of the road race team who had pushed Sara Carrigan to the line and gold medal in Athens. Olivia, who also wasn’t racing that week, had already heard from the remaining member of that winning Olympics road race team, Oenone Wood, who would later be crowned Australia’s road cyclist of 2005 for stirring performances in Europe and on the World Cup circuit. ‘I got a text from Oenone about the girls being in an accident, but she didn’t know the details at all at that stage … I was at the supermarket and I started walking home and I knew, I just knew it was going to be bad …’ An hour later, Olivia received a call from Greg Boorer, by this stage on the scene in Jena, and he confirmed Amy’s death. By the time Kate Bates, coming from Amsterdam by train, reached Frankfurt, she had also been contacted and told. ‘I was just overwhelmed – I was a mess on the train by myself. At that point I knew about Amy, but the details of the other girls weren’t at all clear – I was so scared for them as well.’ From Frankfurt, Kate drove with Olivia east to Jena. ‘There was never any question that Liv and I weren’t going to

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get there as soon as we could. And it was a real comfort being with her and Nat [Kate’s sister] and the other Australian girls – I don’t think I would have got through the whole thing without them.’ In Jena, an exhausted Warren McDonald was now being supported by Greg Boorer, an old mate from cycling years past. ‘I probably didn’t get much sleep that night,’ he says in something of an understatement. ‘But I think it’s one of those things, part of the Aussie nature if you like, that Greg was there for me and trying to get a smile out of me now and then. He’s a big bloke, bigger than me, and he was just holding me up and helping me get through it … The other Australian professional girls who were there for the race knew pretty early on that there’d been an accident and then they’d heard the rumours [about Amy being killed] and were outside my door and all I could say to them was, “Look, I just need my space at the moment – we’ve got six girls here …”’ As the hours passed, Warren managed a phone conversation with Simon Gillett, Amy’s husband, at home at Mt Helen, outside Ballarat. He thought it important that he talk to Simon. ‘The last thing you’d want is for him to hear about it in a text message from someone else – so, yeah, that was a hard time.’ About then, ambassador Pamela Fayle arrived to offer Warren any assistance he needed. ‘He was in considerable shock,’ she says, ‘and in fact while I was there he had just got off the phone from talking to Amy’s husband … he turned to me and had a bit of a cry on my shoulder and he’d found that a very difficult call, as you can imagine … Simon was the sort of person who wanted to know the details so Warren had to

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go through a bit of that with him and that was tough, but I can’t imagine anybody handling it any better, quite frankly. I mean, he saw it happen and must have felt quite helpless at the scene with so much to deal with. It would have been horrifying, I think.’ On the other side of the world, Cycling Australia and the AIS were also mobilising to deal with the crisis. Cycling Australia’s Sydney-based chief, Graham Fredericks, and staff worked throughout the early hours of Tuesday morning to provide as much detail as possible for the Foreign Affairs Department and to update the families of the girls scattered across five states. ‘To say it was a shock is, of course, an understatement, but it became a matter of getting resources on the ground in Germany as quickly as possible and getting in contact with the families of all the girls,’ he says. Fredericks makes the hard point that deaths in competitive cycling, including seasoned campaigners, are a fact of racing, but this crash was to have an impact that would resonate across Australia for months to come. ‘That was probably heightened by three factors – first, it involved the national AIS squad, a team representing all Australians; second, it happened far away in another country; and third, the freakish nature of the accident where the whole six girls were taken out, just the magnitude of it – and if the Germans hadn’t responded so quickly and so well we may have been talking of another couple of deaths. That was the reality we were dealing with.’ Peter Fricker, who had only been director of the AIS for two months, was in Tokyo at the Japanese Institute of Sports Science. He was called out of a meeting and within a couple of hours was on a plane bound for Germany. One of

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Australia’s most eminent sports scientists, having been the AIS’s first medical officer in 1981 as well as serving at five Olympics, including as Australian team medical director at Athens 2004, Peter went straight to the hospital in Jena. He was impressed by what unfolded there. ‘The hospital had only been open for eighteen months, but they’d obviously recruited the best staff possible as it was also a university teaching hospital.’ The doctors, from the intensive care staff to the orthopaedic surgeons, were all internationally trained and vastly experienced and so, according to Peter, ‘you knew they’d seen everything at least twice … I keep saying this hospital wasn’t five star – it was six star. You couldn’t fault them’. Over the next week, he was to liaise daily with the doctors and update the growing throng of parents and loved ones flown to the scene by the Australian Sports Commission. The commission’s chairman, Peter Bartels, a former Australian cycling champion, who had also arrived, took responsibility for briefing an ever-present international media pack. As well two AIS psychologists – Rosanna Stanimirovic, a senior performance psychologist who worked closely with the cycling team, including a recent visit to their Italian base, and Ruth Anderson, who was the AIS’s residential athlete counsellor in Canberra – were rushed to the scene. Rosanna, or Rosie as she is known, had been holidaying on an island off the Dalmatian coast and Ruth had been in New Zealand. The day after Amy’s death dawned grey and wet in Zeulenroda and the sombre mood fitted a town now in mourning. The opening stage of the Tour of Thuringia – the time trial that was to have meant so much to Amy – was put

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aside as more than sixty competitors in their racing gear and 1500 townspeople gathered in the town square from where the six team-mates had left on their fateful ride the previous sunny afternoon. Under the backdrop of a large Australian flag draped with black ribbons, the professional girls who had trained and ridden with Amy since she had come to cycling prominence offered tearful insights into a colleague, a competitor but most of all a friend. Kate Bates remembers how the Australians gathered in a hotel room earlier in the day to plan what they would say. ‘We started telling stories about Amy and by the end of it we were laughing through the tears. Some of the stories were pretty funny. We talked about the memorial service and decided that we’d all love to say something because everyone knew who she was, but not a lot of girls in the peloton [the main group in a road cycling race] knew her that well. So we thought it important to tell them who she was and what she meant to us.’ Kate’s story was about the first time Amy had attended an elite training camp. ‘I remember thinking, this girl’s a bit strange – she’s not very friendly. So I said to her, “You don’t seem to socialise with any of us too much”, and Amy said back so plain and frank, “Kate, I’m not here to make friends. I’ve got a lot of really good friends back home” – and off she went. But after that I think, if not every time, every second time I saw her she’d apologise to me, “Oh, I’m so sorry I said that” …’ But as Kate told the gathering in Zeulenroda’s square, ‘The crazy thing is that everybody loved her from the moment she was in the tour’. Gold medal winner Sara Carrigan told the crowd how the Australian girls had their own network in Europe – even

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though they might ride on rival teams. ‘We make it our family. It’s a family away from home. Amy was a special member of that family and to lose anybody in your family is tragic.’ Months later, talking about that day in the rain, Sara’s thoughts went back to a race in Flanders where, as part of the Australian team, she had a puncture and had to stop to change a wheel. Amy, the team workhorse always up for hard work, was given the job of going back to Sara and then pulling her back up through the pack. ‘The biggest thing you have to learn when you come to road cycling is positioning – where to hide yourself in the bunch if you have to, when to attack if necessary.’ She laughed and said these were skills that Amy, having come to the sport late from rowing, was still trying to master. But often she couldn’t help herself and her competitive spirit inevitably came through. ‘So she was always on the front, doing the hard stuff – she was an absolute driver.’ Olivia Gollan told the crowd in the rain-drenched square how Amy had changed from rowing to cycling and how much dedication that had entailed. ‘She wanted to win an Olympic medal. I hope the next medal won by any of us here today is dedicated to Amy.’ Months later, asked about what she had said to the crowd on that gloomy day, Olivia simply couldn’t remember. Much of that turbulent time had been lost in a blur of sorrow. ‘All I know is that we were there and there were lots of people and it was raining …’ Surrounded by black umbrellas, Pamela Fayle read a statement on behalf on Cycling Australia. ‘Amy was an amazing woman, a role model not just for athletes but for everyone who aspires to be happy and successful in life. Her honesty and loyalty made her an invaluable team-mate and her

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friendship was treasured by all who knew her. Her bright, bubbly, joyous personality and that trademark Amy smile are irreplaceable … It is a strange irony that it is often a tragedy like this that brings us together and reminds us of what is really important in life …’ She concluded by saying, ‘Rest in peace, Amy Gillett. May all your rides be in fair weather and calm winds and may all your races be victories.’ This last sentiment would be mentioned time and again at gatherings to commemorate Amy in the coming weeks. Pamela remembers the most moving part of the ceremony being when the Australian cyclists told their personal stories to the gathering. ‘It was really a celebration of Amy’s life as they said all these positive things about her … and everybody who was there was visibly moved by that …’ From the town square, the cyclists, followed by a number of townspeople in cars, then rode out to the crash site where wreaths and flowers were laid. And, according to the Australian girls leading the way, it was suddenly as if Amy was watching over them. ‘When we were in the square talking, it was the most hideous day – it was raining and it was just manky,’ remembers Kate Bates. ‘Liv was the last to speak and she said at the end that Amy had just been the sunshine in the group and at that moment the sun came through the clouds. And it didn’t rain all the way out to the spot where we laid the flowers – and then it started to rain again. And it didn’t stop for a week. You know, it was just that ten minutes of sunshine and it was like a sign. Honestly, I know that might sound strange, but at the time it made everybody there smile and think for a moment, yep, she’s looking down on us. It was a special moment.’

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Earlier that day, Pamela Fayle had visited Lorian Graham, at that stage still alone and nursing her badly damaged knee in the hospital at Gera. ‘That was quite a difficult visit because at that busy point Warren [McDonald] hadn’t been able to get to all the girls and so she’d had no contact and I had to break the news to her about Amy and, of course, that was very upsetting for her … We grabbed one of our mobiles and called Lorian’s sister, I think, and she was able to talk it through with her and that helped a little in dealing with the shock of it. Then we stayed with her for quite a while to reassure ourselves that she was coping and that she was in good hands.’ Lorian says she was ‘absolutely gutted’ at being told of Amy’s death. Soon after, she was visited by the team’s mechanic, Wayne ‘Nicko’ Nichols – no relation to Kate Nichols – and he was also able to offer some consolation as well as bringing her up to date with what had happened to the rest of the team. But she desperately wanted to be with them at the Jena hospital. Lorian remembers a seemingly never-ending day of scans and examinations – with much of the time spent feeling distressed and that mood only interrupted by bouts of vomiting. ‘They weren’t too sure how soon I’d actually be transferred to the other hospital and so they said, “Oh, if you’re going to be here a bit longer we’ll put you in your own room”, and I said, “Yes, please. That would be fantastic”. So I was put in there and at that stage I still didn’t have any real idea of the magnitude of what had happened or how much it had affected people until I turned on the TV and watched CNN. There were pictures of me, pictures of the others and Amy, and of the accident – I was shocked at how big it had all

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become.’ It wasn’t until the next day that Lorian was finally taken to Jena – and once there she had to go through another batch of scans and tests. ‘It was just what I didn’t need – the amount of times I had to duck from one bed to the next …. Yeah, I wasn’t happy about that because all I wanted was to see the others, just see how they were. So after all that, they finally wheeled me up to where Katie and Kate were in the ward and there were tears of joy to see them, to know they were okay. I’d been told Alex and Louise were still in the ICU and had been put in induced comas, so yeah, I guess we were at least together again and the healing process could start.’ Arriving at the hospital in Jena the afternoon after the accident, psychologist Rosanna Stanimirovic started putting in place a support structure for the team, both athletes and staff, to carry them through the days immediately after the crash. An important part of this was to bring the injured girls together, a necessity already recognised by the hospital. ‘What we initially needed to consider, both at the hospital and for all the family members who were to come in, was what each athlete required to get them through the first seventy-two hours or so. That’s considered a critical period in terms of trauma.’ With fellow AIS psychologist Ruth Anderson also arriving, the purpose at this early stage was not to counsel but to monitor. ‘It was about letting the symptoms and experiences surface in each of them as they felt the need. Putting the parents, partners and other family members around them meant that they could create their own units of support, which was fantastic. Those people got into

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good routines and the other cyclists, the other Australians, were there as well … if anything, it might have become a little bit overwhelming for the girls as they were probably still tired through a lot of it.’ Again, Rosanna is another who pays tribute to the German medical staff. ‘The doctors were great in giving the girls information, talking directly to them and updating them continuously about what was going on and what was going to happen. That helped to maximise how much control they felt, not only over the situation they were in, but in regard to their recoveries, too.’ As well, piles of cards, emails and flowers were flooding in from Australia and from around the world. ‘It felt like there was a mass of support and goodwill around them and acknowledgement of what had happened and what they’d been through – and that was almost uplifting during those first three or four days.’ The most immediate medical concern now focused on Alexis Rhodes and Louise Yaxley, placed in induced comas in the ICU. They were on special rocking machines to tilt them and help ventilate their damaged lungs. Initially, Alexis was the principal worry and Pamela Fayle made sure her parents, Greg and Jenny, were on their way from Adelaide on the first available Qantas flight to Frankfurt. Once there, they were put on a domestic connection to Leipzig where they were met by embassy staff and driven down to Jena. However, it was Louise Yaxley, who had suffered a severe head knock, as well as massive trauma to her hands and arms, and considerable blood loss, who would prove to be of the most lasting concern. Her parents, Brian and Annette, also rushed to her bedside from the other side of the world as did her long-time

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boyfriend, Mark Padgett, a well-known northern Tasmanian sportsman, whose marriage proposal she would accept once back in Australia and undergoing her arduous rehabilitation program. Peter Fricker recalls taking phone calls in the ICU asking if Alex had indeed died and he had to stress that she was still very much alive, if not quite kicking. ‘I’d say to these people, “No, I’m standing by her bed. I can tell you right now – I’m a doctor – and she’s alive. Trust me”.’ As their conditions started to improve towards the end of the first week, both girls were slowly weaned off respirators and had their anaesthetic loads lightened. In one memorable moment, which gives an idea of their fighting spirit, Alexis had reached the stage where she had been taken off the respirator and had started to talk in a raspy, weak voice to her mother who was keeping a vigil at her bedside. However, her mum could not understand what she was trying to say in this croaky, little voice. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,’ mother said to daughter. Then Alex bellowed – as much as she could bellow at that stage, ‘Get me some fucking water!’ Her mum then looked at her dad and said, ‘Ah, she’s back’. They then turned to a doctor who was present and said, ‘You’d better knock her out again – she’s going to be a pain in the bum from now on’. Peter Fricker recounts this story with a degree of relish and indeed pride, saying Alex’s grit and determination was typical of the group – and typical of young, motivated sportspeople that the AIS comes to nurture. ‘Here was a kid with twenty-five fractures along her spine – just unbelievable. And soon she was trying to sit up and get on a stationary bike in intensive care. The medical staff was genuinely amazed by her.’

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Motivation in coming back from such debilitating injuries is a mix of inner drive and good genetics, according to Peter. ‘If you meet the parents of these sorts of kids – and Alex’s are a good example – they tend to be independent, self-reliant, noexcuse types. It’s an ethic within them – if you want a result you get it through hard work. And as part of that there’s a sense of toughness and competitiveness. I think you’re born with that. I’m not sure you can teach people to be competitive, that sense of striving to be better and better. Then, of course, in cases like this, you’ve also got to have the genes that give you the sort of soft tissue and bones that will repair – what we call the protoplasm. You’ve got to have that genetic make-up to be able to absorb this sort of damage and recover from it, and some are just tougher than others in that raw physical sense.’ While elite athletes might be high maintenance and demanding because of their internal drive, they seldom look for excuses when things go wrong. ‘We meet kids like this all the time,’ says Peter. ‘They aren’t interested in pointing the finger at someone else and making excuses – “Poor me, I’m a victim”. No, they believe you make your own life. Gymnastics is a sport I’ve worked with over many years and the parents are the ones who always say, “We don’t know where our daughter gets this from – she has a broken leg but she still wants to train”. No, these kids are absolutely driven – and it’s all credit to them.’ But an elite athlete’s heightened drive to achieve can also be a hindrance in overcoming serious injury – the idea of resting, of not putting in masses of hard, physical effort is abnormal to them. ‘That’s the nature of athletes and particularly these guys,’ says psychologist Rosanna Stanimirovic.

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‘They’re so orientated towards progress and movement and change and achievement. So yes, we need to change the idea of rest and make it a positive aspect of their recovery – “Come on guys, you need to stop for a while and that will actually do you some good”. And that’s another educative process, normalising all of the different ranges of symptoms, emotions and experiences – the ups and downs – that they’ll go through. The idea is to make that process manageable for them and those they’ll be around while this takes place.’ Louise Yaxley remembers that as she slowly came out of the induced coma in the ICU she could hear voices around her – and they were talking about her. ‘They say the first thing to come back is your hearing and so I was able to listen and soak up what people were saying. When I woke up I knew there’d been a bike crash, or I thought there had, and I knew that Amy had passed away. So I’d obviously overheard all that, which was pretty bizarre, and apparently I kept on repeating stuff my dad had said an hour before … I was pretty heavily drugged, but that enabled me to handle the situation a bit better … My parents had been due to travel to Europe anyway and were going to Italy and to watch the last stages of the Tour de France and so, yeah, I kind of spoiled that for them. So when I woke up I just presumed they were on their holiday and said to them, “Oh, what are you guys doing here?” and then I saw Mark, my partner, and said, “Oh, so you decided to come, too?” And they all just looked at me and realised I had no idea what was going on … and that’s my first memory on waking up.’

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As the days went by, Alexis was often on the receiving end of Louise’s still scrambled thoughts. ‘I kept repeating myself, especially during the first few days, and poor old Alex was hearing the same crazy stories four or five times. But she was too polite to tell me, “You’ve already told me that one”. Then I said to her, “If I repeat myself just tell me, won’t you?” and then she just looked at me and said, “Are you serious?” … I think by that stage she was starting to feel the loss of Amy as well, whereas with my frontal lobe injury I wasn’t at the stage of coping with that yet. It wasn’t until I got home [a month after the crash] and I was off the heavy medication that the reality sunk in. It’s a process we’ve all had to go through and we were all obviously devastated that she was gone, but we appreciate the effect she had on our lives. We’ve all got such excellent memories of Amy. She was a wonderful person, energetic and strong, and those memories are ours forever.’ While Louise and Alexis were winning their fights for life in the ICU, the other three – Katie and Kate, now joined by Lorian – were putting together the fragments of what had happened and contemplating the next phase of what would be their on-going battle to race again. For Lorian, the meticulous one, it became a matter of wanting to know exactly what had happened out there on the road that afternoon. ‘I was asking Katie, because she had been in a position to see more than me, “How fast was the car going? How far away was it? Where was Amy?” – stuff like that. They were facts I felt I needed to know because up to that point I didn’t know where everyone was when it all came to a standstill – and that really annoyed me …’ Emails and cards kept coming from around the world – so many in fact that they had to be bound into books for the

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girls to read. ‘I remember one afternoon sitting there reading some,’ says Lorian. ‘I had a book and Katie had another book, but I could only read about ten and I just had to put it down. I had to leave the room bawling and Katie looked up at me and said, “What’s wrong?” It was nice to receive all that support – but the whole magnitude of the situation was hitting home by then and I was thinking, oh, God, I can’t believe this has happened to us.’ But there were lighter moments, too. Kate Nichols said the three of them being together helped to lift their spirits – and they found laughter in the most mundane situations. ‘We’d talk about ridiculous things. The German food became a bit of a hot topic – sausages and gherkins for dinner each night. Before we realised we could order what we wanted, every night we’d get two pieces of bread buttered with this disgusting bit of sausage on each and one piece of gherkin. That was it – that was dinner. We didn’t eat much at that stage anyway and so we’d have fun throwing it round everywhere.’ Five days after the accident, Peter Fricker and Pamela Fayle met Stefan and Kathrin Magner, the parents of Stefanie, the teenage driver of the car. They had wanted to come to the hospital to make a presentation to the injured girls, but the Australians thought it wise that they meet away from the hospital. With Greg Boorer acting as interpreter, the parents, who Peter describes as having been ‘devastated’, said, ‘All we can say is we’ve got a daughter at home who’s injured and she’s trying to come to terms with this. We’re not asking for your sympathy, but we just want to say how awful we feel. Here are some flowers for the girls – and a card. We just

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wanted to give it to you. If you think it’s appropriate to pass on, please do. If not – don’t. But we feel it’s important for us to do this before you go home’. The card, a hand-written apology from their daughter in broken English, expressed sorrow for what had happened and asked for forgiveness. Quickly picked up and a front page story in News Ltd newspapers across Australia, it read, ‘Dear People … I am so sorry that the accident … happened. I don’t imagine the whole extent because I don’t remember anything. Especially I mourn for Amy Gillett. I think of her husband. Please forgive me … With best wishes, Stefanie.’ Also that week, in the family’s only other comment, her grandfather, Norbert Magner, told News Ltd papers that Stefanie had cried constantly since the accident. ‘She is very, very sad and full of remorse,’ he said. ‘The whole family is shattered. It has been a horrendous shock and we have not slept much since last Monday. We all want to say we are so very sorry to the Australian cyclists, their families and, in particular, the husband and family of Ms Gillett. Stefanie does not remember anything of the accident. The doctors have told us she may never remember it … She was bruised all over. She had a ruptured eardrum and deep cuts from where the seatbelt stopped her from flying out of the car. But mostly her heart aches from what happened. She knows what she is feeling is nothing compared to Ms Gillett’s family, the other riders and their loved ones. She had told us she wants to apologise personally to the cyclists.’ For coach Warren McDonald, now joined by his wife, Sian, there was mounting concern for the Australian professional girls as well as his immediate charges in hospital. As several of

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the pro riders were about to leave for the impending world championships in Spain, he and Rosanna Stanimirovic thought it wise that they be brought together and offered support as well. ‘Obviously, the Australian girls were worried about those in hospital, they were worried about me, but we just said to them, “Look, of course, you’re going to be grieving, you’re going to be having a bit of a cry, but we also want you to be able to look ahead and do your best, which is what the others and Amy would want from you anyway”. I think there was an Aussie spirit in that group and in a way we were all family in it together and I know I felt like a member of that family … The strength you can gain from a group can be amazing and we all drew from that. It was like a “Little Australia” in the hospital and I think the doctors there, who had seen a lot themselves, were pretty amazed by it.’ Not long before she headed home, Lorian Graham remembers being visited in hospital by one of the volunteer paramedics who had been at the crash site. ‘One of our doctors came in and said, “Would you like to talk to this guy?” At the time I think Katie was having a sleep and I thought, well, maybe I’ll say hello just to be polite. Anyway, I went out there and nearly fell over backwards because it was the guy who had actually been sitting beside me on the road. He hadn’t said a word to me, just held my hand. He told me how he hadn’t spoken any English since 1989, but since the accident all these English words had started coming back to him. He said that in his normal job he was a truckie and that he did volunteer work and was on call for the emergency crew. On the day of the accident he was driving with his girlfriend and their son to his grandma’s house and with all the ambulances

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going in the other direction it wasn’t long before he was beeped and he had to go, too. He said of all the traffic accidents he’d seen ours was by far the worst – to see six people and their bikes just strewn over the road like that and not one bike in one piece. It was obviously very disturbing for him and I think he lived somewhere near the crash site so every day he was going by the spot with the crosses and the memorial. He said to me, “I just needed to know how you were”, and that on that day I’d given him a bit of a smile and he knew that I’d manage, that I’d be okay. So in the end I was just grateful to be able to say thank you to him.’

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T H R E E

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When Simon Gillett returned from his regular early morning bike ride at about 7.30 on Tuesday 19 July, his teenage son Rhys, from his first marriage and to whom Amy had been more like a big sister than a stepmother, told his dad, ‘Oh, the police were here earlier’. Rhys, who lives with his mother, Barb, like her ex-husband a well-known rowing identity, was over from Adelaide and staying with Simon as he often did during the school holidays. ‘I thought I knew what it was about because two weeks before Amy went back overseas there was a bunch of kids running around the place chucking eggs at houses,’ Simon recalls of where they lived at Mt Helen, just outside of Ballarat. ‘Amy had actually gone to see the police about it to let them know what was going on. So I presumed it was something to do with that and they’d left a card for me to call them. I jumped in the shower and then Rhys called out, “Oh, the police are back again”. Then I knew something was seriously amiss. They 45

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wouldn’t come back twice at that hour of the morning to tell me they’d caught some kids who’d been throwing eggs. So they came in and that’s how I found out.’ To say the least, Simon is a no-nonsense guy. One of four children of a Victorian farming family, his two decades in elite sport – as a double world champion rower and later coach and exercise physiologist – taught him how to get the best out of his charges and himself, mentally and physically. He was also eighteen years older than Amy. As he wryly puts it, he was starting university the year she was born and their age difference raised more than a few eyebrows and sparked its share of whispers behind their backs. But, as was their way, they simply got on with their lives. These days on the land with his own cropping business that turns over four million dollars a year, Simon remains all about priorities and practicalities and doesn’t suffer fools – or questions with obvious answers – all that gladly. Asked how he felt on being told in such point blank terms of his wife’s death on the other side of the world, he answers with his own question, ‘What worse news could you get? So I then had to tell Rhys and a guy who works with me [on his properties] who was staying at the house. Then I thought I’d better get on the phone and start ringing people before it hit the media. So I probably made something like forty phone calls. I also rang Wazza [in Germany] to try and find out a bit more about what had happened. That would have been maybe one-thirty or two in the morning over there’. Others who Simon rang in his barrage of phone calls that morning included Rod Katz, a transport consultant and lobbyist, and his partner, Vida Vilrunas, a doctor, in

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Canberra. When Amy had still been involved in rowing in the late-1990s, she had spent periods shuffling between the AIS in Canberra and the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI) in Adelaide. For some of her Canberra time, she had stayed with fellow Olympic rower Bronwyn Thompson, her future bridesmaid, in a cabana at the back of Rod and Vida’s spacious home in Deakin, an up-market part of the national capital. Over the years, Amy and Simon and Rod and Vida had become firm friends, sharing holidays and the ups and downs of Amy’s sporting career. Coincidentally, Rod had been president for three years of the national cycling lobby group, the Bicycle Federation of Australia, and remained a keen amateur rider. As well, he ran the business side of Vida’s anaesthetist’s practice, much of it centred on Canberra Hospital. Rod has vivid memories of that morning and that call. Vida had already rushed off to work and he was preparing their daughter, eight-year-old Josephine, who had been the flower girl at Amy and Simon’s wedding the year before, for school. ‘It must have been about eight o’clock and my mobile rang and for once I answered it. It was Simon and I said, “How are you?” and he replied, “I’m not real good”. I knew pretty much immediately on hearing that that something must have happened to Amy and when he said she’d been killed I was obviously shattered. Then I asked something like, “Killed by a car?” and he said, “Yeah, the young driver wiped out the whole bunch and some of the other girls are pretty seriously hurt”. He said he didn’t want me to hear about it on the radio. So he was being considerate there. I didn’t know what to say and I remember ending the call mumbling something like, “If there’s anything I can do …”’

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Rod then telephoned a number of their mutual friends in Canberra, including Bronwyn Thompson, from the cabana and rowing days. ‘So Bron came over and we provided a bit of mutual comfort for one another and she was a bit of a wreck because she and Amy were truly soul mates. Then Vida came home shortly after that. We were talking about what we could do and Vida said, “Why don’t you go to Germany with Simon?” and so I sent him a text message: “If you need a mate to go with you to sit next to you on the plane, I’m happy to do it”. I thought I’d ask him like that to give him some time to think about it because there must have been so much going on in his head at that stage. But he called back ten minutes later and said, “Yeah, that’d be good. I’ve spoken to the Sports Commission and they’re going to organise the tickets”’. The trip was scheduled for Thursday, leaving on a Qantas flight that would take them to Frankfurt in Germany. Rod flew down to Melbourne at 6 a.m. to meet Simon and make the connection that afternoon. He went as early as possible to make sure he missed any fog, which can often close Canberra airport in winter. ‘So I ended up having a few hours to waste in Melbourne and it was quite strange wandering around the streets. Everywhere I looked there were pictures of Amy plastered on newspaper billboards – this was someone whom we had known so well. So eventually, feeling a bit numb, I went back to the airport where I was to meet Simon.’ There was a scrum of photographers and reporters – the first of what would be a constant presence during the trip. On the advice of television newsreader George Donikian, who was then engaged to Di Gillett, Simon’s sister, and who is now married to her, Simon managed a few words to placate

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them. ‘Having somebody from the media there like George was a help because he realised that was going to be the easiest way through it and Simon, to his credit, was able to hold himself together with them asking questions such as “How does it feel?” and the obvious answer being “Not too good at all”,’ remembers Rod. Simon simply recalls the trip as the worst journey of his life. ‘Yeah, that’s a good way to describe it.’ Rod remembers it, and the subsequent flight home, as being very long, as if time was dragging. ‘There wasn’t that much I could say … we talked a bit about how it felt and how it [the emotional reaction to Amy’s death] seemed to come in waves. You were never quite sure what you should be feeling, what was an appropriate feeling to be having. Certainly, being there as a support person I was grieving myself, but I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Simon.’ After arrival in Frankfurt, they flew on to Leipzig, in the old East Germany, where they were met by Australian Embassy staff who had set up a shuttle service to drive what was becoming a steady stream of arriving family members and loved ones down to the regional city of Jena where the injured girls were eventually gathered in the same hospital. Simon and Rod’s recollections differ here as Simon says they went first to the crash site outside of the hamlet of Zeulenroda where the road race Amy and the team were to compete in was to have started. However, Rod remembers them initially going to the morgue attached to the hospital in the nearby town of Gera where Amy’s body had been taken after the accident.

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But what they both remember clearly is photographers and television cameramen being ever present. ‘When we arrived at the accident site they were about twenty abreast,’ says Simon. ‘So I walked up and said, “There’s only been one fatality, but you start taking photos here there’s going to be another one”.’ He can’t help but offer a smile as he recalls how both he and Rod Katz, who was never far from his side, both had shaved heads and similar slim builds and the photographers had trouble working out who was who. ‘When we’d arrived at Frankfurt airport there were photographers and when we arrived in Leipzig there were more and when we arrived at the hotel [in Jena where they eventually stayed] there were more again and so they took all these photographs and then were asking, “Well, okay, which one is he?”’ Simon took his own photographs and walked up and down the road and grass verges, studying the crash site from every angle. He remains adamant that Amy’s death was due totally to negligence on the part of the car driver, teenager Stefanie Magner. ‘What’s happened is she’s been either sending a text, changing a CD, or dialling a phone number and she’s driven off the road on her side, dropped the wheel on the shoulder and then, head back up, panicked and just hoicked on the steering wheel and then hoicked it the other way and lost it … What really pissed me off, though, was the prosecutor or judge or whoever it was who came to interview people [the surviving cyclists] in hospital and was trying to make comments like, “Well, maybe you were on the wrong side of the road” or “Maybe a deer ran across the road” – that’s all crap.’ As far as Simon is concerned, his wife was run down and killed on a perfect road under perfect driving conditions –

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and that’s due to negligence by the driver and in his judgement that’s not an accident. He is dismissive of her apology written in broken English and brought to the injured girls in hospital. ‘You apologise when you stand on someone’s foot, you know. Or if she’d had a blow-out with a tyre or the car malfunctioned in some other way – that’s an accident. This wasn’t an accident.’ Rod Katz recalls Simon walking up and down the road at the crash site with the media scrum off in the distance. ‘He wanted to take his own shots and get what had happened inside his own head. He was looking up and down the road and he was just going, “This is bullshit, this should not have happened”. He was obviously constructing, or deconstructing, the whole thing and he just kept shaking his head.’ Rod says they got lost on the way to the morgue where Amy’s body had been taken. ‘We got a call while we were on the autobahn saying there’d been a crash up ahead so take the side road and so we went off on this other road and the trip was taking longer and so the tension [in the car] got to be pretty unbelievable.’ When they finally reached the adjacent hospital there was more time lost over confused directions until they finally reached the morgue, which Rod remembers as a church-like building on a forested hillside. They were ushered inside by an attendant. ‘So we walked through the door and there was Amy. She was behind glass, like a sleeping beauty. At that moment I found it particularly hard to figure out my place … but it was definitely Simon’s place to be there, of course.’ So Rod waited outside in the hallway while Simon spent time alone with his wife. Throughout the whole experience – at the morgue, the crash site and when finally catching up with Amy’s injured

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team-mates – Simon wanted to know the facts of what had happened. At the morgue, he spent time questioning staff about what exact injury had killed Amy – among the most critical was a severed aorta, the major artery that distributes blood throughout the body – but because of the language difficulties, trying to clarify her injuries became a frustration. ‘I can remember Simon sitting ramrod straight in the front of the car and God knows what was going through his brain during all this,’ says Rod. ‘But, you know, I was there thinking that only an amazing feat of endurance on his behalf was allowing him to do this.’ For his part, Simon says he wanted to bring Amy home because it was his role as her husband to do so, but he also needed to understand what had happened to her. ‘I knew all those involved and, of course, I wanted to see the other girls in hospital as well as trying to comprehend what had happened.’ At a hotel in Jena, which had become an unofficial headquarters for Australian support staff as well as family and friends zeroing in on the area – and not far from the hospital where the injured girls were now gathered – Simon and Rod met coach Warren McDonald. ‘The first thing Simon said when he walked into the room with Warren was, “Mate, I know it’s not your fault. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault”, and you could see the relief on Warren’s face. It was tangible. He knew that already, but he just wanted to be told that by Simon face to face.’ Over the next two days, Simon was reunited with the injured girls, although at that stage the two most seriously injured, Louise Yaxley and Alexis Rhodes, remained in induced comas in the hospital’s intensive care unit with

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family and loved ones by their sides. During this, on Friday 22 July, he fronted the ever-present media again – this time not threatening to add any of them to the fatality list – and paid tribute to Amy. ‘She was a pretty amazing person. We were just lucky to have had our time with her really.’ He said he had been overwhelmed by messages of condolence and tributes to Amy from around the world. That day the voice of the world’s most celebrated cyclist, Lance Armstrong, was added to them. On the verge of winning an unprecedented seventh straight Tour de France, the iconic Texan spoke of his sorrow and shock over Amy’s death and the injuring of her teammates. ‘We have a sport that is incredibly difficult. Every time you suit up, you take your life into your own hands,’ he said, underscoring the risks cyclists – professional and amateur – take every time they venture on to roads shared with motor vehicles. ‘Nobody likes to hear that [of a death]. As an English-speaking rider, it hits close to home. Our hearts go out to their families. I know we are thinking of them. Their loss weighs heavily on us and everyone in the peloton. We know that every time we go out that it could happen to us.’ Simon also told the reporters how he had been visiting the injured girls. ‘I know them,’ he explained. ‘They think I’m a bit of a clown, I make them laugh. I was in there [the hospital] annoying them, trying to make a couple of them laugh – but not too much. I was keen to catch up with them. They were pretty good, smiles all round on the three of them (Lorian Graham, Katie Brown and Kate Nichols) and they’re sick of being in hospital so that’s a good sign.’ He was also reunited with the Australian professional riders, including Olivia Gollan, Sara Carrigan and the Bates sisters, Kate and

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Natalie, who had all ridden with Amy early in her cycling career when she was still finding out what the competitive side of the sport was about. Looking back on the trip to bring Amy home, Simon now recalls it as being almost unreal. ‘It seemed surreal, almost like it wasn’t happening. Even then, immediately after it [Amy’s death] had happened, I was suddenly with all these people who I knew and who we’d been friends with and it was like I was switching between emotions … and it’s been like that, you know, almost ever since. Like you catch up with people and you’re having a laugh and a good time, but all that seems like it’s not quite real – and then you get back to reality.’ And Simon is practical enough to know it will probably stay that way for a long time. For a start, there’s a lot of catching up to do. ‘Because of our lifestyle, if I took all my friends from when I rowed and from when I coached and from when Amy rowed and from cycling and from my farming business and from up at Port Douglas [in North Queensland where they had a charter fishing boat] and overseas, you’re probably talking 600, 700 people … everywhere I go I run into people I haven’t seen since it [the crash] happened and go through the whole dialogue and catch up again – and there’s still people I haven’t seen. I don’t mind talking about it to them because I think that’s probably a good thing as we always end up having a laugh about some of the good times we remember and that can’t be a bad thing.’ The flight back to Australia was as difficult as the one to Germany, especially knowing that Amy’s body was in the hold of the Qantas jet. While still in Germany, the idea of forming

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an organisation in Amy’s name to promote road-safety awareness of cyclists as well as encouraging young women riders competitively and academically was discussed with Gennie Sheer, media manager for Cycling Australia. Rod remembers he and Simon talked further about what was to become the Amy Gillett Foundation on the flight home with Simon being keen to pursue the idea. ‘We broadened it out to include the whole issue of road-safety education towards cyclists and that captured Simon’s enthusiasm. You could see he wanted to make sure there was a legacy and that this wasn’t going to be a meaningless death on the other side of the world. I think that’s where the idea of the foundation became really important to him and, later, this was reinforced with the expressions of interest that came from all over the country with organisations and different governments and just ordinary people wanting to make sure that Amy’s death was not some pointless sacrifice.’ Since Amy’s funeral, Simon, with the help of his sister, Di, a Melbourne businesswoman, and using Rod Katz’s lobbying expertise, has worked tirelessly to set up the foundation. He has the principals of several large national companies, who are also passionate about cycling, on side, particularly in Melbourne, as well as the federal and state governments. ‘We’ve got people involved who can pick up the phone and ring a premier or someone influential to get something happening … So that’s the calibre of person who we’re getting involved and they say to me, “Well, what’s your aim in all this?” and I say, “To make myself redundant as soon as possible”. I don’t mind being the figurehead, but we really have to run this properly, not as if it’s being done out of a backyard

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shed.’ As far as cycling safety issues are concerned, Simon wants the foundation to focus on specific projects, rather than adopt a general safety message. Melbourne’s beachside Beach Road is a glaring example. ‘I’d say close to 10 000 people a weekend ride on Beach Road. It’s the most widely used piece of training road in Melbourne – and there are so many accidents along it.’ On arrival back in Australia, touching down initially in Sydney, Simon told yet another posse of reporters and cameramen about the germ of an idea for the foundation. ‘We need to make a positive out of this … We want to try and make the foundation a memory to Amy.’ He asked motorists to take care and watch out for bikes. ‘When you go past a cyclist on the road, just go past them as if it’s your daughter or son or your wife or your husband,’ he said. ‘Give them a little room.’ The most graphic image on the television news bulletins that evening was a hearse quietly slipping out of Melbourne airport, the casket in the back containing Amy’s body draped in the red, white and blue of the Australian flag. And as the months have slipped by and thoughts about the foundation and his farming business are dealt with, Amy is always on Simon’s mind. ‘Oh, I miss her unbelievably,’ he says. He thinks their relationship, despite the often mentioned age difference, worked because they came to complement each other. ‘It was pretty fiery to start with. When I was coaching her that certainly wasn’t … well, you couldn’t have accused me of trying to endear myself to her. But it came to be a relationship of mutual respect and support. We obviously became extremely close, but were also able to give each other the freedom and space to do what we both wanted with

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our lives, which is probably one of the reasons it came to work so well. But no matter where either of us happened to be in the world, we’d talk on the phone half an hour every day.’ He smiles and suggests, ‘As I’ve said to others, “If you’ve got shares in Telstra, you’d better get rid of them now …”’ Also, Simon has come to notice how Amy’s death has affected many of those who were close to them – but in what can be described as a good way. ‘It’s been quite amazing how many of our friends have put their own jobs, relationships, their lives under the microscope since this happened. It’s as if they’re asking, “What am I doing, why am I putting up with this crap? I’m only here once, I need to change and do the best I can”. Some of these people are actually making significant adjustments to their lives, their relationships, as a result of what happened. It’s actually forced them to confront a few situations that they’d been putting up with and think that maybe they could handle it better.’ Rod Katz, the friend who had made the difficult journey with him, was left in no doubt. He was thankful to return home to his family and says the experience – Amy’s death, the trip to Germany and the funeral and memorial service that were to follow – made him realise what mattered in life. ‘It’s like I feel a different person now, I have to admit. There’s pre and post, if you like. Something like this gives you an appreciation of what’s important.’ Not until seven months later would the driver of the car, Stefanie Magner, have her day in court. But it was to be a day that appalled both Simon and Amy’s parents, Denis and Mary. Facing a charge of involuntary manslaughter and five

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cases of negligent assault, she was fined 1440 Euros, the equivalent of $2300, and had her licence suspended for eight months. The first Denis and Mary knew of the judgement was when it was broadcast on Adelaide radio and local media started asking for comment. Until then, they didn’t even know charges had been laid. Unlike Simon, they had decided to keep a public silence about Magner and, indeed, had avoided commenting on the circumstances of the crash, believing justice would ultimately be done. But now they felt they had to speak out – for themselves and in Amy’s memory. ‘We’re absolutely staggered by the generosity to the girl,’ Denis told News Ltd newspapers. ‘It is appalling that she could go out and kill our beautiful daughter and maim the other girls, some of them seriously for life, and walk away with not even a slap on the wrist. Any fair-minded person would think the sentence was ridiculously light. We are not looking for revenge, but one would hope for justice and there is no justice in this. We think about Amy every minute of every hour of every day and when this sort of situation comes up the grief is even more painful, if that is possible.’ Prosecutors in the case said there was no evidence that Magner had been speeding or under the influence of alcohol or drugs. However, Denis was less than impressed with this. ‘The surviving girls saw it unfolding in front of them. They saw a speeding, out-of-control car coming down the highway and they saw it kill Amy and then plough into them.’ He drew comparisons to the infamous Eugene McGee case in his home state, South Australia, which had created national headlines before the crash that killed Amy. McGee, a highprofile criminal lawyer, ran down and killed cyclist Ian

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Humphrey with his four wheel drive on a stretch of country road north of Adelaide. He then fled the scene, only turning himself in to police more than six hours later after arranging legal help. He was fined $3100 and lost his licence for a year. ‘It springs to mind how cyclists can be treated so poorly,’ said Denis. In a bevy of television news interviews that night, Mary said at least Magner could have been given some sort of community service in trauma wards similar to where Amy’s teammates had been taken after the crash. Also, there was never any suggestion that she, Denis and Simon might be able to provide some sort of victim impact statement to the German court. Indeed, they had heard nothing from the German court system or, indeed, Magner’s family. ‘I feel angry towards the system that gave this sentence,’ Mary said. ‘Up to now I have blocked this young woman out of my mind. I have had other things to deal with. ‘But I’m starting to feel pretty angry. We have received no apology from her. Nothing. Perhaps she has been restricted by lawyers, but in the end it is about more than that. It is about humanity. I find it quite distressing.’

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C H A P T E R

F O U R

Oakmount Court

So this is where it began: Oakmount Court, West Lakes, a quiet cul-de-sac in the western suburbs of Adelaide. Back in the mid-1970s, at the time of Amy’s birth, this was aspirational territory – the quarter-acre blocks, brand new brick houses and mortgages of which young families’ dreams were made. Located on a long north–south plain between hills and sea, the South Australian capital offers few of the enticing nooks and crannies with water views of Sydney, the hilly harbour city, or even Brisbane and Perth with their wide rivers. After all, this is the oft-quoted driest state in the driest continent and so when the forgotten back end of the industrialised Port River was reclaimed, landscaped and set aside for close to the water housing, West Lakes was suddenly the place to be. Denis Safe, a television director with Adelaide’s Channel Nine, his wife, Mary, a school teacher, and infant daughter, Georgina, set up home in Marlee Court, on the edge of this 60

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bright new world. As the children of middleclass parents – his father was a bookmaker, hers a transport inspector – they found themselves in baby-boomer heartland. After a year, a second healthy daughter, Amy Elizabeth, was born on 9 January 1976, at Adelaide’s Calvary Hospital. Mary recalls, ‘I can still hear my gynaecologist saying to me, “Oh, you live down there in the swamps – West Lakes. How do they ever manage to build houses down there?”’ ‘It was seen as an aspirational sort of place and it was sold that way – which it wasn’t really,’ says Denis. ‘It had a big lake that had been created and it was something new as far as Adelaide was concerned – this water-type theme. But underneath it all, it wasn’t that up-market because across the road there was a Housing Trust [public housing] area. That was right next door.’ While out riding his bike, a regular form of exercise, Denis happened across a bigger and better house for sale in Oakmount Court, no more than a leisurely pedal away. It was a cul-de-sac with next to no traffic and therefore good for kids. It was close to the lake, which had its own little beach, and still closer to the kindergarten that Georgina – for convenience, her name is often shortened by the family to George or Georgie – was then attending. There also seemed to be an abundance of like-minded young families in the street. So they sold Marlee Court and moved down the road and around the corner to Oakmount Court. ‘It was an idyllic place for children to grow up,’ says Mary. ‘It was a safe, fun environment for them. All the kids played together and if they weren’t at your house you knew they were across the road at someone else’s or they’d be playing in the reserve down the corner.’

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Among this gang, the Ebert children – Tammie, Ben and Brett – and the Barnes boys – Simon and David – were the thickest of young thieves with Georgina and Amy. And the three families would remain remarkably entwined as the years passed. The Ebert kids’ dad, Russell, is a legend in football crazy South Australia, having won four Magarey Medals, the local equivalent of the then Victorian Football League’s and now nationally expanded Australian Football League’s Brownlow Medal. He played nearly 400 games for the Port Adelaide Magpies, the love ’em or hate ’em powerhouse of the local competition. In the later stages of his career, he turned out for North Melbourne in the old VFL while son Brett has gone on to play for Port off-shoot, Port Power, in today’s AFL. Peter Barnes, father of Simon and David, was also a wellperformed local footballer and would go on to have a highprofile career as a sports medico. As well as being the medical director of SASI, he served as a medical officer with the 1996 Atlanta and 2000 Sydney Olympic teams and with the AIS track cycling program. So throughout the years, his path crossed Amy’s on numerous and on-going occasions. But it would be the Eberts’ daughter, Tammie, who would form the most enduring bond with the girl from up the road. Amy and Tammie played together in Oakmount Court from as far back as they could remember, went to the same schools, nearby Grange Primary School and later Annesley College, an all-girls private school with an impressive academic record. From there, they shared courses at the University of South Australia before winding up together at the AIS in Canberra and later on the competition trails of Europe –

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Amy as an athlete, Tammie as a sports physiologist. And, of course, Tammie was a bridesmaid at Amy’s wedding to Simon eighteen months before that fateful day in Germany. At Amy’s funeral service in Ballarat and later at her memorial service in Adelaide, Tammie spoke of their lives that had always crossed paths. It was a simple speech that told much about growing up in an ideal place while underlining the strength of their relationship. From childhood to adulthood, from one side of the world to the other, the bond would endure: ‘It [Oakmount Court] was one of those streets where lifelong friendships were formed and childhood dreams were made. We both had bikes, mine was red and called Speedy Gonzalez and Amy’s was yellow and called Speedy Gonzalez’s Girlfriend. We used to ride to school in single file behind either my mum [Di Ebert] or Mary. After school, we would trade the bikes for roller skates. Before taking off down the drive, we would tie a cushion to our bottoms for added protection and made sure a tree was close by to grab on to in case of an emergency landing of which there were many. ‘We had a block of land in the Adelaide Hills where we used to keep sheep. Often a mother sheep would die or reject her lamb and we used to bring them home to West Lakes. We had a lamb called Silky, but one day dad came home with another lamb. We were unable to keep it so, as you do, you call on your trusty neighbours to help out and they did. Amy took this lamb and called it Surprise. Even at such a young age, Amy was always willing to help out a friend and take something under her wing to care for. So in suburban West Lakes, two little lambs roamed the street, were

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fed bottles of warm milk and provided hours of enjoyment. But, of course, lambs grow up and neighbours wrote letters to the council. So Silky and Surprise had to leave the street. We were told they were going to a lovely big farm, but we knew otherwise. I think this is what turned Amy off meat for her childhood years. ‘There was a low point in our friendship. We were five and playing on the slippery dip. I thought I would climb up it and Amy thought she would come down. Well, I came off the worst and ended up with a greenstick fracture. We did not talk to each other for most of the 100-metre walk home from the park, but within a few minutes after that we were best of friends again. I have not broken anything since except for a broken heart today for the tragic loss of such a wonderful person … ‘Amy was a competitor who loved a challenge. Even outside sport, she loved a challenge. I remember at her birthday we used to play the chocolate game where you roll a dice and when you get a six you are allowed to cut a piece of chocolate off with a knife and fork and eat it. You could keep going until someone else rolled a six. Well, Amy got a bit bored with this, probably because she was not getting any chocolate, and because it was her birthday she could make up the rules. What we had to do then was roll the dice at one end of the swimming pool and if we got a six swim to the other end and then cut the chocolate. Well, you can imagine what happened to the chocolate – chlorine coated and floating on the plate. ‘Long ago we spoke about where we were both going to end up. I was going to be Amy’s kids’ kindergarten teacher and she was going to be my physio. How wrong we were. It

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was only a few months ago that I was massaging Amy’s legs while she was competing in a race in France. I think I got the raw end of the deal! But what made it all worthwhile was seeing Amy achieve and helping her along the way. Amy always acknowledged those who helped her and to my luck she showed her gratitude with bottles of Baileys. ‘Amy and I have travelled a path together, amazingly with very few deviations along the way. From kindergarten to school, then to uni and on to Italy, we have maintained a friendship that is hard to describe and often hard for people to believe when we say how long we have known each other and how we are still both part of each other’s lives. Words such as loyalty, commitment, passion, drive, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness come into my mind when I think about Amy. At times we may not have spoken for months but it only felt like yesterday when we would start gossiping again … ‘For nearly three decades we shared so much, travelled the world and lived out our childhood dreams. I now hold closely those decades of memories for the rest of my life and will live each day as Amy did, with love, thoughtfulness of others and a passion for life and achieving goals …’ There was no sporting discrimination in Oakmount Court. The girls – Georgina, Amy and Tammie – were just as at home having a go at what were supposed to be the boys’ games – cricket in summer and football in winter – as they were playing with their Barbie dolls. ‘I remember George would get sick of it quicker than Amy would,’ says Denis of the cricket matches. ‘But Amy would be there till stumps were drawn.’

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Back then, Russell Ebert had an interest in a sports store so the kids had all the gear they needed. ‘They used to play tee-ball, which is a game for kids where you hit the ball off a stand,’ he remembers. ‘It was a nice combination for both the boys and the girls and it wasn’t about who was stronger or threw harder. Later tee-ball became softball and we organised that for them. Then there was netball and we had a ring for that, as well as the football and cricket – all the sports that they could want to play. There was always something happening down on the reserve and the girls would stand up for themselves and put the boys in their place if needed. Then we’d draw a court on the bitumen road and they had their little games there. So the cars had to stop – not that there were many cars, of course.’ For Russell and Di Ebert, originally from the Riverland countryside of South Australia, this street, even in the middle of suburbia, came to remind them of their own rural upbringing. ‘It was a terrific place,’ says Russell. ‘Even some of the people who didn’t have kids and who weren’t part of this as such couldn’t help but get involved. They were forever throwing balls back that had been hit through their windows or over their fence. It was close to a country upbringing where everyone looked after everyone.’ Di recalls the more ladylike activities. ‘There was always a cubby house with the chairs and rugs and we had what we used to call a fort in the backyard and underneath that was a sandpit. They spent hours out there with their little plastic table and chairs having tea parties.’ Later, reminded of this, Tammie Ebert smiles. ‘We used to be able to do anything and not have to worry about being out late. You’d hear someone’s mum or

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dad call from up the street “Dinner’s ready!” and kids would scatter off home in all directions.’ Thirty years on, Peter Barnes also has happy memories of the street. ‘It was like one big family. The kids were always at one another’s houses and they all became part of our everyday life and activity. Everyone had a backyard pool so in summer they were always rotating between the different pools and they always went down to the beach together. Looking back now, perhaps they might have been more supervised, but it didn’t seem so much of an issue back then. They’d just roam around and you wouldn’t know where they were, but you did know they’d be at one of our places.’ Peter also remembers Amy’s competitive streak at a young age. ‘She’d get frustrated because the boys would try to give her a hard time over the games, but she’d always try to beat them and kept them on their toes for sure.’ As already suggested, bicycles were a big part of Oakmount Court life. Mary had a Malvern Star – the mainstay of the South Australian bike industry back then – with a child’s seat on the back. ‘I remember riding it with Amy on the back up to Channel Nine at North Adelaide where Denis was working then. We were going to have lunch and go to a playground up there. But there’s a big hill on the way and I remember lifting Amy off and saying, “Right, we’re walking up here”. I used to do a lot of riding around with Amy on the back. She loved it. These days I’d think twice because of all the traffic, but back then it was relatively quiet. Then Amy and Tammie got their own little bikes and there was no stopping them.’ As well as all this physical and sporting activity, Denis and Mary tried to interest the non-stop Amy in some of the, well,

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finer points of life. After she joined her sister at nearby Grange Primary School, there were piano lessons. ‘George enjoyed all the sport but she really loved books and I guess she was a bit more introspective,’ says Mary. ‘She would be in there playing [the piano] very delicately. She had a beautiful tone. Then it would be Amy’s turn and I’d have to find her and call her in, “Okay, it’s piano practice time” … And then it was bang! bang! bang! … I’d have to shut the door into the lounge room. I must say she had a fair go at it, but it just wasn’t her thing.’ As well, they would take the girls to museums and galleries to broaden their experiences. But one trip to the South Australian Art Gallery on Adelaide’s North Terrace showed Amy’s emerging strong will. ‘When we announced we were going to the Art Gallery, well … “I’m got going there!”’ Denis recalls. ‘She didn’t want a bar of it. But we thought, oh, yes, you are. So we got there and then she announced, “I’m not going inside!” We said, “Yes you are, you’ve got to be safe”. So she ended up sitting on a seat with her arms folded and announced, “I’ll wait here till you come out”. And when we did come out, she was still sitting there with her arms folded and with this face like thunder.’ The two sisters – Georgina, with her academic bent and lively mind, and Amy, with her interest in all things sporting and unbridled enthusiasm – were already heading in different directions. Georgina would go on to study law at Adelaide University before turning to journalism, while Amy’s rowing and then cycling would take her around the world many times. ‘Even then, they were like chalk and cheese,’ says Denis. ‘People used to say that all the time. They were totally

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different in their outlooks a lot of the time.’ Mary remembers being worried that Amy might be lost in Georgina’s academic shadow once she started at Grange Primary. ‘When we’d go to parent–teacher interviews and it came out that we were the parents to both of them, the teachers initially got quite a shock because the girls looked so different. They’d say, “Gosh, is she Georgie’s sister?” I thought it was good that she wasn’t instantly recognised as Georgie’s sister because that had concerned me. But Amy turned out to be fine academically. She did her own thing in her own way and there was probably a bit of competition over the years to be as successful as what Georgie was academically and she took it seriously.’ Melanie Dunsmuir was a childhood friend of Amy’s, born on the same day and at the same hospital, Calvary, although their mothers did not meet there. That came soon after through a local play group where Mary and Melanie’s mum, Ros, formed a friendship that carries through to this day. Ros and her husband, Andrew, a school teacher, lived then – and still do today – in the nearby beachside suburb of Grange. Melanie remembers Amy at Grange Primary and going over to Oakmount Court to play with the gang. ‘We used to hang out in the street with Tam [Tammie Ebert] and the boys from over the road – I can remember we used to play out there a lot, which seemed a bit unusual, but there weren’t any cars. And we shared our birthdays and that was something pretty special at that age, too – we’d always get excited at the same time of the year.’ Melanie, now married with a son, William, remembers the childhood Amy as being like any other little girl – it wasn’t all sport and running about. ‘I wouldn’t say she was a tomboy at

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all. I remember her room was painted pink. That was her favourite colour and she had all these really pretty things. She had a doll … and some prince was going to come along one day and choose her and her doll and that was, well, it was her fairytale. And that continued on because she was a bit of a princess. Her hair was something that really stood out for me. I remember that beautiful thick blonde hair with these gorgeous natural sunny streaks in it.’ As the girls grew up, the two families, the Safes and Dunsmuirs, would go on holiday together to Robe, a coastal holiday hamlet in South Australia’s south-east. ‘I have memories of going down the street there to this beautiful little shop,’ says Melanie. ‘It was always full of pretty things and we loved looking at the teddy bears. Then we’d walk down to the rock jetty and walk out around the rocks as the tide went out and there was a reef you could walk around and we did that every day. But sailing was the big thing at Robe. We were in a class together and we won a race and so that was big deal. There was a sailing instructor down there, a young guy, and we both had our eye on him. I guess we were about thirteen, maybe fourteen. And Amy was so brave – she wrote him a Valentine’s Day card and actually got a reply, apparently. ‘After sailing, we’d come back in our wetsuits because the water was always cold and then jump in the showers and have these long conversations over the top of the stalls … We’d pass over the shaver, our conditioner and soap and, I don’t know, the crazy things we used to talk about … I have no idea what anyone else would have thought of it. Then our parents would come down with chocolate doughnuts and chocolate milk … it was a lovely time.’

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Ros Dunsmuir says that as Amy advanced into her teens she loved a joke. ‘I’d be over at Mary’s and she’d be there, too, and she’d always be ready with a funny story – “Whad’ya reckon, Ros?” “Whad’ya think about this, Ros?” “Hey, take a look at this, Ros!” She was that kind of upbeat kid, just a lovely, special girl. That’s how I’ll always remember her.’ For their secondary schooling, both Amy and Georgina went to Annesley College, a Uniting Church school for girls at inner city Wayville, on the edge of Adelaide’s famous parklands. The school, which celebrated its centenary in 2002, has a scholarly reputation but also takes its sport and associated activities, such as music, seriously. ‘At the time, all the research indicated that girls did a lot better in single-sex schools,’ says Mary. ‘Annesley seemed a balanced school whether you were gifted academically, musically, or whatever.’ Still, it was a major financial sacrifice to put them there. ‘I’d gone back to work and my wages really paid for it. But that was our choice like a lot of parents and we had no regrets about it.’ Amy started there in Year Seven in 1987, a couple of years after Georgina. Jill Olifent, Annesley’s sports coordinator for much of Amy’s time there, has vivid memories of her devotion to whatever the sporting contest of the moment might have been. ‘With Saturday morning sport, we’d have netball and hockey playing at the same time and generally if you played A grade in one you wouldn’t play anything else. But, no, not Amy. She was known to play hockey out on the parklands and then quickly change into her netball gear and then race around the court in A grade – and do very well at both, of course …

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That was the spirit of how she thought things should be done – “This is what I want to do. Is it possible to do it? Oh, well, okay, why not?” … She didn’t even need to catch her breath. Most people, after a full game of hockey, would need at least a bit of recovery time, but, no, she was straight on to the netball court. She was strong and obviously went further with her netball, mostly as goal defence or centre. But she could play anywhere. And I remember she was always a talker on the court – and she used that to support the rest of the team. And she wasn’t the sort of kid who assumed she was the best or was the leader, even though she would naturally end up taking on a lot of those roles – but never in a forceful way.’ Jill laughs as she remembers one sure sign that Amy was about to treat a contest with deadly seriousness. ‘She had this quirky thing that she used to do that I haven’t seen anyone do before or since. She would tuck her skirt into her sports briefs – and then you knew it was on. You knew that everything was turned on and it wouldn’t matter if it was just another PE lesson, just mucking around, or a very serious match. Once the skirt was tucked up, that was it. I just have this image in my mind of her doing that – and it was just so Amy. The thing was that she was never beaten. I never, ever saw her beaten. And that was not always because she was the better player. It was because she was the most determined person out there. And, of course, she was tall, but in netball terms she wasn’t huge, certainly not super tall. If she couldn’t win physically, she’d use her brain to win.’ And it was at Annesley that she met Sally Newmarch, another sporty type who also happened to be from West Lakes. During the rest of their school years and into

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adulthood, they would share numerous sporting highs and lows, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but going on to represent Australia together at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. But where Amy eventually became disillusioned with rowing and changed to cycling, Sally stayed with it, becoming a quiet achiever and going on to another two Olympics – Sydney and Athens – a sign of her dedication and sacrifice. Now working as a physical education teacher in Adelaide, she simply rolls her eyes at the suggestion that she might try for a fourth in Beijing. ‘I still haven’t got my [Olympic] medal and I missed out this time [in Athens] because I had a broken rib and that really hindered and frustrated me. So maybe I’ll go for another one, but it’s really hard. It’s the mental side of things. I don’t know if I can go back to no income and probably having to move back in with my mum and dad. Then you’re overseas for four months of the year and a lot of the girls are younger than me now. I don’t know how Amy did it with cycling – missing Simon – and I think the stress is harder when you get a bit older.’ It’s all a long and winding road on from Annesley where the two sports girls had a go at everything – hockey, netball, softball, cross-country, triathlon and eventually rowing. ‘And we got quite competitive,’ Sally recalls. ‘If Amy made a state [schoolgirls] team in netball, which she did, I’d make the state team in cross-country. Then the triathlon state team came along and so it was a friendship almost based on training and competing together and we became pretty close.’ But in Year Ten that commitment would go up quite a few notches and change their lives forever. Simon Gillett, a

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former world rowing champion from Victoria, and his then wife, Barb, were working with the South Australian Rowing Association and SASI on a talent identification program to bring likely young athletes, male and female, into the sport. Outside a few of the better-off private schools and once-a-year events, such as Head Of The River, rowing had next to no profile in South Australian school sport. The idea of the program was to go into schools that until then had nothing to do with it and, hopefully, spark the interest of those who physically and mentally might meet what would be its considerable demands – and Annesley was on the list of such schools to be visited. ‘Simon and Barb came into school,’ Sally remembers. ‘They said, “Are you tall? Are you sixteen? Do you want to go to the Olympics?” Well, Amy and I were the right height and we were certainly eager enough. I remember getting a big nudge in the ribs from her and looking and she was just smiling that big white beaming smile of hers. I think from that moment on we were just committed to go to the Olympics. That was going to be our journey and that was the start of it. Amy always had these far-reaching ideas. She was, “Come on! We can do it! Let’s go to the Olympics!” I’d say, “Really? Do you really think we can?” She’d say, “Yeah, of course we can”.’ And, so started Amy and Sally’s grand adventure as they went to SASI to be tested. ‘We took it so seriously,’ Sally says. ‘We were dead-set that we were going to get in. We warmed up and stretched before the tests and then we tried to eyeball the other 400 lanky schools kids who were there as if that would give us some sort of advantage.’ With hopefuls

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gathered from schools across Adelaide, the mob was culled to ten girls and ten boys and, of course, Annesley’s dynamic duo made the cut. ‘Barb then had to go around to each house to interview us with our various parents to see if they were committed as well – driving their daughters down to training early in the morning for a start. I remember she went to Amy’s house and as soon as she left Amy rang me and said, “These are the questions … you’ve got to say this … you’ve got to say that … you’ve got to say that you’ll give a ten out of ten commitment because I said that and it worked!” So Amy was in there encouraging me again.’ Indeed, Sally admits the two of them came to be carried along by each other’s enthusiasm – and maybe one needed the other. ‘I don’t think I could have done it on my own. I’m not sure if Amy could have done it on her own either. She’d do an ergo [a bike or rowing ergometer test] and I’d do one and then we’d be comparing scores. We were very competitive. Just about every minute of the day we talked about what we wanted to achieve and encouraged one another along. We’d sit up the back in maths class and calculate how many sit-ups we could do in a forty-five minute lesson or in English we’d have arm wrestles. We couldn’t wait for the bell to go so we could go training again and at lunch-time we’d do our homework so we could train before and after school. We just loved it.’ At their first rowing session, even before they’d put an oar in the water, Simon Gillett, who was to coach the girls, sat the squad of hopefuls down and told them they had four goals. Sally remembers, ‘He said, “The first is to learn how to row. Next, in that same year, is to be a world junior champion.

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Third, is to go to the world senior championships and then the fourth is to make it to the Olympic Games”. And we sat there thinking, wow, this is so good – we’re going to retire on the back of a cereal box and be at the Olympics! We just thought this was the greatest thing to ever happen to us. Simon is very confident when he tells you these things. He makes you believe they’re very achievable – “This is what you’re going to do …”’ However, reality soon set in. Within a month, few of the squad were left standing. ‘Simon flogged us,’ says Sally in no uncertain terms. ‘And he admits now it was to see who the potential rowers really were. He wanted to know who was going to go through with it and who was wasting his time. So he pushed us so hard in that month. But Amy and I, as other girls dropped out, we were just even more inspired to go further and further. ‘In our first month or so, we were only training once a day but it was a seven days a week thing. And that was the hardest part to get used to – every day being committed to rowing. So it was like a two-hour rowing session or some weights down at SASI. Then we started doing morning sessions and that’s when it really got hard because it was before school. So we’d be down there at 5.30 a.m. because we had to be at school by 8.15 a.m. or thereabouts. So it was get on the school bus, go via the bakery to get some food and get ready for school on the bus and then be ready for a full day there at 8.15. It was a massive commitment and a lot of parents pulled their kids out of the program because they felt they couldn’t cope, but our parents let us keep going.’ Again, the competitive edge took over. ‘If Amy felt great, then I felt better,’ laughs Sally.

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‘And with so many other girls falling over and whingeing and whining, well, we felt really positive about ourselves that we could do something that they couldn’t. And Simon knew what was going on and he kept encouraging us.’ Sally tells how one girl who dropped out of the program ended up going to the Adelaide media, a television current affairs program, to complain about Simon’s flog-’em-till-they-drop methods. ‘It was like a child-abuse story,’ she says. ‘It was hilarious. We just sat in front of the TV and laughed and laughed.’ Mary remembers the moment the rowing commitment really hit home with the Safe family. ‘We were going out somewhere that night and Amy had training that afternoon. I said to her, “I’ll be down there to pick you up at 5.30 and we’ll go straight there” – wherever it was. So when I arrived, they were still out on the water and I was really cross about that. Then Simon came along on his bike watching them as they rowed and I said, “I’m here to get Amy – we have to go now”. He said, “Oh, they’re just coming in” and I said back to him, “Well, I had to pick Amy up at 5.30 and she needed to be ready to go and now we’re late”. I guess I made the point clear to him. And it was then that I suddenly realised that for these people there was nothing else – it was all about rowing. Then I thought, well, we’re really in deep with this now.’ Denis and Mary were understandably wary about the time and effort needed for this sport that they knew next to nothing about. But Amy wanted it so much. ‘Oh, she loved it from the start,’ says Denis. ‘She liked the physical activity and the organisational side of it as well. It was quite a big social thing, too. The rowers … well, they weren’t exactly backward

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in enjoying themselves. There was always something going on. They were all the same sort of people – they were highly motivated. You noticed that right from the start.’ Every day there was something to work toward, says Mary. ‘There was always a regatta coming up and there was always a goal just down the road. It was the sort of sport that appealed to motivated people. The whole family seemed to revolve around rowing because at that stage Amy couldn’t drive herself and so one of us always had to help with that and I guess we had concerns about her schoolwork.’ And, on top of rowing, there was netball. Having played in the South Australian secondary schools state teams in 1990 and 1991 as a defender, there was now a decision to be made. Which sport? Paula Nielsen, executive officer with the South Australian Secondary School Sports Association, who coached Amy in netball during this time, still has the background sheets that had to be filled in when a girl was picked for her state. Asked in 1990 what she needed to be successful in the sport, Amy wrote: high fitness level, motivation, dedication, self-discipline, concentration, skills, agility, speed and – her spelling – aggrition. Paula supposes that was meant to be aggression. The following year, 1991, nothing much had changed, although there was a concession – you won’t always win. Asked what characteristics she admired in an ideal player, Amy wrote: speed, agility, determination, ball skills, ambition to succeed and ‘ability to accept decisions and any failures and continue on’. Paula remembers Amy coming to netball training with her hands blistered from rowing, and her husband, Michael, who

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has also been a top-flight oarsman, gave Amy hints on the best tape she could use to save them from this on-going wear and tear. ‘I think even then she was smart enough to realise she wasn’t going to be an Australian netballer at the senior level. She could see she had the fitness and the willingness to work hard – that was never in doubt – but she probably didn’t quite have the skill level of the very top girls who would go on to play for Australia. Some just naturally have that and you see it in them even at a young age. And like my husband said to her about rowing, “You get to go overseas and if you’re good enough you get to go to the Olympics …” With netball back then there was no Commonwealth Games, there wasn’t much at all. And probably, too, with rowing at that time it was opening up to women. I mean, my father’s now well into his seventies and he rowed for the state. Back in his day, girls simply didn’t row – it was not a sport for them. But by Amy’s time, it was really a chance for them and I think she saw that.’ The state teams Amy played in both won the national championships, beating South Australia’s then and always arch rival Victoria. ‘So these were top teams and hard to get into,’ says Paula. ‘She was a great team member and always funny. In some ways she liked to play the dumb blonde, if you like, but she was anything but that. I think it was her sense of fun with the others in the team, but she was very competitive as well. In particular, her fitness results were always at the top. That was particularly so in the second year … in the first year, being younger, she was on the bench for the play-off game against Victoria. But for the second year she’d trained all through the summer and came back way ahead of a lot of the other girls.

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‘She would always be asking, “How can I improve?” You’d give her some suggestions, something to work on, and she’d go away and work as hard as she could. When I look back now, she probably worked harder than anyone else there – just trying to improve. She always wanted to be better.’ Paula, who is also national secretary of the Australian School Sports Association, says its annual state netball competition will now present an Amy Gillett memorial trophy for the best team player, the one who gives most to benefit her team. Annesley teacher John Owen also recalls Amy coming to him about her impending decision … ‘Mr Owen, I’ve got to decide … rowing or netball?’ He would be her supervising teacher when Amy was named captain of Nemea, one of the school’s four houses. ‘She was in my maths class and she was a good student. She’d always ask questions. She had that big smile on her face, but would ask about a problem until she understood it – but that’s what you want, that’s what good students do. And so I can remember this one morning her asking me … rowing or netball? I said something like, “Well, if you want to go to the World Cup of netball, stick with netball. If you want to go to the Olympic Games, go to rowing”. But I suppose everybody would have said something like that to her – but she was the kind of girl who would have been asking everybody.’ ‘Amy’s toughest decision was to decide between the two,’ confirms Sally Newmarch. ‘She had to give up one or the other. She didn’t know how she was going to go with rowing and as she was already in the state netball team that was a big achievement. But I think she saw there could be more from

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rowing – and her success at it came pretty quickly. So she gave up netball just like that.’ For the two starry-eyed friends, it was an exciting time. ‘We’d only been rowing a few months and were already training with people who were on the Australian team – for us, that was massive,’ says Sally. ‘I still remember thinking how lucky we were to be there alongside them. We idolised anyone who wore the green and gold. We had such fantastic role models and it made us want to stay with the program and progress. We were only young but we could see what could be ahead for us. These people were going off to Europe and all over the world and Amy and I thought, well, if we can stick at this we’ll be able to go overseas, too.’ And the dream made them work even harder. ‘It just threw discipline into our lives,’ Sally recalls. ‘There would be parties on the weekends or people would be going down to Port Elliot [a South Australian holiday town], but we were just so keen we’d skip the parties and stay back and train. It was like some weird transformation came over us. And having Amy there, if she wanted to stay back, then I wanted to stay back. We didn’t want one of us to get further ahead of the other. We were just good training partners and we had our dream and we were living it.’

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F I V E

Two Girls in a Boat

Right from the start, revving up a bicycle and going for it was an important part of Amy’s rowing training. Sally Newmarch remembers groups of rowers heading off for long, hard rides through the Adelaide Hills, the verdant backdrop to the South Australian capital. ‘We just became better and better with our riding and ended up loving it. But I know my mum and Mary [Amy’s mother] used to hate us going out on our bikes like that. They used to worry about the traffic and then the heat in summer and it reached the stage where we’d almost have to sneak out … well, we often would sneak out and not tell them where we were going because we couldn’t cope with their worry.’ Their favourite ride would take them up through the hills on a long climb and then back down the picturesque Gorge Road to the wide plain of the city and its suburbs. ‘It used to take us about three-and-a-half hours and I suppose it was about 90 kilometres,’ says Sally. ‘And then we’d go straight to 82

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the bakery and buy a long torpedo [roll] and just munch it down. We loved doing that.’ Only about four months after their induction into rowing, the girls’ bike survival skills were put to the severest test. They went on a training camp to the Victorian Alps where Simon, their coach, took the squad on what can only be described as a hell ride from Falls Creek to Mount Hotham via Mount Beauty. This was twelve hours of sheer slog, up and down slopes that made the Adelaide Hills look like ant mounds. ‘I remember some athletes ended up doing all sorts of weird things,’ says Sally. ‘Someone became delirious and was convinced they were dodging crocodiles on the road. Others had either fallen off their bikes or just dropped out. Some of it was pretty much straight through bush and you’d have to carry your bike and then you’d end up slipping back down the hill. There was lots of swearing going on.’ Sally says, with more than a hint of triumph, that Simon was one of the many to fall by the wayside. ‘In the end there were only a few left.’ Among them were Sally, Amy and Ben Reece, another young squad member who would go on to row for Australia. ‘The last bit seemed about 20 kilometres straight up. Then a bus came along with all the drop outs and they said, “Who wants a ride back? The ride’s over, guys”. And Amy looked at me and I looked at her and then she said, “You gonna go for it?” And I said, “Yep” – and so we just kept on going. At the end we staggered off our bikes and cried and cried. It was our biggest, proudest moment. We phoned our parents and they couldn’t understand what we were going on about. But we were so happy that we’d done something that the seniors couldn’t because we were young then, about

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sixteen, I guess. I was proud of Amy and she was proud of me. I think that was a definite turning point for both of us – we knew after that ride that we could compete.’ And how was the coach? Sally laughs, ‘I think he was a bit pissed off that we beat him! But he was also proud of us because after that every time we went to a big event he’d say, “When you’re sitting there on the start line just remember that you’ve ridden your bike for twelve hours through some of the toughest country – and no one else on that start line will have done that”. He always used to remind us of what we did that day. It was something he could use to motivate us. And I’m sure that’s something Amy would remember, even now, if she were here. I still remember afterwards crying with her and then we said, “Oh what’re we going to eat now? Let’s have two pizzas!” We were so hungry.’ Again, it was a case of one pushing the other. ‘I wouldn’t have ridden up the mountain – I would’ve taken the lift if I was on my own,’ Sally confesses. ‘But the fact that Amy did it, I had to do it, too. And maybe, if she was on her own, she might have taken the lift, but just the fact that one of us was still going meant we both had to keep going. Like I say, she was very inspiring to be around … all her crazy ideas that people ended up taking seriously. I never remember her questioning her ability. She saw everything as a fun challenge. She’d never think, “What if I fall over? What if I fail?” For her it was, “Why not?”’ Part of the process of sorting out the fledgling rowers was to mix and match them in different boats and combinations, trying to find an elusive blend that would move human and craft through the water that little bit faster. In the run up to

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the 1993 world junior championships to be held in Norway, a prize they were aiming at, Sally took on the single sculls and Amy was paired with Peta Coudraye, yet another West Lakes girl. Peta had been picked out in the initial talent identification program the year before Amy and Sally came through. These days more at home bashing surfboats through ocean waves than gliding along manicured rowing courses, Peta has vivid memories of her times with Amy and their quest to win a world title, aged just seventeen. The year before, 1992, she had missed out on a trip to the junior world championships and was determined to be there this time. Peta, who stands 184 centimetres and with the same blonde hair and bright smile as Amy, is, like a lot of these high achievers, a bit of a character. She remembers that when she was inducted into the talent ID program, she was clueless about rowing. ‘There was a huge group of us, maybe 300, who were tested and I never really expected to make the final cut. When I did I thought, well, surely I’ll have to row in a lifejacket and wetsuit – that’s how much I knew.’ The introductory attempts took place on the Torrens, Adelaide’s small and muddy excuse for a river that’s dammed at its western end. ‘We had to start off in the sculls and, of course, we all tipped over at some stage and ended up in the drink. I’d go home and my mum would say, “Oh, you’ve been in the Torrens. Get in the shower now!” She was scared I was going to catch something bad in there.’ But by the time Peta was paired with Amy, things were starting to hum. ‘As soon as we hopped in the boat together, well, it just flew. It went really, really well. It was quite amazing. I’d never rowed a pair like it and I’m sure it will

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never happen again. And we clicked as athletes as well, mentally and physically. I remember we went over to West Lakes mall [the local shopping centre] and we’re saying, “How are we going to get bigger and stronger?” There were a lot of bigger, heavier girls than us around then. They had the legs, the shoulders, the muscles – I mean, I was only seventeen and we hadn’t quite matured like some of the others at that stage. ‘So we walked into a shop where there were all these bodybuilding supplements. We’re checking out the labels with all these big-muscled characters on them and it’s like, “That could be us!” So we’re looking around and this muscleman comes up and he was obviously on steroids. “Can I help you?” he asks. Amy and I look at one another and go, “Outta here!” That was the end of that idea completely. We decided we were going to train hard. And I mean really hard. Our total aim at that time was to get to the world championships and win.’ With Simon as coach, Amy and Peta were put through long, hard and, at times, tense sessions. From the start, Amy’s technique, or lack of it, became an issue that never quite went away – she had the power, the grunt, if you like, and the determination like no one else, but sometimes lacked the finesse, the ability to almost caress the boat through the water. ‘Yeah, we had to do extra work,’ remembers Peta of the endless hours the two of them pulled up and down the lake. ‘And Simon, being Simon – you’ve got to understand him as a coach – well, he really knocked Amy a lot from the technical point of view. She could have problems sometimes, but when she got it, she really got it. Sometimes, it just took a bit longer than with most people. With me, I’m very visual – if

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someone can show me exactly what to do then I’ll do it. But with Amy, it was a bit different. So Simon would be yelling at us from the bank, “You can’t come in until you get it right …” But that just motivated us even more. I know it motivated Amy. She was like, “I’m gonna show him …” ‘At times we’d be that tired, but he was still yelling, “You’re not coming in until you row without your blades hitting the water”, or whatever the problem was. But we never really lost it with him – and she didn’t get angry with me and I didn’t get angry with her. We were cool headed about the whole thing. In a way, it was never an issue for me because the boat felt awesome anyway. I remember at one stage there was this thing about the height of her hands and it got to the stage where they stuck a label on the back of my zoot suit [rowing suit] saying, Hand Height, and that was the level that she was to aim for – every stroke, every stroke. So I’d have to walk down the bank with that stuck to my back and poor Amy’s walking behind me going, “Oh, my God – this is what we’ve come to!” It was just a little bit of cardboard stuck to my zootie so I had a Velcro dot put there instead and she had to aim for that because her hand height tended to waver occasionally. I think the idea for it came from the sports psychologist at SASI, but it never really seemed to faze Amy that much. Like I said, she was always, “Well, I’ll show him anyway …” and I knew every stroke that was coming out of her was one hundred per cent. There was no such thing as fifty per cent with Amy – that just didn’t happen.’ Peta has memories of one session that was supposed to be 20 kilometres turning into a marathon of more than twice that distance as they attempted to perfect their stroke with

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two male rowers aboard as ballast to steady the boat. ‘A lot of people would crack under that sort of pressure. Like constantly, every session, “Amy, what’re you doing?” Oh, she was just getting hammered. Even the very top athletes will only take that for so long and I know that even after we finished rowing together she was still copping it from various coaches about her technical ability. But there was never any, “Oh, bugger this … I’m gonna storm off …” She was amazing.’ In the middle of the preparation, Peta came down with glandular fever and that took her out of the boat for a couple of months. ‘That devastated me because I thought, well, there goes the world championships again if I don’t fix myself up in a hurry. But I was still hell bent on getting down there [to the rowing course on West Lakes] and checking out what was going on. I’d sneak out of my bedroom and ride my bike down to the lake and just sit there and watch and make sure Amy was training right. But I didn’t want to get replaced.’ Peta made it back in time and she and Amy were left to complete their preparation while Simon and others in the team left for Europe. ‘We had about three weeks back here and then we flew over. We’d been working on the technical issues and thought we’d made some real progress and so we met up with Simon in Denmark for a few weeks before we raced in Norway. And so off we went for a row to show him and he stops us and goes, “What the hell are you two doing?” We’d bragged to him before we got on the water about how good we were now and how all our problems were sorted out and then he goes, “Amy, what the hell’s going on?” Well, this time

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she has gone right off her nana at him – “How dare you! I’ve finally got it together and all my problems are solved and now you’re saying this to me!” And he goes, “Well, fine. I won’t be at the worlds [world championships] with you. See you later”. And he rides off on his bike and leaves us there in the middle of the river. So we’re sitting there saying, “We’re not gonna row, we don’t have a coach, we don’t have anything”. ‘So we packed the boat in and walked back up to our rooms. Amy was going right off her head at that stage and I was quite hysterical about the whole thing, too. But, no, Simon finally comes around to see us and says quite calmly, “You two have a few things to work on”. We should have known. That was one of the many mind games Simon liked to play. And we did get there in the end. I remember saying to myself when we did finally win, “There you go, Simon … now put that up ya bum!” But, really, it was more like, “Thank God that’s over – I can go and have a drink now!” I was so relieved.’ In the end, Amy and Peta won the final by a comfortable eight seconds. Their mothers, Mary and Deidre, were there for the occasion. ‘I remember they came in and were just standing there on the bank like a pair of lost sheep,’ says Deidre Coudraye. ‘They were looking at the crowd [the Australians] up the hill who were cheering them on. It was really quite weird because they were just standing there as if to say, “Well, what do we do now?”’ But for Amy and Peta it was as if a weight had been lifted from their shoulders. ‘That’s because it felt as if the whole season had been an expectation,’ says Peta. ‘Because the Australians had won the gold the year before, we sort of felt

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we had to do it again. But I remember we also got the course record that day. So not only did we win, but we rowed a quick time so I was really chuffed with what, more so than winning the medal – the fact that we had rowed quickly.’ As well, Sally Newmarch won a silver in the singles, beaten only by German Katrin Rutchow, described in the press at the time as ‘Amazonian’, and who would go on to develop into one of the world’s great scullers. Still, such was the expectation, that even today Sally has mixed feelings about finishing runner-up, a result that would be more than credible in any judge’s book. ‘Well, I felt … I got a silver medal and I felt really average about that. Really like I’d disappointed everyone … That’s why we strived so hard because a silver medal was pretty average – it wasn’t much.’ Sally remembers that even when she and Amy made the Olympic team in 1996 – she in the quad, Amy in the eight – it was seen as something that was expected of them. ‘He [Simon] was quite manipulative … He made you believe that that was the bare minimum and if you didn’t make the Olympic Games in four years you were trash. You were out of it – that sort of attitude. And I was very much like, “Oh, wow … I’d done the bare minimum!” I certainly didn’t think I was good. I just thought I’d done what he asked. So that was another way Simon got the best out of his athletes. He made you believe that what you were doing was average. You had to do something better than what he asked for.’ Still, today Sally is willing to concede that she should have given herself more credit back then – both in Norway and certainly later for making the team to Atlanta. In 1994, the year after Amy’s first junior world championship, she won a

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second world title – this time in the junior single sculls in Germany – and, again, there was a feeling that it was almost expected. ‘It wasn’t like a huge thing for me to go and give Amy a pat on the back for that,’ explains Sally. ‘It was like he [Simon] had told her that was what she was going to do – and so she did it. We all knew that was the standard.’ Peta is adamant that the mind games Simon used with Amy wouldn’t have worked on her. Indeed, they would have backfired. ‘He’s very clever. He would sit down and have a chat with me versus screaming because if he’d done that I probably would have stopped rowing and …’ Her mother, Deidre, interrupts, ‘… slapped him’. They both laugh and Peta says, ‘Yeah’. Amy simply reacted differently. ‘Sometimes she’d never say a thing,’ Peta says of her partner’s reaction to Simon’s criticisms of her technique. ‘It was almost like you could hear her brain ticking over. But there were always her strengths – I loved rowing with her. I knew that if I said, “Let’s go for a push” she’d be, “Yep, let’s not just push a bit, let’s go harder, harder!” We’d be out to beat the heavyweights as well. We might have been at training and it was only meant to be like sixty per cent, but we’d be at eighty per cent to make sure we sat in front … We liked to play mind games as well and I think that was instilled by Simon, definitely. And in the end we all ended up thriving on the mind games as well.’ But within six months of returning from Norway, Peta was gone from rowing while Amy and Sally continued on – the AIS in Canberra and the promise of the Atlanta Olympics looming larger in their dreams. On her return, Peta suffered a back injury, a problem with bulging discs that caused

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considerable pain. After treatment for that, she simply never went back to the sport that had dominated her teenage years. ‘It just lost its sparkle for me. I remember when I quit I was a bit of a lost soul for a year. You have all these people and all your friends and you finish and suddenly they’re all moving on … you have to start again.’ It was then that Peta found surfboat racing, a growing sport for women, and she threw herself into that and surf lifesaving. She rowed for clubs in New South Wales and later Western Australia before returning home to South Australia. ‘I love the ocean, I love the surf, I love the people that go with that. I enjoy my patrols and that’s what I ended up falling in love with. I liked my rowing and when I finished people said, “Oh, you’re mad! You could have gone to the Olympics!” And I think I could have. But while rowing took me places and gave me great experiences, including a world championship with Amy, I don’t think I ever really loved it – not like I do this [surfboats].’ Simon Gillett is matter of fact. At the elite level of sport – the pointy end where winning is what it’s about – there’s little room for niceties. It’s all about having the best athletes in the best condition, physically and mentally, so they can be first across the line. Like anyone who has coached at this level in Australia, certainly in sports outside the football and cricket mainstreams, he knows all about limited resources and making the best of what’s available. ‘You can’t afford to have thousands of people running around. High-performance sport is high-performance sport and you have to narrow it down to the ones who are capable of doing well. There’s no

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point towing the ones who aren’t. If they want to be club rowers, for instance, they don’t need to be at the sports institutes – and they can still enjoy rowing. But when you’re trying to get to the pointy end, you’ve got to do some pretty rugged training sessions – that’s what it’s got to be about.’ As part of this, the sorting out process used in talent identification programs has to be hard. ‘I mean, you basically get down to the last eight people and then try and make them quit, too. You’ve got to have the tough ones, otherwise they’re not going to make it.’ He says it’s not a case of flogging them – despite what Peta and Sally might think. ‘But you just keep increasing the intensity, difficulty and hardship of the training so that you end up with the people you want. And that’s important because you know pretty quickly who’s going to make it and who’s not going to make it. But if I say to you, “Look, you’re not going to make the Olympics” and kick you out of the program, well, for the rest of your life you’re going to say, “If I hadn’t have been bloody kicked out, I would have been an Olympic champion”. So the program has to be hard enough that people decide to leave on their own accord – then it’s their decision.’ Simon recalls the first time Amy raced and her parents, Denis and Mary, came to watch. ‘They were pretty nervous about it and Mary said to me, “How are they going to go?” and I said, “Don’t worry, Mary, winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing”.’ Asked how Mary reacted, he smiles and says, ‘She just looked at me with a stunned look on her face and walked away’. He describes rowing as a sport of pain tolerance and technique – and having the ‘engine’ to handle the first of those

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two. Amy always had the ‘engine’ and with it the ability to push through the pain barrier, but in the early days her technique needed work, sometimes lots of it. ‘You’ve got to have the technique because if you repeat the same stroke 240 times in a race any error you have in that stroke is multiplied 240 times – it’s not like one bad kick in a game of footy. So if it ends up costing you 10 centimetres every stroke then that’s 24 metres lost down the course. So it’s all about eliminating the errors that can cost you distance – that’s why technique is so important.’ He says it was never a case of picking on Amy. ‘It was a matter of her having the potential, but you had to sort out these technique issues to realise that potential and where a lot of coaches come unstuck is that they’ll identify an error and spend some time on it, but if it doesn’t improve they’ll just move on to something else. So the error never gets corrected, the athlete suffers and the performance suffers.’ Psychology is a big part of this as well – and he used on Amy what he believed would work on her and that wasn’t necessarily what would work on Peta or Sally. ‘It’s a big part of it, but it’s not something you sit down and do outside of training. It’s something that has to be part of training … and you’ve got to tailor what you do to suit the various athletes.’ Still, Amy always retained a mind of her own – and that was a go hard, harder and then hardest of all attitude that could sometimes create as many problems as it solved. Simon recalls her second world title – the junior single sculls in Germany in 1994. ‘She was rowing both junior and senior that year, which was a very big ask, and she got in the final. There was a howling headwind, really strong, which meant you could add two minutes to the race time. So if you

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expected to do it in seven in good conditions, you’re now going to do it in nine. I said to her, “Whatever you do, don’t go out too fast – sit with the field and go through a thousand metres, push out in the third 500 metres and then just put the foot down for the last 500”, because the wind dropped off a bit towards the finish in Munich where the boatsheds were all lined up along the end of the course. So, of course, Amy took off like a bullet – I think she had a fifteen-second lead at the 1000, which was just ridiculous in any conditions, let alone in a roaring headwind. ‘I was riding the bike along the bank, yelling “Slow down! Slow down!”, but she couldn’t hear anything because she was too far across the course. Anyway, there was another girl, a French sculler, who also went on to have a very good career, and she passed Amy at the 1500 mark. By that stage, Amy had just blown up for all money. She probably thought back to those Falls Creek mountain bike rides I’d put them through and maybe that’s what got her through to the finish and to actually win by what was a fraction of a second. But she could have won it by ten seconds if she’d been more conservative early on and then put her foot down for the finish. But that was her nature – and I still don’t know how she got back there to win.’

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As manager of sports science at SASI, Pitre Bourdon has seen them all – the mad, the bad and the best – in testing thousands of athletes. ‘Amy was one of those special ones who come along every so often in that she would listen to what you had to say and then use it to make the absolute most of her abilities. All too often we see athletes who have probably as good, if not better, physiology than she had, but they just don’t make the most it. They don’t have that inner desire or that want to do it. When she committed to something, she committed fully. And, in all honesty, she was just a lovely person to go with it. Friendly, always had a smile on her face. She might be down on herself because she’d had a bad result, but you’d have a chat about it and then she’d be looking for a positive outcome. As an athlete, she was a pleasure to work with – and I don’t say that about many of the athletes I’ve worked with. Some of the best are pains in the arse, to be honest – and maybe that’s what they need to get what they want. But Amy was never like that.’ 96

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Still, her physiology, as well as her attitude, was still pretty special. Pitre – it’s French, but he’s universally known as Pete – remembers her first coming to be tested during the South Australian schools talent identification program for rowing. Part of this was to gauge her VO2 max, or maximum aerobic capacity. ‘It’s a measure of the volume of oxygen you can consume per minute – how much of it you can breathe in, extract in the lungs, transport via the blood to the muscles and use to burn your fuel. The higher the VO2, or the more oxygen you can consume, the more energy you can release and, therefore, the more work you can do, the faster you can go … Amy got on the bike and cranked out a score that amazed everybody. We thought, well, okay, looks like we’re on to a good one here.’ Her first rowing team-mate from her schooldays, triple Olympian Sally Newmarch, still remembers Amy’s fierce determination and even though they would push one another to the limit Sally is happy to concede she was probably never as tough as Amy. ‘I still remember her doing tests and she’d be doing the last ten strokes of a 2000 metres and she’d have foam coming out of her mouth and down her face. She was just pushing it beyond what any of us could do. She didn’t care what she looked like … all she cared about was giving it everything. She was the grunter, the tough one.’ Amy and Sally rowed as a pair for a while and developed their own language to fire themselves up. ‘She had this saying “Planet Reebok” as there used to be these ads for Reebok that were about another planet, another place you could supposedly go,’ says Sally. ‘If you pushed yourself hard enough you could trick your mind and body to go to the other side, kind

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of like a meditative thing. So Amy and I would get in the boat and say, “Let’s go to Planet Reebok today!” We’d push ourselves so far that it was like an out-of-body experience and we’d try to do that in our racing. Or she’d write me cards saying, “Next race let’s go to Planet Reebok” or “Next training session let’s get in the zone and disappear to Planet Reebok”. She was great like that, always trying to push it somewhere else.’ Amy’s bridesmaid Rachael Kininmonth, who would later make the eight for the Sydney Olympics while Amy missed out, came to elite rowing late – at the age of twenty-six – and remembers being in awe of her friend’s determination during testing. ‘She would go like a bat out of hell. And Simon, who had been tough on her as a coach, would even admit, “Well, she might not have the prettiest technique in the world, but mentally …” I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone who would go through the mental barriers as aggressively as Amy did. I can’t say that internationally, but certainly within her peers she amazed me. She’d just be so fired up. She’d look like she was ready to die and she’d still be pushing herself.’ Tammie Ebert, her childhood friend from West Lakes, who would later become a physiologist with the AIS cycling program where she worked with Amy, tells similar stories. ‘Oh, yeah, she was a diesel engine. I remember one of the rowing coaches saying to me, “Jeez, she rows like a dog, but God she’s got a good engine”… he said if they’d had more time with her to work on her technique she would be able to pull the boat around by herself because she was so strong.’ And it was the same when she switched to cycling and had to

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learn technique and tactics all over again. ‘Like I say, she had a great engine and was a real team player,’ says Tammie. ‘If a coach asked her, “Can you ride on the front of the bunch for 50 kilometres and really flog yourself because that’s going to help us win?” she’d do it and never question why. She’d say, “Yeah, and then if I can win it I’ll go even further for you”. She always thought of others, of what was best for the team, and if she was given a particular task in a race, and it would often be to do the hard work out front, she’d just get out there and do it.’ It was gritty commitment like this that would be revealed time and time again during Amy’s rowing and cycling careers and it was inevitable that she would pass through the sports factory that is the AIS in Canberra. She held a rowing scholarship there from 1995 to 1998 and was in the complementary Olympic athlete program from 1994 to 1999, and after many ups and downs would return there in 2002 – as an emerging cycling champion. But initially, Denis and Mary, Amy’s parents, had reservations about their youngest daughter putting her university studies on hold and moving to Canberra and to what had to be, initially at least, a heavy concentration on rowing. However, for much of the time up until her death, she would somehow manage to mix and match her sporting and academic pursuits, turning in assignments while rowing or riding somewhere on the other side of the world. She obtained her degree in exercise and sport science, completed her Honours and had started work on her PhD at the time of the fatal crash – hardly the attitude of someone who

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thought sport was the be-all and end-all of life. ‘As far as Amy was concerned, it wasn’t an excuse to get out of studying,’ says Mary of her move to the AIS. ‘She understood the value of education and the thinking was, well, university will always be there and rowing was an opportunity that had to be taken there and then. And we wouldn’t, as parents, have stood in the way of our child’s dream. And all these years later I don’t have any regrets about it. Amy was always her own person. And, of course, there was an exciting edge to it for her as well. But it was a big move – because she was very much a home person – to go to live in the cell block as they [the athletes] came to call it … she didn’t really like living at the AIS. She thought it was pretty institutionalised. So eventually she was given a living-out allowance and moved into a flat with another girl and was happier about that.’ That girl was Gina Douglas, a Victorian rower who would make the Olympic eight in Atlanta with Amy. Now married – her married name is Peele – and a physical education teacher at a Melbourne girls’ college, Gina has fond memories of their time together. She remembers that initially they were in different crews under different coaches but they certainly had one thing in common – they both had problems with their rowing techniques and this gave them an instant bond. Eventually, in late 1994, they had something else to share when they decided to live outside of the AIS together. ‘So Amy and I drove around Canberra and checked out a whole lot of flats. She had a little yellow Laser car and we finally found this tiny flat in Yarralumla, which backed on to a freeway, but it was close to where we trained and we could ride our bikes there. It had a tiny kitchen, two small bedrooms and a living

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room. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it was all we needed.’ Coming back from the Christmas break at the start of 1995, Amy and Gina managed to scrounge a television and stereo for their new living quarters while deciding they needed to find a life beyond their sport. ‘I remember we both said at the time, “We really need to learn how not to talk about rowing all the time”,’ says Gina. ‘It could be a very insular life in Canberra as you tended to socialise with other rowers because to a large extent they were the only people who you got to meet there. I’m not sure if we actually succeeded in doing that, but it was something we tried to focus on. So we’d have people over for dinner, although at that stage Amy was anything but a confident chef. She wasn’t too hot in the kitchen – but she was happy to clean up afterwards. Although I never experienced this, one of the guys who she had rowed with told how she would put tomato sauce on everything. And she definitely didn’t mind having cereal for dinner at night. As a rower, after a hard day, you did sometimes go, “Oh, I can’t be bothered cooking so I’m just going to have whatever” – and that could be cereal. And anyway it probably came free from the institute [the AIS].’ Years later, only a few weeks before Amy left for overseas and the fatal crash in Germany, Gina, her husband, Stuart, and a group of friends, mainly from her rowing days, had dinner with Amy and Simon at their Mt Helen home. ‘Normally, when we’d been to dinner with them, Simon always cooked and Amy was happy to do whatever. But this time we had a beautiful lasagne and a nice salad and these little desserts and she’d fully prepared everything. So she’d

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come a long way from ten years before – tomato sauce on everything and cereal for dinner.’ As Amy’s rowing career developed, her parents – like thousands of their contemporaries – had to learn to cope with ‘empty nest’ syndrome. Their elder daughter, Georgina, the academic one, was off working on her law degree, although still in Adelaide, while their younger daughter was in Canberra or off to regattas around the country or indeed the world. ‘Amy would always ring us at least once a week,’ says Mary. ‘She was good like that. But we missed her – I certainly did, something shocking, but at the same time she was off doing what she wanted to do and, as I say, we couldn’t stand in the way of that. So the phone would ring and it would be Amy and we’d have a great chat or a postcard would arrive from somewhere and there would always be something happening with her and I admit I often felt a bit carried away by the excitement of it all for her.’ But there was a cloud gathering on this seemingly sunny horizon. It would be one of the few times a strain would be put on what had become an unbreakable bond between parents and daughter – and it would involve Amy’s future husband, Simon Gillett. Following the outstanding results Simon had achieved as head rowing coach at SASI, revolutionising its programs and pouring the resultant rowers into national crews, he won the $150 000 a year job as national rowing coach. At the start of 1994, he moved to Canberra to take up the appointment. By then he was out of his marriage, having separated from his wife, Barb, in the middle of 1992. She remained in Adelaide

Amy on her first bike, named ‘Speedy Gonzalez’s Girlfriend’, in Oakmount Court, West Lakes.

The all-round sports star at Annesley College, 1992.

Peta Coudraye (front) with Amy and Sally Newmarch (standing) show the medals they won at the world junior rowing championships in Norway, 1993.

Although she usually rowed in crews, Amy also won the world junior single sculls in Germany, 1994.

After four years of struggle and their last-minute qualification, Atlanta Olympics eight crew-mates (from left) Karina Wieland, Tori Toogood, Gina Douglas, Amy, Bronwyn Thompson and Jenny Luff form a chorus line and show a bit of leg to celebrate their arrival at the Games.

Image rights unavailable Riding for Australia on the track in 2003. Amy’s initial cycling success came there before switching to the road.

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A triumphant Katie Brown, Lorian Graham, Amy and Alexis Rhodes come together as the national road-racing team at the AIS, Canberra, April 2005, before leaving on their fateful trip to Europe.

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Amy (at right) and Kate Nichols (in light blue top, left) try to break up the tightly packed peloton, or main bunch, in a typical road race.

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Amy going hard out front – where she liked to be.

At home in West Lakes with her father and mother, Denis and Mary, and sister, Georgina, late 1990s.

Her happiest memory – Amy’s wedding day with her parents, along with Rod Katz and Vida Vilrunas and their daughter, Josephine, who was flower girl. The bridesmaids are (from left) Tammie Ebert, sister Georgina, Bronwyn Thompson and Rachael Kininmonth.

Amy and Simon on their honeymoon at Port Douglas, one of their favourite places.

With Simon’s son, Rhys. Amy was more like a big sister than a stepmother.

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Smashed racing bikes with Stefanie Magner’s damaged car in the background outside Zeulenroda, East Germany.

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Emergency workers tend to the injured Australian cyclists at the crash scene.

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Competitors in the Tour of Thuringia lay flowers at a commemorative cross erected at the scene of Amy’s death.

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Sisters Kate and Natalie Bates with Rochelle Gilmore at the service for Amy held in Zeulenroda the day after her death. Nine months later, the trio would star at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

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Eighteen-year-old Stefanie Magner, driver of the car that ran down the AIS team. Facing charges of involuntary manslaughter and negligent assault, she was fined the equivalent of $2300 and lost her drivers licence for eight months.

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An emotional Warren McDonald addresses Cycling Australia at their awards night in Sydney, November, 2005. He was named coach of the year.

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On the road back – the five crash survivors (from left) Katie Brown, Louise Yaxley, Lorian Graham, Alexis Rhodes and Kate Nichols at the Cycling Australia awards night four months after the crash.

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The victorious Australian road racing team (from left) Olivia Gollan, Oenone Wood (silver medal), Rochelle Gilmore, Kate Bates, her sister Natalie (gold medal), and Sara Carrigan sing ‘Advance Australia Fair’ after their win at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

Amy Gillett: 1976–2005.

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with their young son, Rhys. By winter of that year, either July or August – Simon can’t remember precisely – he and Amy had started their relationship. While not banned, such coach–athlete liaisons weren’t exactly encouraged by rowing’s administrators, but Simon can reel off a list of other coaches and rowers who he says were in similar circumstances at the time. At that stage, he made it plain to Amy that she couldn’t expect any special treatment from him because of the relationship – not that she ever did. ‘I said, “It’s probably going to be harder for you if you’re seeing me because in my position as head coach I’ve got to make absolutely certain that no one thinks you’re getting any favours. If anything, this’ll make your life more difficult – it certainly won’t be easier”.’ As well, he insisted she tell Denis and Mary back in Adelaide of the relationship. ‘She said, “Oh, you know I will, I will”. But she never did.’ Her parents found out, inadvertently as it turns out, several months later towards the end of 1994. Simon smiles ruefully as he recalls the resulting blistering phone call from Mary asking him what he, a much older man, was doing in a relationship with their nineteen-year-old daughter who was one of his charges. ‘So I got this call from Mary … and I’m holding the phone out here,’ he says, indicating a distance about half a metre from his ear. For their part, Mary and Denis were shocked. ‘Our concern initially was that Simon was so much older than Amy and we thought she may be intimidated by him – but that never came to happen,’ says Mary. ‘And Amy didn’t tell us [about the relationship] I guess because she thought she was protecting us in some way …’ Mary reckons that as parents, if

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Amy had told them straight away, they simply would have had to deal with the relationship, but there was lingering regret on both sides about how it had been handled when they did eventually find out. ‘Of course, these days the age difference is just as likely to be the other way round,’ says Mary, ‘and as the relationship panned out over the years, Amy was well and truly able to stand on her own two feet and certainly wasn’t intimidated in any shape or form.’ Tammie Ebert, Amy’s life-long friend and later AIS staffer, never considered the age difference – eighteen years – an issue. ‘Maybe at the start it was for some people, yeah, he’s a bit older than her, but I remember they came to my twentyfirst up in the Riverland [the Murray River citrus region of South Australia] and they looked really happy, like they were comfortable in each other’s company and it wasn’t an effort for them at all.’ Tammie says that Simon had a hard-edged reputation through rowing, but as the relationship developed he would do anything for Amy as she would for him. ‘Obviously, I didn’t know Simon that well back then, but from what people said to me Amy had a real grounding influence on him. Some people have said he was a bit of a bastard when younger, a hard taskmaster and maybe even a bit too tough at times, but Amy brought out that nicer side in him … What came to be amazing about them was that they encouraged each other to go and follow their dreams, he with what turned out to be his farming and Amy with her sport, but they always kept in contact wherever they were and I suppose Simon with his sporting background, having been a world champion rower himself, knew the demands that were on her. He could pass on those lessons and say, “This is how it

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was when I wanted to achieve and now I can see what Amy wants and so I’ll help her get there as much as I can”. So, yeah, he was older in age, but sometimes not in character. They just complemented each other and while they were both driven people they came to be thoughtful people as well.’ The rowers who had experienced Amy and Simon up close in the heat of sporting battle – and often at loggerheads as athlete and coach – were equally impressed as the relationship strengthened. ‘Later, when you spent time with them you started to realise that it was Amy who actually kept Simon in tow, whereas you would have expected it to be the other way round because Simon’s such a determined person,’ says Gina Douglas. She remembers how she and her husband spent time with Amy and Simon at Port Douglas in North Queensland, their favourite getaway spot. ‘Simon took us out on their boat quite a lot and it was really lovely seeing them together in that relaxed atmosphere. She softened him for sure. She’d always stand up for what she believed in whereas a lot of people with Simon would just go, “Oh, okay, that’s what you say so that’s what we’ll do”. But Amy would be, “Oh, okay, I understand what you’re saying, but I see it differently”. I guess you then start to understand how their relationship worked and it was really a level playing field. Even though there was a big age difference, I loved the way they were together. It came to be a wonderful partnership.’ Rachael Kininmonth remembers a lunch at her Melbourne home with Amy and Simon just before Amy went overseas for the last time. It was a somewhat chaotic meal because of her three young children – ‘Rach’s junior burgers’ as Amy used to call them – running riot. (Rachael

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has since had a fourth child, a baby girl she has named Amy Elizabeth after Amy.) ‘I had another couple over who Amy and Simon didn’t know, a girl I knew from school, and then later when she heard about what had happened to Amy she rang me and said, “Oh, my God … how’s Simon going to cope? He was so obviously in love with her”. She’d only met them once at that lunch and I thought that was quite an extraordinary observation to make. I remember it was pretty wild here [because of the children], but that remark pretty well hit the nail on the head. He absolutely doted on her.’ If the late-coming revelation of Amy’s romance caused disruptions within her family, Simon was already facing a much more public drama of his own. In early 1995, a year after he went to Canberra as national coach, the usually low-profile sport of rowing suddenly found itself emblazoned in the headlines – for all the wrong reasons. A group of coaches, including a clique from the AIS, made a series of allegations against Simon about his training methods as well as blaming him for a blow-out in the budget to take the national team to the world championships in Finland. Then the unions got involved. The sports branch of the Media, Arts and Entertainment Alliance stirred the issue on behalf of the AIS coaches, some of whom were union members, and the sport became irrevocably split – those who backed Simon and those who wanted him sacked. Thrown into this already toxic mix were claims that he had acted unprofessionally towards some female athletes, mainly about consuming alcohol while in their quarters after hours on an overseas tour.

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There’s no doubt Simon’s crash-through or crash style where he put the emphasis on performance and results, not past alliances, had upset more than a few within rowing’s cosy confines. The sport’s governing body, the Australian Rowing Council, with its chief funding body, the Australian Sports Commission, now looking anxiously over its shoulder, mounted an inquiry into what had become a festering sore. The public, who knew next to nothing about rowing to begin with, was undoubtedly bemused by the attacks and counterattacks as they were played out in the sports pages of the nation’s newspapers. Much of the reporting carried a bias related to where rowing communities in different cities stood on the issue. In Melbourne, for example, where there was a vocal group opposed to Simon, he took a hammering, but in Adelaide, where he was remembered for the work he had done in bringing a long list of South Australian rowers into the national team, his side of the story received a more favourable run. Finally, Simon was recalled from Europe where he had been with the senior squad and in October 1995 the Australian Rowing Council, with its purse-string holders, the Australian Sports Commission, still in close attendance, terminated his contract, which had been due to run until Sydney 2000. There then followed a rash of reports, principally out of Sydney, another anti-Simon city, that blamed him for the mess while talking up what was going to be a new era for the sport in Australia – an era that would become bogged down in an even more public controversy. At Athens 2004, the biggest story about Australian rowing – and one of the sensations of the games – was the Sally Robbins fiasco where the West Australian, rowing in the

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women’s eight, dropped her oar and collapsed in the bottom of the boat, costing her team-mates any chance. As claim and counterclaim flew once again, the Australian Olympic Committee scrambled to paper over the cracks within the crew, but good performances, such as ex-Oarsome Foursome duo, James Tomkins and Drew Ginn, winning the men’s pair gold medal, were swamped by the barrage of ‘Lay Down Sally’ headlines – a catchcry the media could not resist. By then, of course, Simon was long gone from the sport where he had championed dozens of young athletes, many of whom, like Amy, would have been lost to other sporting pursuits if it hadn’t have been for his initial support. He had returned to his home state of Victoria to start his own cropping business, drawing initially on his family’s farming expertise and then striking out on his own. Amy, who had played no part in his power struggle with the coaches and their subsequent allegations, managed to dodge the inevitable fall-out, even though her relationship was Simon was by then common knowledge in rowing circles. For some of this time, she trained in what must have seemed the safe haven of faraway Queensland and by the end of 1995 was fully concentrating on making the team for Atlanta 1996. With Simon on the land in Victoria and her at the AIS or away at regattas, it was a prime example of what would become their almost paradoxical relationship – so close together but often so far apart. All the years on, Simon is still scathing of his treatment in 1995, particularly the part played by those AIS rowing coaches who were aligned against him. He says that from the start he made it clear to all concerned – the AIS, the

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Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Rowing Council – that under his regime those who performed would get the funding with the aim of producing medals at international events, the yardstick under which he and all coaches operating at the elite level should be judged. ‘The good coaches and good athletes love that system because it’s a clear track. They can see that if they do X, Y and Z and go quick I’m going to look after them. But, of course, the people who don’t produce performance hate that system … they can play the politics, whereas my system had no politics, no backdoors, no shortcuts. Everything was above board and on the table – if you didn’t go quick, you went nowhere.’ Asked now, with the benefit of hindsight, if he went in too hard, trying to change too much too soon, he shrugs and says, ‘That’s my nature. I mean, you have to go hard because you’ve got a time frame. You can’t wait ten years to change it … like it should have been changed in a week’. While Simon settled into the less stressful option of the farming life, Amy pushed on with her quest to make Atlanta. She survived the cut for the eight, a tough process for all concerned as the squad of sixteen was culled to the final eight plus two reserves. But they still had to qualify for the Olympics as a crew. This wasn’t achieved until almost the last minute at a qualification event held in the wake of the Lucerne regatta at the start of the European summer that Olympic year, 1996. ‘We were absolutely ecstatic,’ recalls Gina Douglas. ‘We didn’t actually win that regatta, but we had to finish in the top two, which was what we did. The Poms beat us and they actually went really fast, but, from memory, they

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weren’t so fast when it got to the Olympics. So this was only a month or so before Atlanta and we were pretty relieved.’ From there, they went into final training in Germany to prepare for the run-up regatta in Amsterdam, but Gina had a major crisis of her own making when she tripped and injured her wrist. She could still row, but feared her Olympic dream was disappearing and four years of hard slog were amounting to nothing. X-rays were inconclusive but suggested a broken bone. She was shipped home to Melbourne for further assessment. ‘The girls sent me off with a little teddy bear. As I was leaving, I remember saying, “Yeah, I’ll see you all soon”. But I was really thinking I wasn’t too sure about that. I was obviously beside myself in tears.’ Her father, David, a former rowing silver medallist at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, and mother, Libby, arranged for her to see a trio of doctors immediately, including a wrist specialist. ‘They all said, “Yes, it’s fractured, but we don’t think it should impede your rowing’,’ says Gina. ‘So they forwarded that to the head of the Olympic medical team who was in Perth at that stage. I remember mum and dad got a phone call in the middle of the night – and then I was on the first plane back …’ The Olympic rowing was held on Lake Lanier, 80 kilometres north-east of Atlanta, and although away from the main centre of action it was still the Olympics. ‘For all of us, it was our dream come true,’ says Gina, ‘but even though we were excited we knew we had to keep it in perspective. I guess it’s similar to a world championship in that it’s still the same sort of meeting and the same sort of racing, but it is the Olympics and there’s always the adrenalin that goes with knowing that.’ She laughs while recalling the procedures – getting their

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uniforms, being sex tested. ‘When you’re a first-time Olympian you have to get a mouth swab to show whether you’re female or not. I remember we were going, “Oh, my gosh! Well, sure, I know I’m female … but what if it shows I’m not?”’ The Australian girls did it tough out on the water. They had to come through the repechage, the second chance for crews eliminated in the heats, to make the final where they finished fifth behind medal winners Romania, Canada and Belarus. Denis and Mary, who were there to watch Amy, say that when the crew made it through the repechage it was as if they had won the gold medal. ‘Even to get into the final was beyond our wildest expectations,’ says Mary. ‘I remember that day everybody was just … well, it was like wetting your pants day. It was phenomenal … and as it turned out they came fifth in the final. I’m sure Amy was hoping to do better, but that was Amy for you.’ Bronwyn Thompson, Amy’s closest friend in the boat that day, is realistic enough to acknowledge that fifth overall was a fair result after the Australians had battled just to qualify for the Olympics. ‘I don’t think we were ever going fast enough to win a medal … but my philosophy in ninety-six was “never say die” and you might just surprise yourself, get out there and have a go. And I’d been surprising myself all season so I though we could be up for a medal. Maybe that was unrealistic, but it was a close race in the final … I think looking back now that it was a good result and it didn’t take us too long to accept it as a good result. I remember we were standing around at the end of the race having a team meeting, we looked at each other and we’ve gone, “This crew’s really

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young” and I was stroking it and I said to all the girls, ”This is good, it’s a good building block. Sydney in four years is in our country, we’re all going to be in the team again. We can all work for the next four years and just remember what it’s like to be fifth and remember where we want to be next time”.’ But many things would change in the coming four years. For his part, Simon Gillett, the ousted national coach who stayed in Australia – ‘I’m not a good spectator and rowing’s not a good spectator sport’ – is adamant that the women’s eight should have scored a medal in Atlanta and would have done so if the preparation had been better. He says the girls in the boat had all won medals in various combinations at world championships and international regattas so the talent was certainly there. He simply doesn’t buy the official line that fifth, the best ever result for an Australian women’s eight at an Olympics, was good enough. ‘So what? If that was all they were capable of doing then you’d be happy with it. But it wasn’t all they were capable of doing.’ Be the performance good, bad or indifferent, the crew certainly lived it up that night. The next morning a badly hung-over and dehydrated Amy had to be given a fluid injection by a team doctor. Crew-mates Gina Douglas and Carmen Wearne, another Adelaide girl who had come up through the junior ranks with Amy, recall the morning after the night before. ‘She always had a sensitive stomach and certainly wasn’t an iron-guts by any means … and she was so ill,’ says a matter-of-fact Carmen. And Gina adds, ‘We had a big night and the next day Amy did not stop vomiting and she had to have an injection because she was so dehydrated. She was under a tree while we were waiting for transport to get to the

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main village and she didn’t look very well at all. Amy was one of those tough ones who wouldn’t want everyone to know that, but we all knew her pretty well – and we could tell.’

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S E V E N

From Boat to Bike

Not long after graduating to the national rowing team with the dream of making it to Sydney 2000, Rachael Kininmonth was given a harsh lesson in how brutal competition for places would become. She had formed an unshakeable bond with Amy and Bronwyn Thompson – ‘the two stooges’ as she came to refer to these, by then, old hands in the squad – and this would withstand the highs and lows of striving to win places in a boat. ‘I remember Amy coming down to training and she hadn’t been well for a couple of days, but I didn’t know how sick she really was,’ says Rachael. ‘I just knew she hadn’t been well. Then she told me, “Rachael, I’m pissing blood”. I was shocked and said, “Amy, you shouldn’t be training – you shouldn’t be in the boat”. At the time, we were doing three sessions a day … I was pretty healthy, but I was totally fagged, so stuffed from the hard work. So suddenly I was thinking, she’s pissing blood – her body’s starting to go through a bit of a melt-down here. I said, “Amy, you should slacken off for 114

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a bit – just take two days off and give yourself a rest”. But she never liked giving herself a rest. She was obsessive about it and she looked at me and said, “Rach, while I can keep going I’ll keep going because if I get out of that boat someone else will take my spot”. And that was a real eye-opener to me about how ruthless it could be. It was don’t ever give up your spot because once you give it up someone else comes in and you never know what others in the boat are going to say if that happens – “oh, it felt much better with her”. It can really be like that and then everything can just turn around and maybe all of a sudden you’re not there any more at all. So the first rule was never give someone else a chance.’ As a woman who had come to elite rowing late – aged twenty-six, married and simply wanting to have a go at being the best she could – Rachael quickly developed an affinity with Bronwyn, like her a Victorian whom she had previously known from the state team, and especially Amy. ‘Once I got to really know them they were so refreshing … you’d get off the water and they’d leave all that behind and just be fun girls. So I gravitated towards them …. I remember there was a point where I screwed up a bit – I forgot to go to a team meeting and the others ganged up on me about it, but Amy and Bron were a refuge for me. They said, “Look, Rach, shit happens. Just don’t even worry about it now. It’s over”. They were good to me like that.’ That was in 1998 when Amy returned to the national squad after a year away to study. She – and Rachael and Bronwyn – rowed in the eight, finishing fourth at the world championships in Germany. As well, the eight, plus the four Amy rowed in, won silver medals at a World Cup meeting in Belgium. The following year, 1999,

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Amy was in the eight that finished fifth in the world championships in Canada. However, as her earlier warning to Rachael about never giving up your seat suggested, the pressure was well and truly on as selection for Sydney 2000 hotted up, and Amy was growing increasingly concerned – justifiably, as it turned out. Her training was split between her home base now back in Adelaide, while Simon was farming in Victoria, and the AIS in Canberra, during which time she would stay with Bronwyn in a cabana at the back of the home of their friends Rod and Vida – the Katz household – in suburban Deakin. In the end, only two of the girls who had rowed in the Atlanta eight made the boat for Sydney – Bronwyn and Alison Davies, a South Australian friend of Amy’s – although Gina Douglas, who by then had changed to the single sculls, was also selected. So Amy was out while her friends Rachael and Bronwyn were in – a bitter-sweet moment if ever there was one. Selection trials are inevitably contentious, particularly where multi-crew formats are concerned and even more so in an eight when there are that many bodies pulling the boat through the water. If times are slow, who’s the weak link in the chain? And if rowers are swapped in and out of boats or rearranged in the same boat, a process known as ‘seat racing’, who’s the improvement – or lack of improvement – down to? After missing out on the eight, Amy and Carmen Wearne, her Adelaide friend also from the Atlanta eight, and then rowing under her maiden name Klomp, were asked to try out for the sculling squad. Again, Amy was cut, but Carmen made it as a reserve. ‘She was really pissed off and rightly so in this instance,’ Carmen remembers. ‘I mean,

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selection criteria are never foolproof … and she would definitely have agreed.’ Rachael Kininmonth remembers the selection trials as being exhausting, physically and mentally. ‘That was a really, really tough time because not only did Amy not make it … it’s really contentious. It’s quite subjective, the whole rowing process …’ Rachael was, of course, happy to have secured a spot, but was too worn out to celebrate for herself, or commiserate with her friend. ‘You’re left just so dead in your brain. There’s really nothing physically or mentally left in you and so to be a really good friend and go and comfort somebody like that [who has missed out], well, it’s the hardest thing.’ She recalls Amy being keen to push on for a place in the sculling squad, another exhausting process, and being devastated after missing out there as well. ‘I don’t even know the whole story … the politics of it all. All I know is that she felt the process was bullshit. That the people who were in the selection, who were doing the selecting, had chosen who they wanted … and it’s hard to know what was the rationale on Amy’s behalf and what wasn’t … I know I’ve missed out getting in teams and so you walk away really bitter about it. You think, it’s a conspiracy against me! That’s how I’d be. And she was really pissed off.’ Rachael points out that until this turning point in her rowing career Amy had always had coaching staff, be it at AIS, state or national level, who would stand up for her. ‘She had a different introduction to rowing than me because she’d come up through the juniors and she’d had people like Simon who really did go into bat for her whereas I was always on the outer and I knew that. But even when she was down

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she couldn’t help but inspire you with her competitiveness – always trying to take it on to another level.’ Amy’s other close friend who made the team, Bronwyn Thompson, agrees it was an impossible time for Amy. ‘On the one hand, she wanted to say, “Congratulations and good luck”, but on the other she felt really ripped off and, as I say, every single girl who rowed that boat in ninety-six [at the Atlanta Olympics] was physically and mentally tough enough to be in the 2000 eight and I just think it was circumstances … and after that I think she wanted to prove that it [missing out] wasn’t about her as an athlete. I think that’s what got her caught up in cycling to start with. It was really hard for her. How do you accept missing out on something that you’ve set your heart on from the first stroke you’ve ever taken in a rowing boat? I don’t know.’ Denis and Mary, Amy’s parents, remember her being on edge as the selection trials approached. ‘She was up and down and, of course, when she was that way we were too,’ says Mary. ‘When your child is upset or whatever, you feel that.’ Denis says missing out was a big low for her. ‘For all the highs in sport, there are an awful lot of lows. Most people only remember the good bits – “you’ve won this, you’ve won that” – but there were the bad ones as well and missing out on Sydney was a major one for her.’ Peter Barnes, long-time family friend from Oakmount Court in West Lakes and a sports medico who had much to do with Amy throughout her career, recalls her being angry at not making Sydney 2000, but puts some outside perspective on the story. ‘The thing is it was so close. It was a toss of the coin and you’re damned if you do and damned if you

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don’t from a coaching or selection point of view. I don’t know who made the decisions, but with that group, who had worked together so long, whoever misses out is going to feel hard done by … It was always going to come down to being between a couple of people. I don’t even know who the alternative was or who got her spot, as Amy saw it. And whether it was a good or bad decision … I’ve got no idea. There are a lot of disappointing and hard-luck stories in sport and this was another one.’ However, Simon, Amy’s husband, who had been very publicly forced out as head coach of Australian rowing after failing to push through changes he deemed necessary, including a more transparent selection process, pulls no punches. He says no one involved had any confidence in how the crew was picked. ‘She [Amy] ended up getting the raw end of the deal with no tangible measurements to support the decision.’ He is hardly complimentary of ‘seat racing’, swapping rowers in and out of boats in an effort to gauge who’s best. ‘Whether you measure it against the clock or another crew, it’s a dodgy process because there are a lot of things that can influence a result besides swapping people in and out … Are they trying to measure conditions? Are they trying to measure fatigue? If you keep belting a crew up and down the track, they’re going to go slower and slower – and if you’re the last person in [the boat], well, you’re going to be the slowest.’ Whatever the criteria, he says Amy felt let down. ‘And that affected her a lot. I wouldn’t say she was depressed – just pissed off with the whole thing. That’s when I said to her, “Let’s go for a trip around Australia, let’s drive up through

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the centre and go to Cape York and just forget about the whole thing”.’ So they did – and Amy’s cycling dream was born. If rowing didn’t want her any more, there was always a new horizon for the girl who never gave up. It must have been a sight to behold. The place is a camping ground, any of scores scattered across the back of beyond that is rural Australia. Simon and Amy pull up in their fourwheel drive, tinny boat on top, trailer in tow and set up camp for the night. Then Amy unloads a stationary bike, hops on the contraption and starts pedalling like a maniac. What their fellow campers – the only late-afternoon exercise they tend to get is bending their elbow to down another stubby of beer – think of all this sweat and effort is anybody’s guess. ‘So we’d be at a camping ground or set up in some remote place and there she’d be under a tree on the stationary bike,’ recalls Simon. He says she was always interested in cycling and, like many rowers, it had been a big part of her cross-training – and she was good at it, having the horsepower and leg-drive, to leave the vast majority of rowers, at least, in her wake. And so no one was particularly surprised when she announced she wanted to give competitive cycling a go, although her parents were wondering where this new plan would take her. ‘I suppose I was a mother thinking that after the rowing disappointment of Sydney she’d simply get on with the rest of her life – like normal people do,’ quips Mary. ‘But with Amy, well, there was no stopping her – not that it was our right to stop her at all. But I will admit there was a part of me thinking, oh, here we go again …’ Denis remembers that in her junior rowing days Amy was a bike-riding

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demon when cross-training up and down the Adelaide Hills. ‘She’d just be on her old bike in her sandshoes and she’d fly by all these blokes in their fancy gear on their fancy bikes … so who were we to say, “Don’t do it”? It was obvious by the stage she told us about trying cycling that she was never going to lead a “normal” life – whatever a “normal” life is.’ John Beasley, a Melbourne cycling identity and coach, and his wife, Vicki, took Amy under their care and she made rapid, if raw, progress, learning the intricacies of competitive riding on the road and track. By then, she had moved to Mt Helen with Simon and was also riding with the local Ballarat and Sebastopol Cycle Club, part of a well-organised and thriving local bicycling scene in which Simon was already heavily involved. Pitre Bourdon, who runs the sports science unit at SASI, and who had tested Amy numerous times during her rowing career, remembers it wasn’t long before she sought him out, too. ‘She came knocking on the door saying, “I’m interested in cycling – what can we do?” So we had her assessed in the lab and took that to Ian McKenzie, the cycling coach here. So he looked at the figures and went, “Oh, that’s interesting”. Next thing you know, she’s on a SASI scholarship and medalling at the nationals [winning the individual pursuit only fourteen months after first riding on a velodrome]. So she didn’t waste any time. She certainly didn’t let the disappointment [of missing Sydney 2000] get the better of her … In my opinion, there are a lot of very good athletes who retire too young. That’s particularly so in sports like rowing where you have to train hard and long and you might reach the ultimate of the Olympics and have some success – but you don’t get the financial return or a lot of

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public profile and in the end it can become just too hard. You’ve got to try to eke out a living or think about finishing your studies and so a lot quit in their mid-twenties when physiologically they’re just starting to reach their prime. But Amy was one who said, “Maybe I’ve something else left in me …” And one thing we try to do at SASI is look for athletes who can do what we call “talent transfer”. If, for whatever reason, they retire or an injury takes them out of one sport, there might be another they’re suited to.’ But there was to be an early and ultimately chilling portent of what was to come when Amy had a bad crash while riding in her first major road race, the Tour of Canberra in May 2001. Wheels clipped while at speed, close to 80 kilometres an hour, and she came down heavily. She landed on her head and was rushed to Canberra Hospital and admitted suffering from skull fractures and bruising on the brain. Her Canberra friends Rod Katz and Vida Vilrunas had taken her to dinner the previous night and she had enthused about her new cycling life and what she hoped to achieve on what would be the Canberra event’s final day, a Sunday. ‘So that afternoon Vida got a call from Bron [Bronwyn Thompson, Amy’s old rowing friend] saying they were supposed to have met after the race, but Amy hadn’t shown up,’ says Rod. Fearing the worst, Vida, who has an anaesthetist’s practice centred on Canberra Hospital, decided to check there. She was put through to emergency and told, ‘Yes, she’s here with a head injury’. Simon, who was working on a tractor outside Ballarat at the time, was tracked down and notified and within three hours had flown to Canberra. Rod and Vida picked him up

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at the airport and took him straight to the hospital. ‘Later, Vida and I agreed if we were ever crook in hospital we’d want Simon to come and look after us because he was just constantly there from the crack of dawn until late at night,’ says Rod. ‘Amy was pretty seriously ill there for a while and when you get a bad knock on the head you can have what’s known as irritable brain syndrome and it can make you pretty cranky. She’d say stuff like, “I just want to get out of here, I just want to get out of here”, and Simon would reply, “Well, you can think about getting out when you can have a shower by yourself”. He’d keep on setting her these little goals.’ Denis and Mary, back home in Adelaide, were also wondering why they hadn’t heard from Amy on that ill-fated Sunday afternoon. After all, it was also Mother’s Day and no matter where she was around the world, Amy would send a card or message to mark the occasion. ‘We knew she had the race in Canberra that day and I said to Denis, “She’s obviously been caught up and she’ll ring later”,’ recalls Mary. ‘We’d been out and after coming home we hadn’t been back more than five minutes and the phone rang. It was Simon and he told us there’d been an accident in Canberra and she was in hospital. I said, “Well, can I speak to her?” and he said, “No, you can’t actually”. So the alarm bells started ringing. Then he was ringing us every day with updates and I still couldn’t speak to her. I remember visiting a school and saying to the teachers that if my phone rang I’d have to go out and take the call – and then it did. It was Amy, but like I’d never heard her. It was just this tiny little girl’s voice and I was shocked. I rushed home and said to Denis, “I’ve got to get on a plane to Canberra now”, and that’s what I did. And, like I

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say, when I finally got to see her in the hospital I was even more shocked.’ Like Rod and Vida, Mary remembers Simon coaxing Amy to slowly but surely get back on her feet. ‘The mothering instinct in me was thinking, oh, Simon, just let her be, she needs the rest, but he was just pushing her along, helping her out of bed and things like that. Then she had to go through psychological testing before they’d let her out and I remember she was quite aggressive and irritable about all that. She just hated being in there. She had to go for some tests … and she swore at the woman and later said to me, “Mum, do you know what she was wearing?” and I said, “No” and she replied, “She was wearing a pleated kilt!” I thought, what’s that got to do with the price of eggs? I said to her, “Amy, you’re dependent on that woman to help get you out of here – don’t worry about her kilt”. Anyway, she finally got out and I’d come home by then and she went to Rod and Vida’s and stayed there for a while to recuperate. But the whole episode had been pretty darn scary for us.’ Amy had injured her frontal lobe, one of six major sections of the brain. It is located directly behind the forehead and plays a key role in regulating mood, judgement, attentiveness and foresight. Any injury to it coupled with bleeding can lead to dramatic personality shifts until the trauma settles down – hence Amy’s ongoing irritability about being confined to hospital and her bizarre comments about the woman wearing a kilt. The fact was she had been badly injured in the race fall and another crash and head-knock of similar proportions could prove fatal. She needed rest – and lots of it – even if she was unwilling to concede that at the time.

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Sports doctor Peter Barnes, who at that stage was the AIS cycling medico, saw Amy in Adelaide after the accident. He also remembers her being more aggressive than usual as she still recovered from the head injury. ‘She related the whole saga to me, how getting out of hospital was a real effort because they were trying to keep her in there. She said, “The stupid psychologist asked me all these stupid questions …” and, apparently, she got quite angry with them and said it was all a waste of time. This can happen in brain injuries, especially frontal lobe, and the person can lose a bit of emotional control. I can just imagine Amy at that stage – she was bad enough when she hadn’t had a bang on the head. She was very strong willed and liked to call a spade a spade. I thought when I was speaking to her at the time that she did seem more so than normal – a bit hyper and upfront. I told her this and she just laughed at me, “No, I’m like this all the time”. I said, “I know you are, but you’re even a bit more so at the moment …” But in the end she was all right about that. Still, it was a serious crash with a lot of bleeding inside her frontal lobe. It could have quite easily been a fatal injury. And I think she did have a few misgivings – did she want to keep on riding, did she want to give it away? But those didn’t last long and then she was back on the bike.’ Months later, Peter would be in Italy with the AIS team when Amy was facing her first big race back. ‘I asked her how she was feeling about it and suggested she take it easy, ride conservatively and look after herself. If she didn’t feel up to it, she could just drop out. She looked at me with a smile and said, “Oh, don’t be stupid. Stop worrying about it. I’ll be fine”. And she was.’ For the medico who had known her since

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she was a little girl playing with his sons in the street, Amy’s handling of the Canberra crash was a snapshot of how she handled life. ‘One of her great strengths was her positiveness. She would get angry for sure, but she wouldn’t let it get her down. She wouldn’t dwell on things. She’d analyse a problem or setback and then move on from it. It was the same in her relationships. Some people might drive her crazy and she wouldn’t like them and she’d say so, but she wouldn’t get all bitter and twisted about it. She just let you know how it was and then move on.’ After Canberra, Denis and Mary were hoping, of course, that she would indeed move on from cycling. ‘They used to have races at Regency Park [a northern Adelaide suburb] where there’s a sort of warehouse complex and I’d take her there on Saturdays,’ says Denis. ‘Every lap you’d be wondering if everyone was going to come round again. It was always in the back of your mind what could happen. She had a fall once when I was there and came up missing skin.’ Mary recalls talking to Amy about whether she would continue after the Canberra crash. ‘I asked, “Amy, you’re not going to get back on the bike again?” and she just said, “Oh, yes I am”. I could only think, my God, she’s gone through all this and she still wants to get on that bloody bike … She would go training when she was home here [at West Lakes] and it would be music to our ears when we’d hear the click, click, click of her cycling shoes coming up the driveway. Then we knew she was back. And when she was racing in Europe, there was a good Internet site where we could get the results quickly. But it was always there in the back of our minds – has she actually finished the race? We’d think

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about the weather conditions – what if it’s raining? It was just always there …’ SASI cycling coach Ian McKenzie, known to all within the sport as ‘Macka’ and who spent a summer working with Amy, smiles ruefully and says no one ever doubted her enthusiasm. Getting her to do the work was never a problem – but getting her to stop was. ‘There was never any fear of her not doing enough. The fear was she wanted to do more and more. She believed the more she did the better she’d get – but that’s not necessarily the case. She was definitely addicted to hard work, absolutely no doubt about that. And knowing why she should do things and also understanding the outcomes, or if the improvement from all that training wasn’t showing, well, she demanded a reason why. “Why aren’t I going better?”’ McKenzie recalls. He says one of Amy’s early problems on the bike was that she developed an obsession with the individual pursuit on the track, but after her early success at it her performance started to level out and, as he puts it, she started to ‘beat herself up’ over not getting the improvement she thought she should. He faced a long and at times difficult task to convince her to try the road where, as well as racing in a team, she could concentrate on the individual time trial where she didn’t need the technical expertise – just her undoubted power. ‘So especially in the last year she started to move forward in that area and she was making progress, no doubt about that … She did lack a bit on the technical side [having come to competitive cycling late]. That was all about how she interacted with the bike, just that sort of feel and skill, and

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she was not quite at the really elite level there. But in terms of putting power through the pedals, well, she was as good as anybody.’ Macka says that while Amy certainly had her cycling goals – like making the team for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006 – she also enjoyed the lifestyle and camaraderie that the sport gave her. ‘She told me a couple of times that she never wanted to become a professional like some of the others. That didn’t seem to excite her. She had a great balance in that she had this whole life beyond the sport. Of all the people I’ve dealt with in cycling, she would have had the most idyllic and well-balanced life. There’s no question about that. A lot of cyclists are just straight cyclists – that’s all they want to do and they forget about the rest of the stuff, but not her.’ And so it was that Amy came to revel in cycling. Even though still a team sport, it offered a freedom that crew rowing couldn’t. No longer was she stuck pulling a boat down a course with a group of others where comparisons were being made – or maybe just imagined – about who was doing the job and who wasn’t. With cycling, it was one woman, one bike. She was in charge of her own performance, her own destiny – and after the disappointment of failing to qualify for Sydney 2000, that was all she wanted. Of course, the team aspect was still there and she would give everything for the cause and, indeed, her power and extraordinary determination out on the road made her an ideal candidate for the job of team workhorse – the one who did the hard, tough stuff without necessarily being the first across the line. Like other Australian riders, she also noted quickly how road cycling

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had a high profile and appreciation in Europe and she enjoyed the lifestyle that came with it – the wine, the food, the history and just getting out and riding through its postcard scenery. Adding to this multi-faceted approach to life, Murray Drummond, a senior lecturer in the School of Health Sciences at the University of South Australia, who was Amy’s supervisor throughout her tertiary studies, points out that the mass of publicity that surrounded her death and its aftermath overlooked her academic qualities. ‘There was such an intellectual side to her and the work that she was going to do on her PhD would have done a lot of good for women in sport.’ The study was to look at how women react to life after sport – not only the high-flyers who have a profile and perhaps money-making potential, but also the middle-ranked athletes who make up most of any team. ‘For a lot of elite male athletes, particularly those in the high-exposure sports, it’s straight into the media or business, but what happens to a woman, maybe a netballer, who hasn’t got the gift of the gab or hasn’t the beauty we seem to require of women in Australia, or the Western world anyway? What happens if she hasn’t those attributes? Where does she go? The study was to find out how these women felt. It was going to be fairly exploratory in that regard.’ Murray has since been given the go-ahead for a scholarship to be set up under Amy’s name so the study can be concluded. As an elite endurance athlete himself – competing in the torturous Hawaiian Iron Man marathon among others – Murray remembers that when he was in full training with nothing else in his life but triathlon he felt as if he was slowly

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going brain dead and so he went back to studying as well. He was happy to take on Amy who wanted more in her life than rowing or later cycling, even if her study often had to take a back seat to some looming competition. ‘Not many lecturers would take on someone like that but I’m quite open to it. I like the idea of students having those sorts of diverse backgrounds as long as they’re willing to put in – and Amy certainly was. She trained bloody hard and she was also prepared to put in with her studies. When she did her Honours we set up a pretty good method whereby she could email me her work from wherever she was around the world. Then I’d email back with comments and recommendations … When she’d walk into my office at uni, I didn’t ask her what she’d been doing with her sport. We’d talk about the work we had to do, about the academic side – she never tried to big note herself.’ But she did have a mind of her own – and that meant she didn’t always do what her supervisor suggested. Murray recalls a meeting the day before her Honours presentation where he recommended some last-minute changes to her work. ‘I said, “No, you’ve got to change this, this and this” and she said, “Oh, okay”. So she came in the next day and I’m watching the presentation and she hadn’t changed it. Later, I said, “Why didn’t you change it?” and she just looked at me and said, “Oh, I thought it was all right the way it was”. But there were things she got picked up on in the presentation and I said, “Well …!” But she still got the highest mark of all the Honours presenters that day and that was fine. So who am I to say? We had a great relationship. It wasn’t just a supervisor–student relationship – we were friends.’ Of course, the reality is that even the best female cyclists

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are never going to make a fortune from their sport – so they tend to look after their education. But the best men can win lucrative contracts in Europe and, put bluntly, many of them who come up through the ranks in Australia have eyes well and truly on the Euros while the women take on further study to lay the groundwork for careers after pushing pedals. Still, Amy also studied because she wanted to – not because she had to. It was part of her questing nature and her topics invariably covered women and their place in sport. Her oldest friend Tammie Ebert remembers how they started their applied science degrees in exercise and sports science in Adelaide in 1993. ‘Given her heavy rowing commitments, she could only take it part-time, but to her credit she finished, although it was a few years later than I did. During that time, she’d often say that I was so lucky to have finished, but I’d constantly remind her of the amazing experiences she was having with her rowing. The truth was many of us were envious of her sporting talent and also her ability to apply herself to uni.’ After her undergraduate degree, she ploughed into her Honours with assignments completed on the go at various competition venues around the globe. ‘I think she was just a busy type of person,’ says Tammie. ‘She never wanted to be bored.’ Somehow, Amy seemed to glide through it all. Despite the cluttered schedule, everything got done – eventually. Prior to leaving for Europe on the trip that would ultimately cost Amy her life, Tammie remembers her at a cycling training camp writing the literature review for what was to be her PhD. ‘She had papers spread everywhere in the physiology lab trying to write it.’

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With this mix of sport, study, travel here and overseas, and family, Amy was building an enviable lifestyle. Simon was also tailor-making his life to fit in with hers, having structured the cropping business so that he only had to be on hand during harvesting season. So it might be Port Douglas and their fishing boat for part of the winter, then the European cycling season followed by time on the properties around Ballarat. ‘Yeah, she was away for periods of time, home for a while and then away again,’ Simon says. ‘But because I had the freedom to travel, I could be where she was for a lot of that. I remember Mary made the comment when we got married that soon after there were some important races here then in New Zealand and Europe and people were going, “Hang on, she’s just got married. How come she’s not at home cooking and cleaning?”’ He smiles and adds, ‘That wasn’t her go’. Mary remembers their wedding at Springfield House, a stately old home in the foothills of Adelaide on Saturday, 24 January 2004. Amy loved an occasion – and after nearly a decade with Simon, their relationship forged out of adversity, this was the occasion, surrounded by family and friends on a glorious summer day, that she wanted most of all. The civil ceremony was held in perfectly sculptured gardens under full bloom with 200 guests, many of them from rowing and cycling. From toddlers to grandfathers, it brought together the generations of Amy and Simon’s friends and families. Attended by four bridesmaids – her three closest friends, Tammie, Rachael Kininmonth and Bronwyn Thompson, and her sister Georgina – it was suitably formal but, paradoxically, Australian-style relaxed. Later, at the reception held in a nearby restaurant, many tales were told at Amy and Simon’s

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expense – as is the way on such occasions, but even more so when sporting types gather. As only a mother can, Mary recounts what Amy told a family friend that day. ‘You know my friends call me Princess [one of several names bestowed on her by her rowing mates] and I really am a princess. I’m marrying the man of my dreams, the man I love so much, I’ve got a wonderful family, wonderful friends and a wonderful life. My life is a fairy tale.’

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C H A P T E R

E I G H T

To Be the Best They Can

Olivia Gollan has become somewhat tired of being asked time and time again by her unknowing countrymen and women why she would ever want to do what she does. She recalls one such encounter, not long after her good friend Amy’s death, where one inquisitor couldn’t understand why an Australian woman would want to go off to race a bicycle around Europe for a living. Why didn’t she do something sensible with her life? Like pushing a pen in the public service or settling down in the suburbs perhaps? An Athens 2004 Olympian who came to elite cycling late, Olivia knows a thing or two about life as well as how to put words together. She ended up giving this particular inquisitor – another woman as it turns out – an earful and in doing so painted a picture of how exciting, enthralling – insert your own adjective – this life on the open road can be. It’s a girl’s own adventure. ‘This woman had been quizzing me all night and I couldn’t believe it,’ Olivia remembers. ‘So I finally said to 134

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her, “Look, when I’m racing I have four hours of the day when I’m on a 100 per cent adrenalin rush. I’ve got a radio in my ear with my team-mates talking to me. The team car is behind talking to me. I might get a puncture and have to go back [through the field] to get a wheel change. Then I’ll have to chase back through twenty-odd cars to get on to the bunch again. Then the next thing you know I might be attacking down the road, trying to get away with my heart rate at 190 [beats per minute]. Five minutes later I’ll be coming down a hill at a hundred kilometres an hour and then maybe I’ll be sitting back in the bunch, laughing away and chatting with my friends and all the while we’re wondering how the race is going to pan out, what the finish is going to come down to … So that’s what four hours of my day is like and I reckon that’s pretty good”.’ Sounds like it beats pen pushing – and no doubt her critic didn’t have much to add after that. From Newcastle, Olivia has a degree in communications but has also travelled the world, working as everything from a ski-lift operator in Canada to a grouse beater during hunting season in the Scottish Highlands. But her time climbing the world ranks of elite cycling – from the AIS squads to the Olympic team and finally the professional ranks in Europe – has been another sort of education altogether, a more real one. ‘Cycling has taught me more about myself and more about people than any other experience I’ve ever had … I learned in the first couple of years about living with others and becoming tolerant and patient because being an athlete, particularly in the circumstances under which we operate, you need tolerance and patience because you live and train with all sorts of characters. We race each

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other in training and then are expected to work together as a team and then again it’s push comes to shove when it’s down to being selected for events like world championships.’ Although cycling’s profile continues to rise in Australia and the sport has a long and proud tradition here, the women who rode with Amy are hardly hanging around and waiting for it to take over the sports pages. They know the football codes and cricket remain kings with the public and as far as sportswomen are concerned there’s tennis and golf, while swimming and athletics get the occasional look in, principally at Olympic or Commonwealth Games times. So twice a year, Olivia can’t wait to head off to Europe to ride the circuit for her German pro team – simply because she loves it. ‘That’s the thing, you know – it makes me happy to do it. There’s no great mystery. It’s a thrill and it’s magnificent. I get two all-expenses-paid trips to Europe every year and travel all over … and when I’m back in Australia there are all the challenges here and always the challenges within myself to try to do better. I don’t think there are many people who can get up in the morning and can say that about their job.’ Her professional sister Kate Bates, who with Olivia was part of the group who rallied on Amy’s death in Germany, expresses similar sentiments. From Sydney’s western suburbs and another Athens Olympian, she says her commitment to the bike has nothing to do with fame or fortune and, indeed, she searches for deeper insight. ‘For me, it’s a very personal thing. I just have this urge to push myself to the limit, to test myself to see what my best is. It’s not even about winning races – it’s about being on the start line at an Olympics or world championships knowing that whatever the outcome

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there’s nothing more that I could have done, physically or psychologically. Whether you’re good enough or not to win, you have to be able to walk away knowing you’ve given your heart and soul – and you can get enormous satisfaction from that. I don’t know if people will understand, but the smallest moment can get you through months and months of hard work, even if you just have a good day training when you’re off by yourself, nobody else around to see it. So, you know, it’s a personal thing and I just love it.’ Indeed, Kate brings an almost meditative sense to what the uninitiated might see as no more than pushing pedals. ‘I could never go to another sport because there’s something about riding a bike at six o’clock in the morning when it’s dense with dew and quiet as can be. You feel like you could rule the world. I’d say that’s when my life decisions are made – when I’m off riding my bike by myself.’ Later, she laughs and adds, ‘The fact that we do get a little bit of money and the fact that we get to travel the world on the government’s budget, things like that, well, they’re a bonus … but we’d do it anyway’. For the girls who were riding with Amy on that dreadful day, battered and bruised as they still may be, both in body and mind, similar fires continue to burn within. Kate Nichols was the rookie of the bunch, having been with them only a month after replacing Victorian Jenny Macpherson, who had come home to treat a shoulder injury. The trip to Europe was part of what was supposed to be a major learning experience for Kate. ‘And I certainly got to learn more than I expected,’ she deadpans. She had only competed in one event, a ten-day tour race in Italy, before the crash, but that was enough to sell

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her on the European circuit. ‘I loved it. Awesome. When I was doing it I was like, “Yep, this is what I want to do”. Now I keep reminding myself that was what I really enjoyed. After the crash, I was having thoughts, do I want to ride again or not? But I know down deep if I didn’t ride, well, I wouldn’t be me.’ Kate started racing competitively as a twelve-year-old under the guidance of her Los Angeles Olympics gold medal winning father, Kevin. She might be small, demure almost, but as with all these women there is a ribbon of steel deep inside her. ‘I love the challenge of it,’ she says of racing. ‘I love the hardness of it. My favourite races are the ones where it’s a challenge to get to the finish – not the ones where it’s easy and you can just put your hands up [going over the line]. I find that hard sort of racing the most satisfying.’ She thinks her style is similar to that of fellow crash survivor Lorian Graham, a noted hill-climber, and she wants to build that endurance aspect into her repertoire. After being the first of the injured five sent home and recovering from her serious hand injury, Kate was also first back on a bike with any sort of intent – not that she sees her relatively speedy recover as a consolation. In fact, she says it was hard to leave the others behind in Germany and, months later, back on her bike she had to force herself to ride in traffic again. ‘I was really not very coordinated. I went round the bike track, a closed circuit, for a while – not with cars or any sort of traffic. Then a magpie started swooping at me and I thought, oh, well, this isn’t any good – I’ll have to move on to the road now. That’s how I got forced back into the traffic.’ Like all the women quoted here – riders and rowers – Lorian Graham talks of her competitive side. Born and raised

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in Rockhampton in rural Queensland, she came from a sporting family. Both her parents were Australian go-karting champions and so getting behind the wheel was a natural progression for her. ‘We were all thrown in together – boys and girls – and I guess that brought out my toughness. You had to drive like a guy and that made me very determined not to be beaten by guys. You’ve got to be in it to win it – and I liked to win, even back then.’ As she grew up, there were a myriad of other sports – touch football, athletics, especially cross-country, and then triathlon. In the swim leg, she’d end up ‘drinking half the ocean’, but she proved to be a machine on the bike. So she took to competitive cycling at the relatively advanced age of twenty-three and pushed through the ranks, first making the AIS development squad in 2002 and winning the Australian open road race title in 2005. For her, the sport has become an addiction, but a nice one. ‘I mean, I’m a bit of a daredevil. I like my speed and going round corners and the technical part of getting round a course. Then I also like a long, hard training ride, going up into the hills. People think we’re mad liking something like that. They say, “Why would you want to go riding up a hill?” But the actual pain from going hard is worth it when you get to the top and you see the view – not a lot of people manage to see the world that way. They’re too involved with their busy lives to notice stuff like that, but I like that aspect of it as well. So there are various reasons why I do it, but, yeah, it is addictive.’ Further explaining her view of the world from behind the handlebars, Lorian recalls the 2003 Giro d’Italia, one of the major European road races. ‘I’d read about Venice, of course, but as a child you think, well, I’ll only ever see that in

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a book. But here I was that day riding from the mainland across to the island and it was just unbelievable to finish there, the steps covered in Masonite so we could ride across them. I remember looking around and almost having to pinch myself and I’m thinking, my God, who would have thought that I would have got here and would be doing this? So to do something that you absolutely love and then also see the other side of the world, places you’ve only dreamed about – yeah, that’s pretty special. Most of the time when we’re racing, we’re looking at bums on bikes and there’s not a lot of time to look sideways at the scenery when you’re sharing the road with 150 other girls, but it’s still nice to appreciate where you are. It’s a reward for all the training and sacrifices that you’ve made, what you’ve had to go through to get that opportunity. It’s not something that’s given to any of us on a plate. You have to put in the hard yards to be noticed and to be selected to go over there. And so when you’ve made it, then you can say, “Well, okay, that was so worth it” … I know it’s hard for people to understand why we put ourselves through all the pain, sweat and tears and I guess the individual only knows how much it means to them. But it gives me goose bumps to be able to stand on a podium and have our anthem played and it’s just … well, that’s all I want. I don’t want the money, I don’t want the endorsements. It’s just that reward at the end and you know then it was worth it.’ Fellow survivor Katie Brown, whose older brother, Graeme, was a double gold medal winner at the Athens Olympics, started out as a BMX racer – aged four. She competed at ten Australian championships and came second at the world

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titles. ‘Riding a bike was a normal part of life for me,’ she says of growing up in Sydney’s southern suburbs. ‘Then Graeme got into cycling and started doing okay at it and I thought, oh, that looks cool, and so I got involved at that level, too. But it all came back to BMX, just cruising around, having fun back then.’ And, again, there was that aggression factor – and the need to find an outlet for it. ‘You know, I wasn’t allowed to play netball after a while because I was a bit too aggressive. So then I played softball and that wasn’t enough for me and then it was soccer, but I’d make too much contact and got yellow carded, or red carded. So I had to find something where I could let out the aggression and came to realise that could be on my bike. It had been a passion since I was four and I got to love the competition. I love being good and I love winning – and I just love all those ingredients that make a great competitor. And seeing Graeme go so well has just made me think, okay, can I do better than him? He’s won two Olympic gold medals – I might win three, even though there’s not three that I could win. But it all comes down to that competitive spirit – it’s just part of me and I’m lucky to have it. I’d hate to be someone who doesn’t have it because that would be such a boring sort of life, you know. But in anything you do, you want to strive to be good at it – work, study or your sport. You just want to be the best.’ Katie also enjoys the mind games that are inevitably played out during a long road race. ‘Because I’m a sprinter, I love being a tactician. I like having a plan and thinking, right, if I do this then no one can come past me. It’s awesome. If you’ve got a stronger head than someone else you can really play on that. When it works, you just think, I’m

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feeling fantastic now.’ And when it doesn’t? She laughs and says, ‘Then you think, oh, that’s great for them – I feel like shit now’. She particularly likes the sprint and dive for the finish line, the culmination of hours on the road. ‘That’s when you get among it, get the elbows out and start pushing and shoving – “get out of my way!”’ she laughs. Still, to get to a position where someone can win, it takes a team effort and Katie speaks fondly of the six who rode together, previously including Jenny Macpherson before her injury. ‘We worked together really well and with the race radios we’d even have a good old chat now and then – not just about bikes, but like, “How’s it going up there?” or “Look at that”. It was a fun environment to be in. And I guess that’s what a team situation has to be – you’ve got to enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it then you’re not going to go too well, are you?’ If there were problems and differences of opinion – as in a highly competitive and stressful situation there predictably were – Amy tended to be the one to bring them out and to try to resolve them. ‘She’d talk about it, get it out and we’d deal with it and then she’d say, “Okay, that’s forgotten now”,’ Katie recalls. ‘That’s something that everyone in a team situation needs and Amy was great at it. So we left the problemdecision thing up to her a lot of the time.’ Even with her own fiercely competitive nature, Katie was in awe of Amy’s appetite for hard work on the training track and in busting up a field in a long race. ‘She was so powerful and I’ve never seen anyone so dedicated in my life. Where I’d go, “Oh, no, I can’t be bothered today” in training, she’d be, “Come on! Let’s go and do four hours!” … But she was the nicest person. She was funny to be around and, as everyone says, she loved

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shopping. And I love shopping, too – so we’d have a great time spending our money together.’ With the on-going rehabilitation – bouts of physio and hydrotherapy – and the thoughts continually running around their heads about making it back to the sport they love, Katie believes they are all stronger after surviving what has been the worst experience of their collective lives. ‘If all of us end up back on our bikes we won’t help but have a strong team because now we know each other’s weaknesses but also our strengths. We’ll be a hundred times better than we were. What’s the pain of riding up a hill now? You know, Louise [Yaxley] can say, “I had half my arms hanging off” and I can say, “I had half my leg hanging off” so, you know, if we’re out there pushing it hard and if ever pain becomes an issue we can all think, oh, well, it doesn’t hurt that bad after all.’ Tasmanian Louise Yaxley, who suffered severe head, chest and arm injuries, and was on the edge of death when emergency crews arrived at the crash scene, admits she has had to reassess her life and what’s important in it. Daily, she battles with physio, especially for her wrists and arms in an effort to regain their strength while coming to terms with skin grafts to repair horrendous cuts to her arms. ‘It’s definitely been an experience which makes me ask what’s important. And, I guess, in a way that’s been a good thing, not that what happened was good at all …’ Like the four other survivors, it’s in her nature to search for positives in what for many of lesser will and commitment would seem the darkest of situations. ‘It’s funny that people are always saying how positive we are, but, yeah, we were always able to be like that … As I say, I might wake up and have a bad day, but I think, well, what

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have I got to complain about? I’m a lucky one. I’m still here.’ Still, she admits there’s now no place in her life for hyperbole. ‘I know I don’t have as much patience as I used to so if anyone complains unnecessarily or tries to feed me a pack of bullshit, so to speak, I just shut them down now.’ Louise, whose nickname is ‘Yakers’ and who readily admits she likes a good yak, or chat, says she often used to take the opposite side in disputes or airing of problems within the group. If Amy could be counted upon to bring a problem into the open, Louise would usually ended up supporting the other view. ‘If Amy felt passionately about something, she’d let you know. We knew exactly where she stood, which was great. So she was always there like that, more the big sister than the mother (of the group). Then I’d play the defensive role and so if she felt strongly – “I can’t stand it when this happens” – I’d always stick up for the other person.’ Louise laughs and adds, ‘It’s a bad habit I’ve got. But Amy had always thought through her justification and she just about always ended up getting me. She was the only one who’d get me like that and there were a few times I had to say, “Okay, fair enough – can’t argue with you on that one”.’ Louise describes herself as being very much a team player, on or off her bike, and says she thrived on the combined power of the six girls when the going got tough out on the road. ‘When we had our good days, when we all worked together to get someone over the line or just keeping a lookout for each other, it became a bit like Australia versus Italy, Great Britain, the Dutchies and the rest of them … just the camaraderie of it. That was one aspect I loved.’ This was her second year in Europe, this time as a full AIS team

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member, and the team had settled into a harmonious balance. ‘It had reached the point where we could just say, “You really gave me the shits when you did that in the race today” and we’d deal with it and it was gone. I think that’s why we got on so well because we were able to be open. You didn’t have to play any games or hide your comments.’ Alexis Rhodes, the gritty South Australian-based rider who, like Louise, slipped close to death in the wake of the crash, initially set small goals in her rehabilitation, principally for her spine and battered lungs – but they were to achieve big and very impressive results. ‘I’ve always got something to achieve. I get real satisfaction out of going up a bit in my weights or if I get a bit more movement in my back. I know it’s not “winning”, but it almost is. It’s something that I can see that I’ve done, that I’ve progressed. It’s an achievement.’ With Alexis, you get the impression actions will always speak louder than any number of words. ‘I’m not going to say, “Oh, I’m going to break world records” – all that sort of stuff. If I did that I think I’d only be setting myself up for a fall.’ Still, she scored a remarkable comeback when only seven months after the crash she made the team for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne – which, of course, had also been Amy’s dream. On her way to this quite astounding feat, she won the Mayor of Holdfast Bay women’s trophy race in Adelaide in late December 2005. As defender of that title and then still very much on the comeback trail, she said her only aim at that stage was to beat her younger sister, Terri, who finished second in a big day out for the Rhodes family. But only a couple of weeks later, in January 2006, she won the Australian criterium – a form of sprint racing – that was

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staged as part of the Bay Cycling Classic, held in and around Geelong in Victoria. Her victory was all the more remarkable as the field included the best riders in the country. Also as part of the Geelong event, more than 3000 cyclists, including Alexis, Kate Nichols and Katie Brown, with Lorian Graham and Louise Yaxley watching from the sidelines, took part in ‘Amy’s Ride’, an impressive charity ride that raised more than $50 000 for the Amy Gillett Foundation, an amazing result. On her Commonwealth Games selection, the self-effacing Alexis admitted she had even shocked herself by making it. ‘I’m very surprised at how quickly I’ve come back, but once I started racing the Bay series [in Geelong] I thought, hang on a minute, there’s a bit of form there. Since then, I’ve just been getting stronger and stronger.’ Of the injured five, Alexis had the closest association with Amy. With her family, she moved from Alice Springs to Adelaide to pursue her promising riding career and in 2002 was named Australia’s junior track cyclist of the year. Like Amy, she came to be coached by Warren McDonald who was following in the team car at the time of the fatal crash. Alexis still has memories of their early rides together in Adelaide. ‘I remember doing the first day with her and thinking, gee, I don’t think I’m going to be able to get through this. She did it so easy – it didn’t seem to be an effort for her. I think I was eighteen at the time. She was really friendly and happy to have a chat, but I couldn’t chat back – I was going so hard. I reckon that first ride with her was about the hardest of my life. There was me, Amy and Rochelle Gilmore [an Australian and pro team rider in Europe]. Rochelle and I would take it in turns sitting next to Amy.’ It turned out to be one of Amy’s

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infamous hell rides through the Adelaide Hills to one of the higher points, Norton Summit, and back down again. Alexis lives at Kersbrook, a hills hamlet on the way back down to the Adelaide Plains, and so she was able to duck out early. She laughs and admits, ‘I got a bit of a flogging that day. She was an awesome person to train with’. So Amy, with her work ethic and commitment, the tenacious qualities that Alexis sought in her own riding, became someone to emulate. ‘She raced the style that I wanted to be able to race – really strong and aggressive. She could spend the entire day on the front of the bunch – and I’d like to be able to do that.’ Later, Alexis, talking about her road to recovery, says Amy also taught her about inner strength. ‘If she had a disappointment she’d always sit down and assess it – see how she could improve on it or move on from it. She was never someone who just got by and that was all she did. She always seemed to turn a bad situation into a positive – and she influenced my life in a big way.’ That was there for all to see and the journey back was complete when Alexis rode as part of the Commonwealth Games team in the points race on the track. Her role over the 25 kilometres was not to win a medal but, as Amy would have appreciated, to be the team worker, closing down any chance of an opposition breakaway. This she did with a fierce vigilance, allowing team-mates Kate Bates and Rochelle Gilmore to dominate the sprint sections of the race and thereby accumulate enough points to take the gold and silver medals respectively. There was extra poignancy for Kate and Rochelle as they had been in Germany with Alexis and the other injured girls

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in the aftermath of the crash. Clutching her gold medal after the race, Kate said thoughts of Amy were always with her. ‘When we get up every morning and when we get off our bikes every day, Amy’s in the forefront of our minds.’ Rochelle, no doubt remembering their exhausting Adelaide Hills training rides together, said, ‘It’s obviously an emotional time without Amy here. We’re always thinking about her and after racing and getting off the track it’s a hard thing to deal with’. As one who prefers to let her actions do the talking and who is not always comfortable with what has been a constant media presence since the crash, Alexis faltered this time when asked about Amy but added, ‘I knew I had a job to do. I just went out there and focused on that’. Amy’s spirit came to permeate the women’s team during the games. Three days later, the Australians dominated the time trial on the road with Oenone Wood winning from the veteran Kathy Watt with Sara Carrigan third. This was the event in which Amy had been aiming to compete in Melbourne and, again, Oenone and Sara had been in Germany to help pick up the pieces of the injured girls’ lives. As Oenone told reporters after taking gold, ‘All we can do is continue to ride and take motivation from the fact that Amy was such a fantastic friend to us all and such a fantastic rider’. Sara added, ‘We’ve done her proud – three of us on the podium’. But perhaps the defining moment came during the 100kilometre road race on the last day of the games when the Australian team – the Bates sisters, Kate and Natalie, Oenone Wood, Sara Carrigan, Rochelle Gilmore and Olivia Gollan – would pick up the gold and silver medals, Natalie claiming

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gold and Oenone the silver, with Welsh rider Nicole Cook taking the bronze. At the medal presentation, the six Australians all crowded onto the podium in a celebration of team solidarity. The win was especially satisfying for Natalie who, like Alexis in the points race and Amy, was often assigned the role of team workhorse, dragging more fancied riders up through the field or chasing down opposition breakaways. This time she was the only Australian positioned in a small breakaway and then, riding the perfect tactical race, was able to clear out on her own over the last 20 kilometres and cruise to the finish. As the rest of the field raced for the line, Sara Carrigan helped position Oenone for the final sprint and second place, a reversal of Sara’s gold medal ride at the Athens Olympics when Oenone had helped position her for that win. A teary Kate Bates said of her sister’s win, ‘It’s all about team, all about sacrifice. We always work for each other, just as Amy would have expected’. And as Natalie, who had been out on her own with a lot of time to think during her winning run home, added, ‘I was thinking on the last lap this is exactly what Ames would do. Be out there having a real go’. For their coach, Warren McDonald, it was one of the best days of his life and part of the long journey back for both him and his girls from their worst day on that rural road in eastern Germany nine months earlier. ‘We had faith in every one of those six,’ he said of his charges. ‘That was our team motto last night – Australia comes first, personality second.’ At home in Adelaide, Amy’s parents, Denis and Mary, watched the road race on television and were particularly pleased that Natalie Bates, the hard worker and giver of all

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for the team, soared away to win. They were certain Amy would also have approved. As with bike riders, you don’t have to scratch deep to find rowers’ source of inspiration, even though it can be difficult to wrap up in one neat package. Carmen Wearne, who rowed in the Atlanta Olympics eight and who goes back to the early days with Amy in Adelaide, says there are a lot of reasons why she gave herself over to the sport. ‘It’s a drive you have, not just a competitive spirit because loads of people are competitive. It’s a combination of a lot of things – a drive to excel, a drive to challenge yourself and, I guess, a drive to win, to stand out, to be the best. It becomes an addictive thing as well to get you up in the morning to go and do the work. You come to love so many things about it, particularly the teamwork, particularly the girls and the environment you’re all placed in. That’s huge – one of the biggest things. Basically, there’s the rowing on one side and on the other is the camaraderie and friendships. But a lot of it comes back to this unexplainable drive.’ Amy’s close friend and bridesmaid Rachael Kininmonth experienced her own version of Carmen’s unexplainable drive. In the mid-1990s, Rachael and her husband, Brad, were living in London after having travelled and worked around the world and would get out on the water at the Thames Rowing Club. ‘It was a good club because there was a real cross-section of skill and experience. They had novices – and that’s what I was then – right through to girls who had represented their country. So I used to see them in the gym and think to myself, I can do that – I can lift that weight. I’m

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as good as them. And so I thought, righto, I want to represent my country, too.’ Four years later, back in Australia, she made the national team and set herself on a path to the Sydney Olympics. Gina Douglas, another Atlanta eight member who then went on to Sydney 2000 as a sculler, believes it comes down to the challenge. ‘You say, “I want to see how far I can go with this” and so you’re surrounded by a whole lot of like-minded people. You train in the morning and then in the evening and sometimes during the day and you end up so tired I don’t think you actually have the time or energy to ask, “Why am I doing this?” But, obviously, you do start to question why when things aren’t going so well, but I’d never change the experiences rowing gave me for anything. It’s given me friends all over Australia and around the world and those intense experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.’ Even for those whose job it is to monitor and support elite athletes, there remains an element of mystery to what fires them. ‘It’s got to be in their personality because that was there in Amy from day one,’ says Pitre Bourdon, the sports science head at SASI. ‘When I first saw her, she didn’t give up when we tested her in the lab. A lot of athletes will go in there and when it gets hard they stop. But she kept on going until we told her to stop. I can tell you that gets a big tick immediately with any coach. That’s the grunt, the X-factor, that you want. As well as having the physiology to do it, she’s not going to give up on you. It’s probably just in the nature of those athletes – be it downright stubbornness or the desire to get the best out of themselves. It’s an essence or quality you wish you could train or transfer. But I don’t think you can. You can

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improve it a little bit – but you’ve either got it to start with or you haven’t. There are factors that are simply like that. Like a friend of mine used to say, “You can’t put in what God left out”.’ Sports doctor Peter Barnes, who had a lot to do with Amy through SASI, says whatever the quality is it comes from within. ‘And with a young athlete you’ve got to have the support of great parents, as Amy did with Denis and Mary, but if there isn’t that drive to start with it’s never going to happen. We see that with athletes all the time. It’s the “want” factor – a lot of people “can”, but not a lot of them “want”. She “could” and she “wanted”. A lot of people with the talent never fulfil it because it doesn’t mean enough to them. But Amy had the whole package.’ As well as the mental and physical challenges for the individual athlete, Tammie Ebert, the AIS cycling physiologist and Amy’s life-long friend, likes to underline the teamwork aspect of the sport, something often overlooked in Australia where the nuances of something like team road racing are little understood. ‘The winner’s only one person, but to get them there requires a massive team effort and that can be a very inspiring thing. Just the camaraderie that they need – a group of girls away together in a foreign country where they have to live, work and get on together for a common goal. When it works well, it’s an awesome environment. I know, even for me to be there as a staff member, it gives a real sense of community and these girls just loved cycling and that environment it created for them.’ But Amy’s rowing team-mate Bronwyn Thompson, a veteran of two Olympic eights, can’t help but simplify it all.

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Known for her occasionally left-field outlook on life, Bronwyn says that as a kid she just wanted to be good at something – anything. Like Amy, she was talent identified in the early 1990s as a possible rower. ‘So if someone comes along and says, “You could be good at this” and if you’ve got an ounce of self-belief you think, yeah, why not? I really wanted to be good at something.’ At the time she remembers writing about it all in her diary. ‘I was kind of hoping my thing wasn’t going to be sport …’ What did she want it to be? She smiles and says, ‘Well, I wanted to be a vet, actually’.

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The tale of how Amy came to believe Scotch Finger biscuits could lose their calories has taken on folklore proportions among her friends. Jane Hassell, who was head prefect at Annesley College in 1992, Amy’s last year there, now works as a lawyer in London and says the tale was retold – among tears and laughter – by a group of her old school friends, now in the British capital, as they held an impromptu wake, sharing drinks and memories after Amy’s death. ‘There are a lot of stories that make me laugh when I think of Amy but when we got together there was something we remembered that had happened in Year Twelve,’ Jane says. ‘In a way, she was so naive but she could always see the funny side and end up laughing at herself. We remembered how by that stage she was so keen on keeping fit because she was so devoted to her sport. She ate and drank the right things, wasn’t going out late and was just basically looking after herself. As part of this, she was always concerned about 154

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how many calories there were in different foods. So we were in the common room at Annesley with the rest of the Year Twelves and Amy was eating a Scotch Finger biscuit. Someone told her it was full of calories but if she broke it in half, half the calories would fall out. So every time she had a biscuit she’d break it into small pieces. I think for a while there she seriously believed that the calories would fall out.’ Others at the London wake spoke of Amy’s full-on enthusiasm for any school sporting contest and how it could prove to be a bit intimidating for those who didn’t quite share her passion for all things running, jumping and throwing. Jenny Molde, who was in the same house at Annesley, recalled trying to handle her bullet-like netball passes. ‘Amy was such a good netballer, but Jenny said she could never play with her,’ says Jane. ‘She’d throw the ball so hard that no one could catch it. She had this amazing strength and commitment and she’d let it fly towards Jenny or Bec [Angel, another ex-Annesley girl in London] and they were quite tiny. She’d almost knock them over.’ The house system was all-important at Annesley and in her last year Amy was captain of Nemea – the other houses also having Greek names, Corinth, Delphi and Olympia. They competed in sport and other activities, such as music and debating, as well as academically. Amy’s rowing partner at that stage, Sally Newmarch, was Nemea’s vice-captain, Jenny Molde was secretary and Jane a member. ‘There was a real camaraderie,’ Jane recalls. ‘We had to vote for house captain and everybody voted for Amy with Sally as vice-captain. At the time, she had such a ridiculous training schedule with her

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rowing, but she was also academic and we became a close group. There was a great spirit. ‘That’s the main thing I remember about Amy … from the outset, I think she was the happiest person I have ever met. She always had this amazing smile on her face and was always joking around. When I think of her now, I remember how much fun we had together. There never seemed to be sad times with her. It was always laughter.’ As the Scotch Finger story told at her expense proves. Indeed, believing stories that couldn’t possibly be true and revving up her house-mates says a lot about Amy. Those who knew her – be it academically, through sport or simply as a friend – talk of her openness and, yes, her gullibility, But they also talk of her commitment to the task at hand – never less than 100 per cent. Rosalie Hubbard, a fellow South Australian and former junior world champion cyclist who spoke at her funeral, often travelled overseas with Amy after she switched to the bike following the disappointment of not making Sydney 2000. These trips would inevitably end in an adventure, or misadventure, of some sort. ‘I remember we’d been in Switzerland and Amy, Shane Kelly [four-time Olympian and four-time Australian track cyclist of the year] and I were coming home. Apparently, we were told we’d be on stand-by for the flight on from Singapore but it just didn’t register with us. So we came out of Customs there and then we couldn’t get back in to get our bags. We ended up staying there for two days while they tried to arrange seats to get us home. And Amy being Amy just couldn’t believe that something like this could have happened. She was waltzing

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around saying, “Can you believe this? This is just not good enough!” She was getting pretty worked up about it. Then none of us had any money and we were wondering where we’d sleep. In the end, we ended up in a hotel, but it was chaotic, just the whole process. Shane and I were trying to be relaxed about it, but not Amy. That wasn’t her way.’ A trip to China for a cycling World Cup meeting ended in a litany of woe, recalls Rosalie. ‘Amy, who had a delicate stomach at the best of times, was throwing up the whole time on the plane and had food poisoning. Then we went to the official opening and I guess they [the organisers] were trying on put on nice food but, you know, the cultural differences in the food didn’t go too well with Amy at that point when we were preparing to race and she hadn’t been too well. She said, “Are they kidding! Is this what they expect us to eat before a World Cup? Are you joking?” Then she said, “I’m going, I’m leaving”. Others might have been thinking the same thing, but Amy was the only one to actually say something and then she stormed out of there. Then on the way home, after I’d taken off half my skin in a crash, Amy was throwing up again. That was one of our worst trips.’ Rachael Kininmonth, Amy’s close friend from rowing, also has the obligatory drunken athletes ‘throwing up’ story, but it has a slight sense of class to it – well, almost. ‘After any world championships there would be a party and it never entered Amy’s head at any of these events, where everyone gets pretty drunk and there’s people kissing anybody – well, it was never any sort of temptation for her. I was a married woman and so it was of no consequence to me either as everybody was so much younger anyway. And so that was one of

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the nice things, too – she’d get really drunk and I’d get really drunk, but we wouldn’t abandon each other to go off and snog some bloke. It would never occur to her to do anything like that. I don’t think she was ever tempted by another man – and I mean ever. It was like, “I’ve got Simon. I’m with Simon – that’s it”. ‘So I remember we were walking home from this party and everyone was really drunk and there was this Italian guy, Carlo, who was married. Carlo couldn’t believe how gorgeous Amy was and she was just chatting away to him and we weren’t far from the hotel. I was walking along behind having a chat to someone else and poor old Carlo’s just really enamoured with Amy and she’s like, “Blah blah blah …” and completely oblivious to any of that. Then suddenly she goes, “Uno momento” and walks over to the bushes where she does this great big chuck and then she comes back and just keeps on talking, “Blah blah blah …” as if nothing had happened. Carlo, and Italians in general, I suppose, have this concept of what women are supposed to be like and Amy fitted that beautifully – but what he made of her after that I don’t know.’ For Rachael, it was a typical Amy moment – a bit of naivety, a bit of humour and even a bit of class in what was hardly a classy situation. ‘She only needed two drinks to get like that. She’d have half a glass of wine with dinner and she’d be, “Ohhh!” It wasn’t like she ever drank a lot. Everybody else would be under the limit, but Amy would be legless.’ Rosalie Hubbard says the point with Amy was that she had so much energy and personality that something always happened when she was around. ‘But she had that ability to laugh, too. She’d be absolutely over-dramatic about something

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and then you’d start laughing about it and then in the end she’d laugh as well because she’d realise just how stupid the whole thing was. ‘I don’t know if it was Amy being similar to me or that she was just being supportive but she became a very loyal friend. “Yep,” she’d say when we were discussing something, “totally agree with that, Rose”. When we caught up, we didn’t necessarily talk about bike riding that much. It would be all the social stuff and a lot of just girl things. I’ll never forget the first national titles I went to with her and it turned out we were both shopaholics. I said to her, “Amy, you know there’s a shop down the road and they’ve got all these fantastically cheap clothes”. We were supposed to be competing, but she’s like, “Yeah, let’s go”. The next thing we’re both down there because we’re both mad bargain hunters. That’s when we probably decided that we really clicked. ‘I remember at one of the nationals she wasn’t overly happy with how it was going and I was rooming with her and so I’ve seen her at her worst as well as her best … But I must say even when it was tough going she was an inspiration to be around. She’d always manage to pick herself back up and look at things in the most positive light. She had that energy about her that made her good to be around. She probably believed in herself more than anyone.’ Ex-Olympian Carmen Wearne, who also lives in London where she works for accounting giant Ernst & Young, rowed with Amy, or ‘Betty’, as she calls her. Under their maiden names – Klomp and Safe – Carmen and Amy were in the Atlanta eight and had numerous adventures over the years. ‘I think Betty and I had a similar

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approach, which is very strange, because girls in particular can get quite catty,’ Carmen says of the highly competitive rowing lifestyle. ‘Friendships that remain after rowing with girls I would say are less so than remain with boys. Like my husband [ex-Olympian Richard Wearne] has loads of friends all over the place … But with Betty and I, I think we’d pretty much row our arses off out on the water and anything goes in a competitive sense, but once we were off the water we’d just chat for hours about anything, even our mums and dads because we were both very close to our families.’ Carmen believes the bonds built through such intense experience – working together in the same boat but still needing to be highly competitive to make sure you have a spot in the big races – are completely different to the usual friendships. ‘They’re exceptional,’ she explains. ‘You’re in a situation where you’re putting pretty much everything that you are as a person, everything you’ve worked for, on the line. You put complete faith and trust in the people around you. You’re working towards a common goal and you’re so narrowly focused on it for such a long time that, for example, even our menstrual cycles come into sync. ‘You know the other people, you know their mood swings, you know the foods they like, the foods they don’t like. When they get cranky, you’ll know exactly what to say to them to help them out. You’ll know when to leave them alone. It’s like they’re your sisters without them actually being related. They’re your family for the time you’re in that situation and you can act up and treat your family terribly at times – but you know they’ll still be there because they’re your family.’ Carmen is another who remembers Amy’s delicate

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stomach and unusual eating habits. ‘Oh, my God, she was the slowest eater. It didn’t matter what it was, how big or small the meal, she’d still be going when everybody else had finished. And, as rowers, you’d just wolf down your food. It was quite disgusting, whereas Betty would be taking her time. Obviously, the rest of us would start picking at her plate and she wouldn’t have a bar of that. Then she had very particular tastes – as everybody will tell you. She’d always want something a bit different – she wasn’t pain-in-the-arse-type fussy, but there’d definitely be an “Oh, can I have this or maybe that on the side, please?”’ Delicate stomach aside, Carmen remembers Amy as a ‘tough nut’ – and one painful story from Europe after her switch to cycling underlines that claim. Carmen and her husband met up with her after she’d come off her bike during competition. ‘She had massive grazing, but she’d also needed stitches in her arm but then she couldn’t have anaesthetic because it was during competition. She told us how the doctor who stitched her couldn’t speak a word of English and so the amount of pain must have been … well, I can’t even imagine how much pain that would have been. And then there was the way she was telling this story, “Oh, have you seen my arm? I came off my bike”. And I said, “Oh, Betty, I’d be such a girl if that was me”. Then she said, “Yeah, they couldn’t give me any anaesthetic – and the doctor couldn’t understand English, but I’m pretty sure he understood the word ‘fuck’ by the time he’d finished stitching me up”. So I’ve got to say she was a tough, tough girl. She loved the whole competitive thing with cycling and turned it into a lifestyle, which made it even better for her.’

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An early sign of Amy’s cycling prowess came after she and Peta Coudraye had won rowing’s junior world pairs championship in Norway in 1993. They went out to celebrate in Oslo with Amy’s friend Sally Newmarch, who had finished second in the world junior singles. ‘So we went to a pub and were having a few drinks after we’d won and they had this cycling competition going in there,’ says Peta. ‘Apparently, there was also a world championship cycling meeting straight after our regatta and they had this contest set up where you could hop on a stationary bike and whoever recorded the fastest time would win tickets. They were really good tickets – box seats. So Amy hops on the bike, vroom goes the pedals – and she blitzed everyone in the place. All these people are hopping on then, going their hardest to beat her, but no one could come within a mile of her. ‘In a way I guess it’s quite ironic that she eventually did change over to cycling. I remember everybody there was amazed that night. Jaws just dropped when she did the damage she did – no one else stood a chance. And this was after a week of heavy rowing, we were pretty tired – and she’d had a few drinks …’ Peta laughs, ‘That probably made her go faster. The sponsors of the competition, well, they just loved her and were giving us all this merchandise. But we couldn’t go to the cycling because we were flying out to Paris. So Amy gave the tickets away, “Who wants them?” and they’re all yelling, “Me! Me!” I don’t think any of us realised what they were worth.’ Sally Newmarch, who had known Amy since they started rowing, agrees her friend might have become known as something of a princess for her fashion sense and stilettos, but as a schoolgirl rower she was a bit of a dag, if not a grub.

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‘On casual day at a private girls’ school everyone would wear labels, buy a new outfit to make a bit of a statement. But Amy would rock up in her floppy hockey socks and blue and white flip-flops, a pair of big baggy shorts and, like, a tank top. She was always willing to make a statement that she was confident just how she was – she didn’t need to try to be someone else.’ On a more serious note, Sally recalls seeing the Clint Eastwood–Hilary Swank Academy Award-winning movie Million Dollar Baby a few months before Amy’s death. About a female boxer who lives, and dies, chasing her dream, it was to have a profound effect on Sally, more so after what happened on that rural road in Germany. ‘I cried a lot because I could relate to it – just giving everything, even when people tell you you’re ridiculous,’ she says of the film and women like her who give everything for their sport. ‘And then when Amy died, I just thought so much about it because there she was – Amy was doing everything to go for her dream. The character reminded me so much of her – one girl and her dream. In the film, she’s so desperate for it and then she ends up dying … but she dies happy, almost, because she’s managed to do what she loved. Then I spoke to Simon and he said, “Yeah, that was Amy’s favourite movie, too”. I think the moral of the film is that the girl achieves more by taking on this dream, this risk if you like, than she would have if she had lived to be ninety years old. And maybe that was Amy – she achieved so much with her rowing and cycling. If she had been just a normal, average person living a normal, average life, she might not have achieved in ninety years what she had achieved in twenty-nine years.’

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Bronwyn Thompson had been in and out of rowing for a few years, had gone to cycling to regain her confidence and at the end of 1995 found herself at the AIS, having come back to rowing. ‘So I knew who Amy was because of the stories about her, some of which were quite legendary. But I’d never met her until then … I just remember being in awe of her. We were in the dining hall at the institute and she just gave me that big, friendly smile of hers and I thought, my perception was, well, she was just a nice person and I was thinking, well, she’s not going to bite my head off …’ It was the start of a lasting friendship and later the pair would move outside the institute, setting up in the flat behind the Katz home in Deakin. ‘We hit it off from day one and my season just got better and better and Amy had a pretty good year, too. So it was a good time for us when we’d come back from a regatta and we’d have achieved the result we wanted. I used to go out and celebrate while Amy tended to stay home where she’d have one glass of wine or something like that. Her focus was phenomenal. Whereas I was like, “No, this is my journey and I’m going to celebrate every little victory I have!” I remember one night I’d had a few drinks with a few of the other rowers who had been over. It was the end of the week, Saturday night or whatever, and I guess I’d had too many to go down to the supermarket to get another bottle of gin. So I sent Amy down to get the replacements and, anyway, she’s coming out of the supermarket and she runs into our coach. Then she has to explain to him somehow what she’s doing with the supplies. I can still imagine it now – she’s like, “No, no – it’s not for me …” I don’t think she knew what to say. Needless to say, we got a fair ribbing at training the next day.

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‘I look back on those times now and think, well, I was really lucky that I had that. Those days were probably our fondest memories because we spent twenty-four hours a day together … it was so good when we were selected in the eight because the coach would put us in a bow pair and we just had so many in-house jokes. It didn’t seem to matter how hard the training got, we’d always find something to laugh about. She was easy to get a laugh out of, too. It was addictive because you just wanted to say silly things to her to get her laughing.’ Another of Bronwyn’s memories is Amy’s seemingly endless phone conversations with her mother, Mary, back home in West Lakes. ‘They’d talk for hours and hours – and it was like, “What are you on about now?” And they’d be talking about the price of eggs in China. Somehow, Amy could turn that into an interesting phone conversation.’ Or, again, her shopping fixation – her Bargain Betty persona as Bronwyn remembers it. ‘I would be out with her for the day and we’d come back and I’m thinking, well, it’s been pretty mundane today … but she’d have her shopping bags and then she’d start recounting how she’d bought this and that, the great deal she’d managed to get on something else. Somehow, she’d manage to turn it all into a big adventure and a funny story and I’m left thinking … what?’ As with Carmen Wearne, Bronwyn says she and Amy reached an early understanding that rowing differences and rivalries wouldn’t intrude into their broader lives. ‘It was like, “Okay, you want to be really competitive, but that’s on the water stuff and when we’re off the water we’re so similar anyway”. In that sense, we were just so lucky. This [Amy’s

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death] has been so hard for me because I’ve had two really good girlfriends in my life and Amy was one of them. It’s like a lot of people say … you can count your real friends on one hand. You don’t know why, but you connect – and I was like that with Amy. ‘We might not have spoken for months and months and then we’d just pick up the conversation right where we’d left off. It wasn’t like I had to live in her pocket to feel I knew how she was going. But one thing I am thankful for is that the last time we were together I said to her, “Look, when we catch up, we don’t have to have any negative feelings because we don’t have a lot of time together any more. You don’t change and I don’t change and all we have to do is work out where we’re up to in our lives. You’re putting your energy into your cycling at the moment and I’m putting mine into my work and business”. ‘And I guess I thought there were always going to be those sorts of times in our lives. I spoke at her twenty-first and I spoke at her wedding. I always thought I’d be speaking at her fiftieth and then we’d end up wandering around the nursing home together. And then, you know, I thought we’d both probably have children and that would be another period of our lives. So it just makes me so sad. You just don’t think this is going to happen to anyone, especially someone so young and fit. So, yeah, like I said, there have been two girls that I’ve been really close to in my life. Amy was one of them – I don’t know why. She just was.’ Some of Amy’s London friends are to plant a tree in her memory. Fittingly, they plan it to be in Kensington Palace Gardens, next to where another princess, Diana, used to live.

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Carmen Wearne, Amy’s London-based rowing-mate, agrees this is a fitting location for someone who enjoyed playing the princess herself and who loved an occasion. ‘I mean, weddings … she would love to talk about brides. If there was a car with a bride-to-be in it, Betty was there.’

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A Personal View

When the telephone unexpectedly rings or there is a knock on the door before the sun has risen, you think instinctively that it can only be bad news. And so it had proved, as earlier described, for my brother, Denis, and his wife, Mary, on the morning of Tuesday, 19 July 2005, when they were told of Amy’s death. After the police officers, who had the onerous task of informing them, had departed their West Lakes home, Denis and Mary were left alone and, somehow, had to try to find some sort of meaning in what they had just been told – understanding it was well beyond them at that stage and remains so today. After Denis had phoned the Foreign Affairs Department in Canberra and had been told what little detail was available at that stage, he and Mary had the task of ringing the rest of their family scattered around Australia to tell them what seemed unbelievable. My call, as Denis’s younger brother – he had already 168

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phoned our older sister, Margaret Cocks, who lives in Adelaide – came about 7 a.m. Sydney time. My wife, Jennifer Gilbert, a journalist like me, answered the phone, which is located in our home office at the front of our Bondi Beach apartment. As is my lazy way, I was languishing in bed, half asleep and thinking about anything but facing a brand-new working day. She brought the phone to me and simply said, ‘It’s your brother’. I could see the concern on her face. Although Denis had told her nothing, she had caught the note of distress in his voice and, like me, was apprehensive about early morning phone calls. I sat up, took the phone and said hello. Denis, usually the calmest of people, certainly as far as our family was concerned, was indeed in a state of high distress. To this day, I remember his first words exactly. ‘There’s been a terrible accident. Amy’s been killed in Germany.’ I said, ‘What!’ or something similarly useless. I whispered to my wife what had happened. Her hand went to her mouth, disbelief now reflected on her face. Denis gave a few details about what had happened – I can’t remember any of them now – and I said something along the lines that we were so sorry and I would call him later. Then he was gone as quickly as he had come. From that moment on, it became a strange, disconnected sort of day that led into a strange, disconnected week. I told Jennifer the rest of what Denis had said and we both hovered about in a bit of a daze. I said I couldn’t face work that day and she suggested staying home, too, but in the end it was decided it was better if she went as there was nothing she could do just sitting around the apartment. Once she had left, I turned on the radio and television and fired up the Internet. Nothing, not a word, not a sound

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bite. Just the usual news of the day – hot-air politics, boring economics, footy players with groin strains, traffic reports, blah, blah, blah. Even in my disbelieving and somewhat dazed state, the news man of more than thirty years in me couldn’t help thinking … wait until this story gets out; it’s going to be massive. But I had no idea how massive. Somewhere around 8.30 a.m., I walked down the corner to Bondi Beach to check the surf, something I do by habit most mornings, even if only in the car on the way to the office. It was crud – a metre or so of junk dropping on shallow, uneven sandbars. But even Bondi, supposedly Australia’s most famous beach, these days over-run by drunken British backpackers and more self-appointed beautiful people than you can fit into a hundred tanning salons, always manages to soothe the soul. There’s something about its wash of water on sand and the sun bringing the promise of a new day. The coming together of the elements in such a way induces a sense of calm, even if there was an overriding uneasiness to it on this morning. After buying coffee and a newspaper, I started back up Hall Street, the beach’s main business strip, towards home. On the way, I met a neighbour, who was wheeling his toddler daughter in her pusher on one of their numerous outings to the beach. For some reason, I felt obliged to tell him what had happened. He, of course, was genuinely shocked, offered his condolences and wished me well. What else could he say? Nothing. It was a reaction that I would encounter a lot over the next few days. In my time as a young newspaper reporter, back in the wild old days of the afternoon tabloids, I had knocked on

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my share of doors to ask a grieving father or mother, son or daughter how he or she felt about the death of a family member in some horrific incident. Sometimes they would slam the door in my face, sometimes they would invite me inside and proceed to tell every possible detail. We called these assignments ‘death knocks’ and they were simply part of the rough and tumble of the job back then. That’s changed now with hindsight being a wonderful thing, of course. The media, for all its self-importance, is somewhat more empathetic these days, although there are still those who can’t wait to barge into others’ real-life distress and dress it up as lowest common denominator entertainment. Still, remembering what it had been like to be the interloper all those years ago, it was a telling experience to be on the other side for a change. But these first few days were to prove bewildering in an even more personal way that left me feeling inadequate, guilty even, because while as a family member I felt part of what had happened I also felt outside of it. While I was cut by it, I knew I could never know what Denis and Mary and their older daughter, Georgina, a newspaper colleague of mine based in Melbourne, and Simon, who now had to face going to Germany to bring Amy home, were truly feeling. They were inside what had happened and were being torn by every moment of it. The rest of us in the family, well, we were there somewhere … but not in the darkest of places where they were. Still, I’m not so full of myself to think there was something extraordinary about how I was feeling in any of this. From the

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high-profile Bali bombings to the thousand-plus annual road fatalities around Australia that rate no more than a paragraph deep inside a newspaper, there are the countless many who have faced the shock of the totally unexpected, violent death of someone close. And, like the Bali deaths, Amy’s would be played out in public. Back home, I turned the radio, television and Internet back on. Still nothing. Then somewhere after 9 a.m., Sydney time, I saw a brief Internet item. From memory, it was on the ABC News Radio website. It was no more than a line about an Australian female cyclist being killed in Germany. There was no name and the story would be updated as information came to hand, the report said. And then it exploded. Within thirty minutes, the story was everywhere – radio, TV and the Internet. This was ‘breaking news’, constantly being updated, one sound bite leading to the next, most of it right, some of it wrong, all of it building into a mass of words and images that overwhelmed any other story that day. Amy’s name and photograph were, of course, at the centre of it as rival news outlets scrambled to build profiles of her and the injured girls. The reality was, of course, that these were not big-name athletes, not household heroes. Amy might have been an Olympian but it was as a member of a rowing crew that had made a final without winning a medal – and that had been eight years before. Beyond the ‘Oarsome Foursome’, who had scored a TV advertising campaign for a brand of canned fruit, rowing was hardly the sort of activity you took up, in Australia at least, if you wanted a mainstream media profile. Amy had given everything for that sport and it had given her

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major victories while taking her around the world many times, but to the great Australian sports-watching public she remained all but anonymous. If she wanted fame and fortune, changing to cycling was probably a tad better bet. Following in the slipstream of Kathy Watt, who had won Australian female cycling’s first Olympic gold medal at Barcelona in 1992, road racer Sara Carrigan and time trialist Anna Meares had built profiles for themselves after doing the same at Athens in 2004. But in Australia, sports such as rowing and cycling are never about fame and fortune, certainly not for women and especially not for Amy who had her own set of motivations. In cycling, for example, fame was for someone like Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. He even had a rock-star girlfriend, Sheryl Crow. That’s real fame – even though Lance and Sheryl have since pedalled off in opposite directions with the world’s media in hot pursuit. Perhaps more precisely, gossipcolumn fame is what rates in the modern world of ten-second attention spans. So why was the media beast that gave next to no space and time to rowing and cycling – at least between Olympic and Commonwealth Games, unless it involved scandal, usually alleged drug-taking – now devouring every scrap it could find out about these six girls it had never heard of? Sitting there, watching this stuff scroll off Internet sites, not only in this country but around the world, turned out to be a revelation, even for a media cynic like me. Over the coming days, it would become apparent that a chord had been touched, an emotion had been reached somewhere deep inside a lot of people who had never heard of Amy and her team-mates. Again, why?

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No doubt it had something to do with the fact that these girls were over there somewhere, far from home, representing us, ordinary Australians. They weren’t there on a package holiday, or backpacking their way through a northern summer, or attending a German beer festival to get drunk and have a wild time – they were a group of everyday Australian girls with anything but everyday abilities and an ambition to do something certainly for themselves and their team – and, therefore, for us. If that sounds corny, so be it. Whatever our belief systems, whatever our political masters do to manipulate us, whatever our socio-economic circumstances, the majority of Australians – not all of us, but most of us – are still able to believe that this is a pretty good place. Those never-ending Qantas ads about still calling Australia home, set to a tune by Peter Allen, a song and dance man who just happened to call the United States home, might have seen better days, but the majority of us still believe in their sentiment, no matter how cheesy it might seem. And when our best and brightest go away to represent us, we wish them well. So when a tragedy, such as that which was unfurling on our Internet screens and blaring out of radios and televisions that morning, happens … well, we all pause, for a moment at least. Within half an hour of the news breaking, I was receiving calls from the media, principally people I knew. Understandably, my brother and his wife weren’t in any condition to say anything, even if they had wanted to, as news crews parked outside in what was normally their peaceful suburban street. Their surviving daughter Georgina was, just as understandably, in a state of shock. I had no idea about

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Simon’s situation in Ballarat. I felt like telephoning him, but I knew there would be plenty of others closer to him than me doing that already. The truth was that I did not know Simon particularly well. Indeed, I no longer felt that I knew Amy in much more than an occasional uncle meets niece sense. I had lived in Sydney for twenty years, having left Adelaide when she was nine. Over the years, I would see her at infrequent Christmas visits back there and a couple of these in later years included Simon. But in recent times, I had only seen her at her wedding in January 2004 and a year later at the funeral of her grandfather, my father, Jack Safe, a great bloke and an equally great fan of Amy’s. She was among the grand-children who had read lessons at his service. Ours was like many modern families – we had scattered far and wide. My sister, Margaret, had lived in Syria for more than a decade, her three children now spread across Australia, although she was back in Adelaide and working as a teacher. I was in Sydney where my son, Nathan, by my first marriage, was now a Qantas pilot on jumbo jets. Half the time, I never knew where he was – London, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, or numerous places between. Denis was the one who had kept the home fires burning, although his two daughters had moved away. Whenever you’d phone, which was less frequently than it should have been, there would always be some story about Amy being off in some faraway place on some new athletic adventure. Weddings, funerals and the occasional Christmas – like the Hugh Grant movie Four Weddings and a Funeral – these milestones of lives were when I tended to see Amy. So I would

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be a liar if I claimed that on the morning of her death I had some clarifying insight into her life and especially her time with Simon. But as others have already remarked, there was an easiness to her, an ability to pick up the bits and pieces of lives from a year or two ago, as if the last get-together was only the day before. She loved a chat and a gossip. So when reporters started phoning me, asking for photographs and comments about her life, I was left feeling somewhat inadequate. I remember calling Denis and saying this was happening, but he was in no state to advise on what to do, what he and Mary might want. Finally, I gave a few harmless quotes to my newspaper, The Australian, and in the afternoon did two television interviews simply because someone from the family had to say something. The TV crews were respectful, undemanding even, but then, as already suggested, I was a step removed from being truly inside the story. A day later, I flew down to Adelaide to see Denis and Mary, my editors saying take off as much time as needed. After meeting and hugging them on their doorstep, I went inside the house to find a carpet of flowers. Every fifteen minutes, a delivery man from a florist shop seemed to arrive with a new bunch. Bouquets of every colour and size spilled out of the living room into the kitchen. There were scores of cards, letters and messages scattered across tables and desks, and they would keep coming for weeks. The phone rang every time it was put back on the hook and there was an endless procession through the door of friends and acquaintances of Denis and Mary and training partners and former team-mates of Amy. It was all pretty raw and emotional, but it seemed

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beneficial that it was busy like that – not too much time to think, not too much time alone. That night we had a family meal at my sister’s home – Margaret, me, Denis and Mary, Georgina and her partner, Daniel New, a book designer and artist, who had been at her side throughout. There were a few emotional meltdowns, but it was a night that was needed to bring us together and steel Denis, Mary and Georgina for the difficult days to come. Margaret reminded us of a pledge that had been made at our father’s wake only six months before and that had now been reinforced in the most graphic way. Whenever we gathered as a family group from far and wide we would offer a toast to absent friends, old and young. And so we raised our glasses that night. Amy’s funeral was held in Ballarat on a cool but bright Friday, 29 July 2005, eleven days after her death and four days after Simon returned from Germany with her body. Jennifer and I flew down to Melbourne that morning, hired a car and picked up Georgina and Daniel at the airport. The most notable point of the drive to Ballarat was that we missed the appropriate turn off to the freeway and spent fifteen minutes lost in the western suburbs of Melbourne. It was a moment of light relief. The service was in Doveton Park Funeral Centre on the outskirts of the central Victorian town and, depending on what media report you believe, there were either 300 or 1000 mourners. It was probably about 700, including Federal Sports Minister, Rod Kemp, chairman of the Australian Sports Commission, Peter Bartels, and chief executive officer

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of Cycling Australia, Graham Fredericks. There were a lot of Olympians, rowers and cyclists apparently, but mainly it seemed a blur of faces. The ABC had an outside broadcasting unit present and there was the expected posse of reporters and photographers. Inside, there was a large portrait of Amy hanging above her track racing bike, the surroundings decked with pink and white roses. The service started with the Byrds’ hit from the 1960s ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ The song was originally adapted from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible’s Old Testament by American folksinger and activist Pete Seeger. I’m supposing this was my brother’s request as it was a favourite way back when and its tone suggests that life is a journey through both good and bad, a journey that’s about celebrating and enduring. And, indeed, this might have been a day to endure, but it was also a day to celebrate a young life that had been anything but ordinary. Also to feature musically was ‘Throw Your Arms around Me’ written by Mark Seymour for his seminal Australian rock band, Hunters & Collectors. It was a favourite of Amy’s and it’s a song that works on a couple of levels, either as a good old sing-along – imagine it after a rowing or cycling event and a few drinks – or as a love song. On this day it was, of course, as the latter. Denis and Mary both addressed the mourners. Denis told of how Amy, on one of her daily five-hour training rides while home in Adelaide, had met an old bloke trundling along on his bicycle. Slowing down, she got to talking to him and he offered all sorts of advice on how to improve her riding. ‘Amy said, “I think he just wanted someone to talk to”,’ Denis

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recalled. And she was happy to be that person, that listener. But the loss of a daughter was forever in his mind. ‘The tragedy that has fallen on our family is unbearable. And the pain is never-ending. But I hope the love and support Mary, George [Georgina], Simon and I have received from both friends and strangers will help us on … We’ve asked ourselves how could this terrible tragedy have happened to us, a simple family living a simple life, but there are no answers, just the pain and our remaining family of three united in our grief.’ Mary said there were two words to be used in remembering Amy – love and optimism. ‘Amy was always looking onwards and upwards. And this is the foundation of our memories.’ She recalled the message she had left on their West Lakes answering machine the day she left for Germany – her last words to them. ‘It was along these lines, “Hi, Mum and Dad, sorry I missed you. I’ve just woken up and read all the texts you sent me about your holiday. Today we’re flying to Germany. [They ended up driving.] I’m really looking forward to the time trial and I’m feeling so good. My body feels right and my head is strong. I’ll text you the results as soon as I can and phone you later in the week. Lots of love to you both …”’ Rachael Kininmonth, who rowed with Amy and for Australia and who had been a bridesmaid at her wedding to Simon eighteen months before, was moved to tears – as were many in the crowd – as she placed a tiara on Amy’s Olympicflag-draped coffin. Amy had worn the tiara on that brilliant January afternoon the year before, her happiest day. As is the way with athletes, they can’t help but tell stories at one another’s expense – and Rachael, lapsing between tears and

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smiles, told how Amy, nicknamed either ‘Betty’ or ‘Princess’, always aimed for the bow seat in any boat she rowed because she’d be the first over the finish line. She called it the ‘sun deck’ and treated it accordingly. Rachael further told how Amy would also always claim front seat in any team van. It might have been that she was a good navigator but she also had the smallest bladder in the world that called for numerous stops and quick exits. Oh, yes, she was also prone to travel sickness. ‘You were the most committed friend … in my heart I haven’t let you go,’ Rachael concluded. ‘Ride on the rainbows, Betty. Now the halos will protect you.’ Pastor Murray Lydeamore, the AIS cycling chaplain, and Monsignor Henry Nolan, of the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, then offered a final blessing: May the road rise to meet us May the wind be always at our backs May the sunshine warm upon our faces The rain fall soft upon our fields And until we meet again May God hold us in the palm of his hand. To the baroque strains of Pachelbel’s Canon, the coffin was carried outside to a waiting hearse. Simon and his son, Rhys, led the pallbearers who included my son, Nathan, representing the Safe side of the family. They passed through an arch of honour formed by rowers and cyclists with raised oars and bicycle wheels. There was then a private ceremony at the nearby crematorium. Later, we gathered at the Golden City Hotel in Ballarat’s

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picturesque main street for a wake cum memorial service catered for by the Australian Sports Commission. The old hotel, with its wide verandahs and polished wood, was a regular haunt of Simon and Amy when they were in town and it was appropriate that athletes mixed with officials, family members and friends in what was a determinedly upbeat occasion. Television news reader George Donikian, who was engaged to Simon’s sister, Di – they have since married – acted as master of ceremonies. Along with a message of tribute and support from Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, the five survivors of the crash, all at that stage still in hospital in Germany, sent a message that was read by former Australian track cyclist Rosalie Hubbard, another with whom Amy had more than a few adventures around the world. ‘Thanks, Ames. We want to share with everyone what a delightful, fun-loving great friend and team-mate you have been to all of us. No words can express what we are feeling … Just a few habits, Amy, we will never forget – your excessive amount of anchovy consumption, your love of Lambrusco, and we can’t forget the gelati, your coffee addiction in the morning to kick-start your day, your love of pink and your ritual of being a cleaning freak, your colourful headband fascination and, most of all, your passion to achieve in life. Lots of things happen for which we have no explanation. We love you always.’ Tammie Ebert, the AIS physiologist and Amy’s oldest friend from West Lakes, told how their lives had continually intertwined since childhood. This included spending time on the European cycling circuit during the northern summer where Amy was forever on to her for any tips, hints or suggestions

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that could give her an edge. But it was Tammie’s memories of their days together as little girls – much of it told earlier in this story – that hushed the crowd. There was laughter as Tammie explained their unique way of playing two-girl netball, their then favourite sport, and how they both ended up with the nickname ‘Mich’. ‘Amy and I were netball hopefuls, actually it was more like I was the wanna-be and she was the star, who used to play in the front yard. The only problem was that there was just her and I and you need seven for a team. So to overcome this she played goal scorer, wing attack, wing defence and goal keeper and I played goal attack, centre and goal defence. During those netball days, Michelle Fielke, the then Australian captain, was our idol so we called ourselves Mich. The ball moved down the court with ease as Mich passed to Mich who passed to Mich and then Mich scored the goal. We represented Australia and always played Jamaica and, of course, we always won.’ Olympic rower Bronwyn Thompson, who is credited with dubbing Amy ‘Betty’ – another of her seemingly endless list of nicknames – told how this came about. With Amy’s middle name being Elizabeth, they became firm friends when on scholarships at the AIS. They regularly roomed together on rowing trips and for a while shared a flat behind the Katz family’s home in Deakin – just up the road from the Prime Minister’s Lodge, a considerable step-up from the ‘cell block’ accommodation at the sports institute. Part of their shared sense of oddball humour was a liking for the British TV sitcom Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em with Michael Crawford as the ever-bumbling Frank and Michelle Dotrice as his longsuffering wife, Betty. So Amy Elizabeth immediately became

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‘Betty’ and Bronwyn became ‘Frank,’ much to the confusion of their team-mates until this bit of quirkiness was explained to them. Bronwyn, who now runs an injury rehabilitation clinic in Canberra, is able to see the funny side of most situations, but she became deadly serious when discussing Amy’s commitment to her sport. She recounted how one coach in the run up to the Sydney Olympics had dared to suggest to Amy that in this physiologically based sporting world of laboratory measurement and testing her heart was literally too small. Amy’s curt reply was something along the lines, ‘Well, what the fuck can I do about that!’ Bronwyn made the point, as have many others in this story, that anyone who climbed in a boat with Amy knew there was never going to be less than 100 per cent and she would not be found wanting in the heart department – she had the biggest ticker of all in that sense. Simon was the last to speak and made it clear that he wanted the day, or at least this part of it, to be about the happy moments, not the down ones. As is his way, he then proceeded to tell a range of off-the-cuff stories, more than a few of which were good-heartedly at Amy’s expense – her gullibility that led to numerous practical jokes; her peculiar eating habits where every restaurant menu came under close scrutiny and where most mouthfuls, unless they were from the sweets list, took forever to swallow; and her susceptibility to seasickness on anything but the smoothest water, surely not a good sign for a rower battling a stiff headwind. And finally, ‘I think she got more beautiful with every year … that’s the way that I’m going to remember her’.

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For me, that day in Ballarat was to end a little strangely. As a writer for The Australian Magazine in The Weekend Australian, the national newspaper, I had been working on a story about how MasterFoods, the Australian makers of universally loved Mars and Snickers chocolate bars, had coped with an extortion threat against its products in New South Wales. The threat had led to millions of chocolates being cleared from store shelves across the state. As part of my story, it was suggested by company management that I should visit the Mars and Snickers factory and key distribution centre that just happened to be in Ballarat. So later that day, I left the wake and went to the factory on the outskirts of town. There, wearing a hard hat and white coat, I was shown over the premises by a very accommodating manager. On leaving, he gave me two large bags of Mars and Snickers products, which we duly ate on the drive back to Melbourne the next morning. It was all a little surreal. But you couldn’t help thinking that Amy, known for her sweet tooth, would have approved. The next Friday, 5 August, there was a second service. This time it was at the Adelaide Super-Drome indoor bicycle track in the northern suburbs of the South Australian capital, a venue where Amy had ridden many a lap. The South Australian Premier, Mike Rann, and Governor, former Olympic sprint star Marjorie Jackson-Nelson, whose late husband Peter Nelson had been an Olympic cyclist, spoke glowingly of Amy and her contribution to the state’s sporting record. Tammie Ebert spoke again and her father, Russell Ebert, the football champion, also recalled their families growing

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up together in Oakmount Court – the reserve at one end set aside for footy and cricket matches that seemed to last all day and the enticing green expanses of the Grange golf course to be explored at the other. Three-time Olympian Sally Newmarch, Amy’s Annesley College friend with whom she had embarked on her rowing adventure, spoke also, bringing a burst of laughter with her recounting of Amy’s Year Twelve book project based on her ‘Bible’ – Lisa Curry’s Total Health and Fitness. A large contingent from Annesley was among the 500 people gathered inside the Super-Drome. Mary spoke again as did Simon, sporting a shocking pink tie – another symbol of Amy’s favourite colour. He spoke of their eleven years together and revealed, ‘My greatest joy in life was to see that smile of hers’. The Adelaide ceremony was low key but just as emotionally charged as the week before in Ballarat. This was more a family and friends affair – those who had known Denis and Mary and, of course, Amy and Georgina since childhood. The sporting symbolism was still a powerful presence, but this was just as much about neighbours, school-mates, colleagues and friends – those the family had rubbed up against in their everyday lives and who had come to love Amy for the person she was. Her sporting prowess was just part of that. Premier Rann announced a $50 000 donation to the Amy Gillett Foundation from his government, an amount matched by his Victorian counterpart, Premier Steve Bracks, on the same day. By this time, leading cycling organisations, including the national lobby group, the Bicycle Federation of Australia, and the sporting arm, Cycling Australia, had also given to the cause. Later, the Prime Minister, John

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Howard, would announce a $50 000 grant from the federal government. On a big screen backdrop there was a message from the Australian Defence Force cycling team, ‘As ancient Egyptians used to say for their kings, let’s not remember how Amy Gillett died. Let us remember how she lived – that is how her name and fighting spirit will never be forgotten’. That was accompanied by a second message, ‘Farewell, Amy … may all your rides be in fair weather, calm winds and may all your races be victories’.

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A Pink Balloon

As the numbness and disbelief continued in the weeks and then months following Amy’s death, her mother woke from another night of fitful sleep to open the curtains of their West Lakes lounge room on a new day. Out in the front courtyard, tangled among the plants and foliage was a large, fully inflated pink balloon. Pink, as already recounted several times, was Amy’s favourite colour. Mary Safe turned to her husband, Denis, and could only ask, ‘Where did that come from?’ He had no idea either. ‘There hadn’t been any parties in the street,’ Mary recalls. ‘Nothing at all. And we’ve got quite a tall front courtyard wall. So how did that balloon get in there? I was just standing there, staring at it and the whole thing started to fill me with such joy. I don’t know what anybody else thinks about that and I don’t really care, but I took comfort from it. So we left the balloon out there and it gradually deflated. But it’s still out there. I know that sounds crazy …’ 187

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Suddenly, signs – even a lone pink balloon – mean everything. Mary finds herself looking at pink flowers, finding something of her daughter in their beauty. She tells a story of how she and Denis were driving to Ballarat from South Australia for Amy’s funeral when they saw a rainbow covering the sky as if it was showing them the way. ‘When we got there and I spoke to Max and Margo Gillett, Simon’s father and mother, they told me that when they drove up from Geelong to Ballarat they’d also seen a rainbow. Then Rach [Rachael Kininmonth] when she was making her speech at the service made reference to Betty [Amy] riding over the rainbow. Back at Simon and Amy’s home that night, I was talking to Rach and said, “Did you know Denis and I saw this absolutely beautiful rainbow coming in to Ballarat?” Well, we both just broke down at that and she said, “I had no idea”. Again, it was like some sort of sign, something that we could just hold on to that meant something to all of us.’ As is her meticulous way, Mary started to keep a list of these signs, coincidences perhaps. ‘There are a lot of triggers. Some give you feelings of happiness and others bring you sadness. So that’s just there on your shoulders all the time. But you do still see the beauty in things around you. It’s not like we hate the world or anything. We just have a different perspective now. Perhaps we’ve learned to cut through the crap to what’s important – let’s get to the real stuff.’ Denis, forever the practical one, says it’s about being brought more in touch with everyday things, ‘It certainly brings out the raw side of your emotions’. Mary tells of a friend she simply calls Anna who had undergone a major operation and who, like Denis and Mary,

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was facing a daunting year. She came to their door soon after Amy’s death when the house was full of visitors. ‘She said, “I’ve got these words – I don’t like to use the word prayer because I’m not a religious person – but in my difficult times I read them before I get out of bed in the morning. Would you like to have them?” I said, “Well, yes, Anna, I would”. Because there were people with us, she didn’t want to come in, but said she’d leave them in the letterbox – which she did later. And they were perfect. I’d say them in the morning. Denis would ask me, “Have you said those words to yourself today?” They say … “Give me the grace to get through this day – not for a life-time, not for a year, not for tomorrow, but just this day”. They go on … “Bless my thoughts, my actions, every thing I do and say, but I just need that strength to get me through this day”. And I guess I clung on to those words and their thoughts and they were a help. So it’s those little things that can mean something.’ Speaking on behalf of the rowers and cyclists, the family and friends that Amy touched during her twenty-nine years, Rachael Kininmonth explains it best when she says her friend and team-mate through the good and bad, the losing as well as the winning, had many qualities, but most of all she had a good heart. ‘I recognised that about her right from the start and, hopefully, she saw that in me, too. I think that’s what drew people to her. She was very real and very grounded. There was no bullshit about Amy and so you didn’t have to fluff around with her … You could tease her and make fun of her and she’d take it the right way and make it even funnier. She was a real character with a real personality – the whole

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Princess thing – but she was very light-hearted about that, too. She had her life worked out in so many ways. She knew the priorities – friends, family, Simon and being happy. It was like she’d found the recipe to a successful life. Loads of people say, “Oh, I just want to be happy” but they don’t know how to do it. Amy knew how to do it – she’d certainly found that recipe. People talk about not wanting to die wondering and Amy was never going to die wondering because she pushed herself in so many respects. She was pursuing her dreams, everything she wanted to do. I used to say to her, “Why are you doing all this study on top of all the other stuff you’ve got going on?” and her answer was that she loved it all. She loved being challenged in every part of her life – and so the life she led was fantastic.’ In conducting the interviews for this book across five states and two continents, it was astonishing how many people remarked that it didn’t seem as if the Amy they knew and loved had really died on some rural road in a faraway country. They still expected her to come breezing through their doors and back into their lives any time soon. This was how she had lived for the last decade at least – here, there and everywhere, a few stories to catch up, some laughs, a friendship renewed and then she was gone again on to the next adventure. The first person to mention this was eightyear-old Josephine, the daughter of Rod Katz and Vida Vilrunas in Canberra and the flower girl at Amy’s wedding to Simon. Another was Russell Ebert, the football star who had watched her grow up all those years ago with his own highachieving daughter, Tammie, in Oakmount Court in suburban West Lakes. So from a little girl, who had kept a scrapbook of

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Amy’s exploits, to the sporting hero, who had won the highest accolades, Amy came to touch many and varied lives – and even more so with her shocking passing. But as her friend, Rachael, remarked at her funeral service, she’s sure to be riding the rainbows – and no doubt the spirit of this girl from ordinary circumstances who came to create an extraordinary life is still out there somewhere going harder and higher than any other.

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From her high school years onwards, Amy spent considerable time away from home. Rowing took her, at first, interstate and then overseas. And so it was later with cycling. She loved the travel – well, most of the time – but at heart she remained a homebody. According to Mary Safe, Christmas was her favourite occasion and was meant to be spent with family and friends at home, either at West Lakes or, later, Mt Helen. From the start and, indeed, before she was away for months at a time, she was a keen writer of letters, cards and notes to all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons – and sometimes no reason at all. For her it was the thought that counted. What follows here is a selection of that correspondence covering the years and many occasions – from the good to the not so good. Her words are those of a girl and later a woman who had more on her mind than a clichéd ‘wish you were here’.

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This letter was written to her mother while Amy was still at primary school. It’s funny and it’s touching – but once she gets to her point she surely makes it. The spelling and punctuation, as in all the letters here, are hers: To mum Hi, how are you. I hope you had a good night. Get any more chocolates? Guess what! Tam [Tammie Ebert] and I saw Jenny Craig (you know weight loss centre)! We go the thrill of our lives. We yelled out the window of the car and she waved. Aren’t we lucky? It’s not every day that you get to meet Jenny in person. Netball was fun apart from playing G.K. [goal keeper]. Here’s a joke … You know the Bulldogs [footy team] … wear could they go if they got dumped or beat? The RSPCA! How funny. Mrs Noblet wasn’t at school today either. We had some else who was quite good. I have a problem. Mum, I dread each Wednesday now cause of callisthenics. I really don’t like it now. I know I sound like a winger and a pain but I don’t enjoy it anymore. If I did get picked for S.A. netball (I know I won’t) but if I did I would have too much with homework and everything else. I suppose it’s a bit late to stop now. I already feel really tired in the afternoon at school and sometimes feel I could go to sleep. I know I made a commitment and I have to stick with it but I really well and truly hate it. I’m sick of it. I’m really sorry if I sound like a winger and pain in the neck. Please think about it. This year in school I want to get good grades and a good report and I’m not just saying that. I really do want to try a lot harder. Guess what? Today at school we hardly did any work at all

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only our calendars and sewing and we also sang to the parents club. It was okay. We learnt the time in German. The time for five past five = ‘est ist furf noch furf’. It is five past five. Well I guess I better go. Good night mum. Sweet dreams. Lots and lots of love. PS, I love you! XXX This undated card was sent early on during her initial stay at the AIS in Canberra. It was to Mary for Mother’s Day, an occasion Amy never forgot wherever she was in the world. It also contained a line about her mother making sure she was relaxed – a common theme in Amy’s correspondence: Dear Mum Wishing you a very happy Mother’s Day. I hope you have a relaxing day and take it easy because you deserve a rest. I thought that this card was really appropriate and it was the very first card that I picked up! Pretty good hey! I hope all is well in West Lakes and everyone is good. Hi to Dad and George as I’m sure they will read this. Canberra is fine and the AIS is terrific in terms of everything being on your front doorstep from uni to the cappuccino machine in the dining room! You will have to come and visit and come to the dining room for dinner. Say hi to Gran, Nanna and Pop for me and I will try and write to them soon. Well anyway once again have a great day Mum and I will be thinking of you, although I can’t be there. Lots of love always. XXX

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Dated September 1995, this card displays a growing depth of thought and seriousness as the battle for places in the rowing crews for the Atlanta Olympics the following year gained intensity. But, as always, home – where this card was written – was never far from her thoughts: To Mum and Dad I just wanted to let you both know how wonderful it has been to come home and spend time with you both. I hope you both know now where I’m at and where I’m hoping to go. It would be so wonderful to stay here at my home with both of you but maybe for me that would be giving in. It’s definitely tough on all of us me coming and going all the time, but I guess the things that are worth the most don’t come without a sacrifice and easily. It makes it so wonderful to know that I can come home at any time to both of you and West Lakes. Rowing is obviously a big part of my life and I’m chasing dreams like never before now that things are even tougher – and I won’t give in without a fight. However, rowing isn’t everything. Family is more!! I hope I can achieve a good balance in my life of both of these. Looking forward to talking on the phone (Sundays maybe … it’s cheaper!!) and hearing all the news. Thanks for everything. All my love. XXX However, it wasn’t all happiness and light. In this undated card Amy expresses her regret for not having told her parents about her developing relationship with Simon, an omission that came to weigh heavily on both daughter and parents.

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Dear Mum, Dad and George I just wanted to let you all know that I’m thinking about you all and all that has happened. It’s hard to say anything in a card but I really wanted to let you all know that I love you all and I’m sorry I lied to you. As my stars said Mum: ‘It’s not what lies behind or in front of you, it’s what lies within.’ Speak to you all soon. Lots of love. XXX This card from June 1996 represents a happy day indeed. Amy had just learned she had made the Olympic team for Atlanta – but was still able to put it into perspective: Dear Mum and Dad I found this card and thought you would like it with the nautical, ocean look. Today is Sunday 9th June, we raced yesterday. I guess for me one of the best parts about yesterday was being able to call both of you and say that YES! Finally I’m going to the Olympic Games. I think it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and I cannot wait. We had today off and went swimming in the lake – it was very hot! Tonight there was a thunder storm with which everyone’s mood seemed to change. We are all now coming down off the high of yesterday and I feel strangely very flat and a little depressed. Everyone I guess is very tired, mentally more than physically, and that flat feeling is inevitable. While being away is great fun it’s times like this tonight that are tough – when you want to be around family and friends. So I thought I’d write in the card and it would make it a bit better. I got a really nice fax from Simon and I’m really happy as

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he is over the moon for me which means a great deal. I will slowly try to fax to people like Mich, Hele and Jane to let them know. Hope all is well at home. Bron’s dad came over for the regatta. It’s so great that you both can come to Atlanta and we will definitely give you something great to watch. Mum, now you can have that duty free Baileys!! We are off to Germany tomorrow and then race in Amsterdam and then on to Atlanta for training and then it all begins. We all get to move into the Olympic Village in the 2nd week. How fantastic! I guess I still can’t believe it. I had three goals this year. 1. To get a seat in the eight. 2. To go to the Olympics. 3. To win an Olympic medal. Two of these goals I have with one remaining to achieve. I think for all of us none of this has been easy, but now more than ever I believe the great things in life are never achieved without a struggle!! Will have to go. Pack your bags for Atlanta!! Lots of love. XXX After the Atlanta Games – with the women’s eight finishing fifth, the best ever result by an Australian women’s eight at an Olympics, but still failing to achieve the third of Amy’s dreams for 1996 – she sent Mary this birthday card: Dear Mum Wishing you a wonderful somewhat belated birthday! I hope your day was fantastic although probably very jet lagged. I think so far 1996 has been a fantastic year for all of us. Going to the Olympics was fantastic but being able to have Dad and you to share it with me was beyond words. The

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special experience we have all just had will stay with us for years. It was real – but what dreams are made of!! Well, thanks so much for all the support, love and care you have always given me and now as I begin to work things out I am so thankful for the wisdom and advice you give to me. This at present is worth more than anything. Let’s enjoy the rest of the year as more exciting things happen!! Happy birthday Mum!! All my love. XXX In 1998, the women’s eight finished fourth in the world championships in Germany and Amy was determined to push on to Sydney 2000, the dream for any elite athlete. But it was proving to be a hard road as this undated card hinted: Dear Mum and Dad Just a quick note to say hello and goodbye. I hope you kind of like the card. I know it’s a little rude [the message read ‘Arrivederci – That’s Italian for “Shit, I’m gonna miss you!”’] but with Bron and her Italian in my ear I just couldn’t go past it. Many thanks for all your invaluable support and encouragement this year. Making the team in 1998 was so important to me and now that the time has come to perform I want more than anything to make the people close to me proud and happy. Canberra, well actually Empire Circuit [the home of her friends Rod and Vida], has been home away from home which has helped West Lakes, both of you and Maxi [the family dog] not seem so far away. I am looking forward immensely to going away and regardless of all the idiots we have to deal with I am confident

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that the eight will perform beyond expectations. Well, thank you both again for never being more than a phone call away to listen to my winging – and that is something I will never take for granted. Have a great next four weeks. I’m thinking of home constantly somewhere in my thoughts. See you soon!! All my love. XXX Often far from home and struggling to keep her spirit and place in the crew, a girl’s truest friend remained her mother – as this undated birthday card posted from somewhere in Europe suggests: Dear Mum I have no idea when this card will reach you. Hopefully, it will be early rather than late. Wishing you a wonderful birthday for the 3rd of August. I saw this card in a little village and thought it was perfect for you. Although I cannot be with you on your birthday my thoughts are with you as they are every day. We have recently been through so much together – well, I guess all four of us. You amaze me with your strength and courage to deal with things and face the problems that life presents us. I sometimes wish I could be more like you and develop those same qualities. Hopefully some day I will. Thank you for being so supportive over the past six months especially when I have been struggling with myself and the ability to accept how I feel. I only wish I had come to you and Dad sooner. Next time I will. I hope through my rowing I can make you and Dad and George proud of me and that I can

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somehow fit back into a normal lifestyle and create a quality life just as you and Dad have when it’s all over. Well, I hope you have a relaxing day and my thoughts will be with you although I can’t be. Missing you and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Sending lots and lots of love with all my heart. XXX This card, written after missing Olympic selection in 2000, was sent before Amy and Simon embarked on their journey of discovery to the remote stretches of Cape York. It contains a hint of the bitter disappointing she was feeling after failing to make the team – but she still searched for a positive: ‘2000’ – looking forward to 2001 more than I can say!! Dear Mum Wishing you a very happy birthday and a relaxing, peaceful day. Once again, I will not be with you on this special day, but as always, no matter how much distance separates us, you are always in my thoughts and heart. I will try and call from some remote town probably on my way up to Cape York. As you know, I am finding it easiest to be busy right now, as I’m sure you are as well. Often too much time to think is not a good thing. Anyway, I hope you like the small gift. It should give you some good memories. Happy birthday to a mum who is truly fantastic! All my love. XXX By the end of 2000, the disappointment had been dealt with and it was a matter of getting on with life:

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Dear Mum Well, what a year, another Christmas and another year gone. (Thank goodness.) I think it’s been a year in which nothing went according to plan – for any of us. The rowing dream I had was not just mine. I know that you and Dad shared and lived it with me. Disappointment sucks!! But I guess my life will have some others (disappointments) as well. I want to thank you so much for your love and support. Words don’t really describe my gratitude. I have learnt an awful lot this year and most of all I learnt that without family and friends you don’t have much. Have a very merry Christmas and wonderful New Year full of happiness and good health. All my love. XXX In 2001, during the Tour of Canberra, Amy had a massive crash that put her in hospital with a fractured skull, an omen of what was to come. She spent five months away from the sport but, of course, came back. A card she sent her parents after that drama featured a photograph of a toddler trying to push a car. The message read ‘Believing – it’s 90 per cent of doing’: Dear Mum and Dad Well what can I say! Many, many thanks from the bottom of my heart for all your care, love and support over the past few weeks. While the experience was hardly memorable, I feel completely fortunate and dare I say lucky to walk away from it in the way that I have. I thought this card was a great reflection of the message that you have always taught me. I

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think I just need to keep remembering it!! Well, little is left to say except thank you!! Let’s hope next May [the next Tour of Canberra] is better. All my love and best wishes. XXX Amy also kept up a steady correspondence to her friends, especially Tammie Ebert, nicknamed Mich, from all those years before in Oakmount Court. In this letter, sent to Tammie in August 1993, the wide-eyed Amy recounts her adventures on her first big trip to Europe where she and fellow West Lakes rower Peta Coudraye would win the world junior pairs championship in Norway. Dear Mich Hi! How’s it going? Hope that you are well. I have been in Denmark now for two weeks and tomorrow we are heading off to Norway which should be good to finally race. Denmark is really pretty and we are staying at the national Danish training centre at the lake we are training on. Our room is a small attic type place but is cute and cosy. We (all seven girls) are living in a house overlooking the course which is quite nice but now an absolute pig sty. We have been training morning and afternoon and the time change of about eight hours is still wearing off so we haven’t been able to do a great deal during the day except rest and watch videos. We have been into Copenhagen a few times which was ace and full of shops. Friday night we went to a place called the ‘Tivoli Gardens’, very similar to somewhere like Disneyland but on a little smaller scale. It was ace and a good break from rowing and a chance to get out and

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do something. It’s been really weird because we have only seen the night time once or so as it gets dark about 11 p.m. and light again around 3.30 a.m. which makes sleeping difficult. So far we haven’t seen much of the sun as we had planned so I hope it comes out in Norway for me to work on my tan! Hope uni is going well. Say hi to Kaye, Linda, Christina, Georgia and anyone else. How were your exams? Mum and dad said they have my results but I don’t know any of them yet as mum will bring them over with her. [Mary Safe and Peta Coudraye’s mother, Deidre, attended the world championships.] If I failed biochem I don’t want to know about it! I am absolutely dreading coming back and catching up all the work but I guess that’s the way it goes. You’ll have to fill me in completely on the Crows [Adelaide Crows AFL team] When I get back that’s one thing I really want to hear about. I hope they have been winning – what legends! Say hi to Russ [Tammie’s father] for me and tell him I’ll be round to say hello when I get home … A lot of the Danish people seem really arrogant and the language is an absolute crack-up! Some words bear absolutely no resemblance to what they mean. Numerous times I have gone to get in the car and found myself in the driver’s seat rather than the passenger’s one. Driving over here is quite different. We have had fun doing the washing and getting it stuck in the machine because we overloaded it. But the novelty is quickly wearing off and I now realise how lucky you are if someone else does it for you! Well, I had better be going. Hope all your family is well and say hi to them for me. See you soon. Love XXX

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By the time she wrote this letter, May 1994, Amy was at the AIS in Canberra. She had deferred studies for her sports science degree to give herself over to her training, a decision she was starting to regret. She would resume the course at Canberra University the following year. But, like any teenager away from home, what she wanted most was to know – and share – all the gossip. Dear Mich Hi! How’s it going? Hope all is well in the Ebert household … Well, life over here besides training can get a bit boring – especially without a car to go and do stuff. We are training morning and night and the squad is coming along really well … Canberra itself isn’t too bad – heaps of trees and parks etc and really easy to get around. I guess I could cope living here. Sally [Newmarch] and I are in a block with all the other girls who row here on scholarships and they are great fun to get along with. It’s fun living with everyone and everyone here has decorated their rooms as if they are their own. So they are not too bad. The institute itself is a fantastic set-up with everything you need on your doorstep – masseurs, physios, doctors and really yummy meals. This morning after training, we had breaky and then went to the library to watch some videos – rowing and gymnastics. The video library is great! I’ve just come back from having a spa which was nice while Sally was at the physio. It sounds great and all, but it’s more an issue of filling in time – I think you definitely need to study or work here. You would go absolutely brain dead! I guess I should enjoy it because I know life will not always be like this …

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Saturday night we went to the b-ball [basketball] which was great – athletes at the AIS can get free tickets so that wasn’t bad either. The Melbourne Tigers kicked the Canberra Cannons arse! Last Sunday we went to the rugby and saw the Canberra Raiders play Manly. It’s a real joke because everyone calls it footy! What a joke – I reckon it’s a poxy game … So how is uni? Thanks a lot for having lunch last week at Fasta Pasta. That was great even if I did eat too much icecream. I hope everyone at uni is well and say hi to them for me. What’s the latest with Kaye and Darren? Are they married yet? Huge congratulations, Mich, on coming top of First Year. You deserve it as payback for all the hard work you put in. I was talking to mum and she was telling me that there were a few problems with the Contax/Garville super league grand final? I heard Mich wouldn’t sign the score card? Bloody Contax bush pigs! [Amy and Tammie had played junior netball with Garville in the South Australian competition, then the best in Australia. Garville’s great rival was Contax and Mich was, of course, Michelle Fielke, the Australian captain and their great hero.] Did you hear [name deleted, a mutual friend] ran away from home for about four days! [Names deleted, her parents] didn’t know where the hell she was, but then she rocked up four days later and they still don’t know where she went! I’m not sure of all the details. Mum only mentioned it briefly when I spoke with her. Canberra is really cold in the mornings, especially at 5 a.m. and there has been quite a lot of fog on the lake. The lake is really good to row on and you can row for about 95 kilometres without having to turn around – a bit different

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to West Lakes, I think! The water has been mainly flat which has been good. Despite seeing a water rat the other morning, the lake is really pretty. Well, anyway, I should get going soon I guess. Thank you once again for the beautiful poem and frame you gave me – I will treasure it forever. I showed mum and George and they both started crying when they read it … Catchya cruisin’, Mich. Love always XXX Then there were the letters to her. After achievement of Amy’s finest sporting moment – selection in the 1996 Olympic team – Mary wrote this letter to her as she embarked on the countdown to Atlanta: Dear Amy By the time you open this hopefully you will have had a chance to catch your breath and relax a little as you are winging your way across to Europe. Having you home for just a few short days was absolutely wonderful, although at times exhausting – but in a good way. So now you’ve set everything in order (from a business sense) i.e. banks, travellers’ cheques, addresses etc and I guess now you have to concentrate on yourself and your dreams and aspirations. No ‘normal’ person can really understand what it must be like for you and your crew mates at this time and I hope you’ll be able to draw strength and support from each other (especially Bronny) as you set off on your big undertaking. As a Mum, I ask myself what gift I can give you (apart from travellers’ cheques!!) and I guess the best I can do is to assure

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you of my love and support always and that I will always be here for you. My love for you is unconditional – no strings attached, for that is the very best kind of love one human being can give to another. I think you know that in your heart, but it is very important for me to say it to you now as distance separates us. As you go away each time, a little part of me goes with you – that’s what happens when you have a child. The caring and loving is long and deep. But every time I hear from you I begin to feel whole again. So darling, have a wonderful trip and may you fulfil your dreams and above all believe in yourself – we all do. All my love Mum XXX And from her father, Denis: Dear Amy: All the best wishes to you today. Remember I’ll be thinking of you all the time. You have worked so hard for everything and I’m sure luck and good fortune will now be on your side. It only seems such a short time ago you started rowing and just look at you now! I’m very proud of you today and always will be. Remember mum and I will always be supporting you and your dreams. Best wishes and good luck to you Amy. Your loving Dad XXX And Simon, always the coach and always there to give Amy a psychological boost when needed, wrote this undated

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card to her when something in her training had obviously gone wrong: Dear Amy Thought that I’d send you a little card to cheer you up. I know that you have been going through a rough patch but, hey, better in the middle of the season than at the end! Remember that your most powerful tool is your mind. No matter what, you know that you have my support and love (lots of that). I’m sure that you will achieve what you desire and remember that a door closed in one direction may be the best thing as sometimes it allows you to go through another door to something better. Love you lots … Simon After Amy’s death, while Simon was on his way to Germany to bring her home, a grieving Denis and Mary were inundated with correspondence and flowers – and even food from concerned neighbours. As already pointed out, the lounge room of their home quickly came to resemble a florist shop and soon the brightly coloured bouquets were overflowing into other rooms. This was as the postman earned his pay, delivering hundreds upon hundreds of cards and letters from all over the world, many of them from people they had never heard of. And this went on for weeks. Among them were some that were simply inspiring. Here are two, written by friends of Denis and Mary (the names of the writers have been withheld), which look beyond Amy’s

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death to make a better life for a couple of small children in faraway places: Dear Mary Your words at Amy’s memorial service were both beautiful and inspirational – a true reflection of Amy and her life. Over the past days [name withheld] and I have pondered on the love that we were asked to take away and the ways in which we should pass it on. Today we made the decision to sponsor a child – a little girl from Kenya. We sincerely hope that this gift will enhance the life of little Beatrice just as Amy enhanced and inspired those around her. Love always. Dear Mary After many attempts, I’m finally able to write to you. Words have seemed inadequate. Your dear Amy obviously touched so many people in very special ways and was inspirational in all aspects of her life. Mary, I’ve admired the strength and compassion you have shown. You and Denis, still thinking of others while enduring the unimaginable – such a warm, loving, selfless family. Nothing will ever compensate for your wonderful daughter, but a Nicaraguan family will have an opportunity for a better life. You have inspired our family to sponsor 16 month old Amy Pamela Diaz Reyes. Her father is a subsistence farmer, so with a little help, hopefully, the whole community will benefit. Your family has given ours the incentive to assist in making

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this beautiful little girl’s future a little brighter. (Amy’s legacy to Amy.) Thank you, Mary, Denis and Georgina.

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The Amy Gillett Foundation has been established in her name with three principal aims: • to increase the road safety of cyclists by changing the way in which they and motorists interact • to assist with the on-going rehabilitation of Amy’s five team-mates who were injured in the road crash in which she died in Germany • to fund the initial phase of the European cycling careers of young female competitive cyclists – the next generation of Amy Gilletts. Full details of the foundation can be found at <www.amygillett.org.au> A number of on-going sporting awards have also been set up in memory of Amy. These include: • the Amy Gillett Memorial Prize to be awarded as part of the Tour of Thuringia, Germany, to the cyclist who best represents the values of fair play and teamwork • the South Australian Sports Institute (SASI) Amy Gillett-Safe Memorial Award for the athlete who best demonstrates persistence, sacrifice and commitment • the South Australian Secondary Schools Sports Association Amy Safe (Gillett) Award for netball to the player who, among other attributes, makes an outstanding contribution to the team 211

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• the South Australian Rowing Association Amy Gillett-Safe Perpetual Trophy to be awarded annually to the state’s top female sculler • the Annesley College Amy Gillett Award for Honourable Sportsmanship for an outstanding attitude towards education and sport plus a positive and resilient attitude in life.

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Photographic Credits Page 1: Courtesy the Safe family Page 2: Courtesy the Coudraye family Page 3 (top): Courtesy Simon Gillett Page 3 (bottom): Courtesy Gina Douglas Page 4 (top): Cycling Australia Page 4 (bottom): Australian Institute of Sport Page 5 (top): Cycling Australia Page 5 (bottom): Australian Institute of Sport Page 6: Courtesy the Safe family Page 7: Courtesy Simon Gillett Page 8 (top): European Pressphoto Agency Page 8 (bottom): Reuters Page 9 (top): Reuters Page 9 (bottom): Will Rose, News Ltd Page 10 (top): News Ltd Page 10 (bottom): Cycling Australia Page 11 (top): Cycling Australia Page 11 (bottom): Michael Klein, Herald Sun/News Ltd Page 12: Courtesy Simon Gillett

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