Corporate and athletic champion Jane Flemming has stepped onto a runway leading to a home Olympics and potential global glory, writes Correspondent at Large Louise Evans
A clutch of celebrated track and field champions positioned to peak at the Brisbane 2032 Olympics is the measuring stick by which Athletics Australia’s new president will gauge her success.
Jane Flemming, a dual Olympian and Commonwealth heptathlon and long jump champion, wants her term as the new President of Athletics Australia (AA) to be marked by sporting excellence on the world stage.
Flemming will oversee the AA infrastructure and pipelines that support athletes as they transition from domestic to international success, and she hopes her career experience will assist them in reaching the podium at world championships and Olympic Games.
“My intent is to go hard and go hard for a number of years,” Flemming said.
“I hope that by the time I step off the board, whether that be in three, four or five years, that we have a handful of household names that people know from our sport.
“Leading up to the 2000 Sydney Olympics that’s what we had and can have again. Brave, successful committed Australians you can emulate, join their journey and be touched by the sport.”
Flemming OAM, 58, reels off a list of track and field champions from Sydney 2000 including gold medallist Cathy Freeman, and silver medallists Tatiana Grigorieva and Jai Taurima, predicting the irresistible lure of a home Olympics in Brisbane 2032 will create a similar surge of heroes determined to compete and conquer.
Flemming said she knew elite athletes who’d been offered lucrative contacts by Cricket Australia and the NRL and AFL in the lead-up to Sydney 2000 but said no because they wanted to compete at a home Olympics.
AA was able to hot-house these budding stars in the run-up to Sydney and by providing a stable “rainbow” of financial support, coaching, training, competition and sports medicine, Flemming predicts there’s more to come.
“We’re providing the rainbow and the Olympics is the gold at the end,” she said. “Athletes want to go to the Olympics, that’s their childhood dream, something deep inside.”
Flemming’s election as president sets a new standard for leaders of other Australian sporting organisations which are too often mired in controversy linked to poor governance and administration, financial instability and mismanagement, toxic cultures and headline-grabbing personality clashes.
In addition to being an elite athlete who’s competed at the highest level including the Olympics, world championships and Commonwealth Games, Flemming is physically fit, media trained and she’s got solid dual sporting and corporate experience and clout.
As managing director of Flemming Promotions, she developed and implemented multi-million dollar sponsorships for companies including Cadbury, Samsung, British Airways and Coates Hire.
As founding director of the community, not-for-profit national health initiative Live Life Get Active, she helped deliver thousands of free community-based health, fitness and nutrition classes Australia wide. And still is.
Flemming, who is married with teenage twin boys, is also comfortable in front of the camera and behind the microphone, having worked as a TV sports presenter and an athletics commentator for Seven, Nine, SBS and the host broadcasters at major championships.
The runway ahead for Flemming and AA is also ideal – the Paris Olympics next year, followed by Los Angeles in 2028 and then the greatest prize of all – another home Games in Brisbane in nine years.
“When I was eight and joined the Knox Little Athletics club (in Melbourne) I didn’t even know there was someone who ran the sport. I just thought you turned up and when they said ‘ready set go’ you ran for your life,” she said.
“In my first week (as president) I felt like I was running for my life again. But as a teenager I did know that athletics would lead me to other things – a bigger life than competing.”
Flemming believes that her skill set and experience will serve her well as she serves her sport.
“I have an intimate understanding of what it takes to be an athlete at all levels,” she said. “I have a lot of corporate and commercial experience and an understanding of how a business operates.”
Flemming has vowed that under her presidency AA will act as its athletes do – in an transparent environment of constructive criticism that leads to and inspires best performance.
Flemming is also well versed in AA operations and strategy having been elected as president after serving four years as a Director and 18 months as Vice President. Under AA’s rules she can serve a maximum five years as president which gives her a “fantastic runway into Brisbane 2032”.
When she vacates the chair Flemming wants to leave a financially prosperous AA with an increased and growing footprint and membership base.
“I would like to think we’d have increased our revenues and our margins so that we have the flexibility and freedom to achieve our goals – having a very successful junior product in the market, expanding our women’s coaching programs – a whole series of things.
“If we can’t do it in the next nine years towards Brisbane I don’t know when there is another opportunity to do so.”
She’s also determined to promote her female credentials and her sport’s gender equity.
“It’s a great time to be coming on board as a female Olympian (president) because I think the market is ready for us.
“There are ways we will be positioning our sport that will be quite synergistic with corporate Australia and I don’t know if many of the other sports will have thought of them or have the ability.
“We are a gender-equal sport. We don’t have ‘women’s athletics’. It’s just athletics, men and women competing at the same time, in the same place, for the same prize money in pretty much the same events.
“We’re the go-to for anyone who wants a career in sport.”
Louise Evans is an award-winning journalist who has worked around Australia and the world as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and media executive for media platforms including The Sydney Morning Herald (eight years), The Australian (11 years) and Australian Associated Press (six years in London, Beijing and Sydney).
A women sports’ pioneer, Louise was the first female sports journalist employed by The Sydney Morning Herald and the first female sports editor at The Australian. Louise went on to work at six Olympic Games, six Commonwealth Games and numerous world sporting championships and grand slam tennis events.
Louise is the Founding Editor of AAP FactCheck, the Creator of #WISPAA – Women in Sport Photo Action Awards and national touring Exhibition and the author and producer of the Passage to Pusan book, documentary and exhibition.
In 2019 she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) Queen’s Honour for services to the media and sport and named an Australian Financial Review Top 100 Woman of Influence for services to the arts, culture and sport.
In 2020 she won a NSW Volunteer of the Year Award plus the NSW Government Community Service Award for her women-in-sport advocacy work.
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