Nestled near the Swiss border on the foreshore of an Italian lake lies one of the secrets to Australia’s Olympic success. Editor-at-Large Louise Evans gets the inside running on an idyllic state-of-the art sanctuary for Paris- bound athletes.
The call for help came at about 9am.
Six hours later a sick and injured member of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games team arrived at the Australian Institute of Sport’s European Training Centre (ETC) in Gavirate, northern Italy.
The athlete had been training at altitude 200km away in nearby Saint Moritz for the Birmingham Games which started in just one week when he sustained a running injury and respiratory complications.
ETC staff swung into action. They organised an electrocardiogram, ultrasound, MRI scan and lung function and PCR tests at the centre’s medical rooms and down the road with medical providers in Gavirate.
Within 24 hours the athlete had been fed, accommodated, diagnosed, counseled and treated and was heading back to Saint Moritz with a recovery plan that allowed him to continue training and compete in Birmingham where he finished in the top eight.
The turnaround was miraculous but it was just another day in the life of the ETC – a three-storey Australian Institute of Sport-funded facility that provides a unique European training and recovery haven for high-performance athletes on Lake Varese.
One of the miracle workers, Australian nurse Luke Roberts said being able to take the stress out of the athlete’s medical emergency was one of the intangible benefits of the ETC.
“The stress minimisation is priceless,” Roberts said. “We were able to quickly give the athlete a diagnosis and treatment plan that allowed him to get back to training and compete with confidence. He went on to perform very well.”
Imagine getting off a 24-flight to a European destination and being met at the airport and taken to your five-star accommodation where willing staff speak English. There’s modern and clean ensuite rooms, a self-service laundry and kitchen, a dining room serving all-you-can eat four meals a day, free physio and massage, medical centre with resident Australian staff, an Olympic gym and training facilities, recovery pools, lounge areas, games room and free Wifi. And it costs 85 Euro ($A140) a day, for everything. Plus if you’ve booked ahead you can come and go and have your baggage and equipment safely stored. Sounds like heaven?
Rohan Browning, Australia’s fastest man on land, calls the ETC heaven.
“When you are traveling and competing there are so many challenges especially when you’re in a non-Anglo country,” the 100m sprinter said.
“You want to make that foreign training camp experience to be as friction-less as possible. “Gavirate does that. It’s laid back, relaxed and it’s beautiful being by the lake. You have access to all the sports medicine support. If you get sick or injured you don’t have to navigate a foreign medical system. There’s no language barrier. It streamlines everything. And it’s good to be around Australians too. It takes the stress out.”
Nurse Roberts said the ETC’s diagnostic tools are a game changer in terms of infection control and athlete recovery because they can provide results within one hour for respiratory and gastro illnesses.
“We can tell an athlete if they have something that needs to be triaged, treated, isolated or if they’ve got no bugs and can resume training,” he said. “And they can trust us because we’re here working for them.”
Robert’s CV is a perfect match for the base. At 54, he’s well used to being in a high-performance sporting environment having been the 1988 under-20 800m NSW champion (personal best 1min50.50s) and then an AFL boundary umpire for eight years.
He’s also been a frontline intensive care nurse for more than 30 years at Canberra Hospital so knows his way around a medical emergency.
But perhaps his biggest asset in this elite environment is his language skills. Roberts has been fluent in Italian for over 15 years after learning it at high school and perfecting his skills while working at the ETC for three years from 2015-18 as the resident sports coordinator .
Roberts returns to Gavirate in early April for his third summer stint, this time for five-months, as the centre’s registered nurse who works closely with the resident doctor and physio. Being able to navigate, facilitate and shepherd athletes through the medical system gives him the greatest satisfaction.
Suffice to say Roberts has all the town’s medical providers and pharmacists on speed dial and also knows the best places for an aperitivo and dinner. “The ETC food is excellent and there’s also great pizza and gelato in town.
“We’re lucky the ETC sits on such a prime piece of town land. In addition to all our facilities you can walk 10 minutes into town where there’s three to four pizza restaurants, gelato shops, cafes, three supermarkets and a massive shopping complex. Everything you’d need is right here. And the international Milan Malpensa Airport is 40 minutes away.”
In the run-up to the Paris Olympics, which start on July 26, the ETC will be operating at its limits, providing a state-of-the-art base for a rotating roster of about 150 athletes and support staff a night.
ETC chief Fiona de Jong said the high-class operation was funded by the AIS to the tune of $A2.5 million per annum – which funds the building and land lease, and running costs including about 10 on-site staff plus local catering and cleaning crews.
“It’s an island of Australia in the middle of Italy,” de Jong said. “The bricks and mortar of the European Training Centre provide support for about 3000 athletes training and competing in Europe a year.”
Last year the ETC opened the refurbished adjacent Sunset Hotel which provides an additional forty-eight rooms, taking capacity to 150 per night.
They’ll need it to accommodate the seven sports heading their way ahead of the Paris Olympics – rowing, canoe kayak, cycling, track and field, skate, rugby sevens and football.
“We are testing the limits of our operations and staff. We are here to help athletes achieve their Olympic ambitions,” she said.
De Jong has been in residence at the ETC for more than 12 months of a four-year contract that spans the Paris Olympics and the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Games.
De Jong is no stranger to high-performance sport and Italy either, having worked as the Australian Olympic Committee Director of Sport for over nine years and CEO for two years before explosively parting ways with former president John Coates.
De Jong’s husband is also Italian, a luxury retailer from nearby Turin Alfredo Pisapia. Together they have a 10-year-old son who attends a local school.
“I’ve been coming here on holiday for 12 years,” de Jong said. “It’s very different living and doing business here. My Italian is not that fabulous.”
De Jong has made the ETC look and feel more like home by softening the medical institution interiors with Australian colours and furnishing and hanging Tourism Australia-supplied images featuring Indigenous faces, kangaroos and koalas, the Great Ocean Road, Cottesloe Beach, Bondi Icebergs, the Great Barrier Reef, and Kakadu.
“Physical spaces impact how you feel so that’s why we’ve brought Australian decor into the building.”
The economy of scale of being able to accommodate, feed, treat and train 3000 athletes a year without being hostage to hiked summer-time rates in European hotels and restaurants is invaluable. Plus athletes can trust the food on their plate is geared to their dietary needs.
“Our blueberry budget alone would be 40 Euro ($A65) a day,” de Jong said. “We feel the 85 Euro ($A140) a day charge to the athlete is a good offering. It’s a sweet spot which represents good value and it’s cheaper than what they could get elsewhere.
“It’s also a worthwhile investment ensuring they get the same support here that’s provided in Australia. We are stronger together and we can provide better support than the sports doing it individually.”
A good day at the ETC for de Jong was farewelling a cyclist who’d arrived with a knee injury and under pressure from his professional team to keep racing. The ETC staff were able to get scans to diagnose and time-out to treat the injury, placate the professional team doctor and return him fit and well to complete a successful season.
The familiar environment also allowed the athlete to relax and breathe out, nothing was difficult or complex and hearing an Australian accent was warmly reassuring.
“That intervention helped in the short term and long term by looking after his wellbeing and holding his hand through that process. It was a rich and rewarding day.”
Hopefully more rich rewards await Australia’s athletes in Paris.
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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