August 2000 Volume 81 Number 8 "serving the protectors"
By Brett Williams

Bound for the
OLYMPICS

onstable Steve Tully is about to spend eight days amid the glamour and excitement of main-arena Olympic sport. In a role with no connection to police work, he will act as a technical official for track and field events at the Sydney Olympic Games next month.

Tully will rub shoulders with the likes of Canadian runner, Donavan Bailey, American runners, Merlene Ottey and Michael Johnson, as well as Australian champions, Cathy Freeman and Melinda Gainsford-Taylor.

And with only weeks to go before the Games’ opening ceremony, Tully’s butterflies are on the rise.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I didn’t think would ever happen to me,” he says. “I’m so chuffed because I’m just an ordinary person who’s going to the Olympics. I still cannot believe that it’s me who’s going.”

With nine other officials, Tully, 45, will take complete charge of the track-and-field arena for the eight days’ events. He will be responsible for everything from line marking and equipment compliance to the ground surface and grass height.

“You’re responsible for making sure each component of the track is set up correctly,” he explains. “If there’s a hurdle event, for example, you have to make sure the hurdles are manufactured - and fitted to the track - in accordance with IAAF rules.”

Officials must also check the weight, dimensions and shape of javelins, shots and discuses, as well as the construction of hammer cages and safety nets. And should a champion athlete such as Czech thrower, Jan Zelezny, snap his javelin, its replacement must be overseen by an official.

Tully’s first inkling of a chance to officiate at the Olympics came during an informal chat with a SOCOG technical chief in Canberra last April. It seemed Tully was Sydney-bound, but he resisted the urge to celebrate - until he received written confirmation from SOCOG in June. Ever since then, he’s been “over the moon”.

And British-born Tully won’t head to Sydney as a novice. He holds A-grade status as a throws official and scored a “B” grading as a technical official in June this year.

He has officiated at the Commonwealth Games selection trials in Melbourne (1998), the national Olympic selection trials in Sydney this year, and will officiate at the Oceania Games in Adelaide this month.

In contrast to his current-day involvement in elite athletics, however, Tully once held no interest in any form of sport. But when he enrolled his five-year-old son in little athletics - in response to a 1985 newspaper advertisement - his sporting interests changed.

Little athletics, he believed, would help his son, Chris, with physical co-ordination and personal development. But ever the caring dad, Tully wasn’t prepared simply to enrol his son and then walk away.

“I thought: ‘I want to get involved in whatever my kids do’, and it just took off from there,” he says. “I never looked back. You hear all these stories about kids going off on their own and their parents not being interested. I thought: ‘That’s not going to be me’.”

Tully’s initial role was just to help out with his son’s under-six squad. But that role changed dramatically after only six months. “The chap who was actually running it - just another dad - couldn’t continue,” Tully remembers. “He asked for someone to take over.

“I thought: ‘Well, I enjoy it, it keeps me fit, and I like being with the kids’. So, I said: ‘Yeah, I’ll take it on’.”

“The athletes know that, without us being there, the events certainly can’t be run...”

As time passed, Tully scored a level “O” coach’s accreditation, won the Salisbury Little Athletics Club presidency (1992) and moved with his son, a javelin thrower, into senior athletics (1995).

He has, since then, officiated at many state and national championships, and so worked with the elite of Australian athletics. He knows well such athletes as pole-vaulters Emma George and Russian-born Tatiana Grigorieva, and former hammer-thrower, Sean Carlin. He also knows javelin-throwers – and fellow police officers – Joanna Stone (Qld) and Louise Curry (NSW).

“When you’re in the technical shed,” Tully explains, “throwers have to come and give you their implements for you to sanction them to be used at the competition. So they have to have a ‘one-on-one’ with you.

“The athletes know that, without us being there, the events certainly can’t be run - and they appreciate that. They always come up and thank you for what you’ve done. High-ranking athletes know you by name because we’ve been touring around so long. It’s fantastic.

“But as an ordinary person out there interacting with these people, you have to keep pinching yourself. You think: ‘I shouldn’t be here! I don’t deserve to be here!’ That’s the feeling I get when I’m out there in conversation with them.”

Tully is continually staggered by what he sees of the athletes’ abilities, peak physical condition and physiques, which range from “scrawny” to “Schwarzenegger-like”.

“With some guys,” he says, “there’s nothing of them, yet they can throw the discus, put the shot or do the high jump, and you think: ‘How the hell did they do that?’

“I’ll see the whole lot (at the Olympics) because, in the technical area, I’ll be around the whole track.”

Meanwhile, Tully struggles to control his excitement. He admits that, almost every work day at the Major Crash Investigation Unit, he drifts off into deep thought about his cherished Olympic role.

He expects the track-side atmosphere is “going to be electric”, and can barely wait to see his favourite champions, the Kenyan runners.

Tully will live in free accommodation just outside the Olympic village during his term of unpaid work. He will return to Adelaide for a week after the Games, but fly back to Sydney for a further 14 days’ voluntary officiating at the Paralympics.

But with English roots, will Tully secretly barrack for the Australian or British athletes? “I haven’t even given that the slightest thought,” he says. “I’m just so happy to be there to see all the athletes.”

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